Volunteer Policing

One recent Sunday morning, my wife Betsy and I were raking leaves in our yard when I noticed that the small concrete access door to our water meter box was missing. No big deal, except that a person could step into the hole and break an ankle or worse.

I put a small board over the hole and on Monday phoned the water company. Soon there was a red cone over the hole and later the access door was replaced by a plastic door I’d guess cost the water company about $1.25.

The following morning, I answered our doorbell, thinking a Christmas package had been delivered, to discover a Thousand Oaks police car in front of our house. One of its occupants was writing something official-looking and a second was searching our bushes. They were both police volunteers.

It seems they were writing up the theft of our water meter access door. Before I realized what was happening, I gave them my name, date of birth, height, weight, our phone number and the time of day we discovered that the access door was missing. No, I was not frisked or handcuffed.

But it seemed to me that perhaps our volunteer police are involved in busywork. What if someone put a cherry bomb in our $7 mailbox or stole our $6 ceramic house number--would there be a jury trial? Would Betsy and Bob be swept up into the witness protection program?

Up East Avenida de Los Arboles a mile or so is an abandoned pickup truck, complete with flat tires. It’s been there for weeks, despite a city code that says a vehicle can’t just sit at a curb for more than 72 hours without being moved. Can’t the police volunteers make a report about that?

BOB KOCHER

Thousand Oaks