Killings Force Police to Shift Personnel

Two working-class men from Central America shot dead at a seaside park near Point Mugu. Two men in their 20s killed by gunfire at a gang party in Santa Paula. A 37-year-old Oxnard man fatally shot in an argument over a parking space.

These are five of the 10 homicides that occurred over the past six weeks in usually tranquil Ventura County, where overall crime continues to fall.

The number of homicides this year is nearly half the total for 2002, when 23 people were slain. The recent spate of deadly violence has forced local law enforcement agencies to shift some officers to crime suppression task forces and investigative units, officials said.

“We’re going to lock ‘em up,” said Asst. Chief Chuck Hookstra, in charge of investigations for the Oxnard Police Department. “Some people will be arrested.”

Both Hookstra and Santa Paula Police Chief Bob Gonzales, whose two cities account for six of the 10 homicides, said they believe the shootings represent random acts of violence rather than an uptick in gang activity.

“There’s always concern, especially when you have a gang shooting,” Gonzales said. “For us to not look at the matter would be inappropriate. Usually when you have a gang-type of shooting, a retaliatory shooting follows thereafter. We have to do whatever we can to make sure it doesn’t take place.”

To make sure it doesn’t take place in Santa Paula, Gonzales has ordered officers to heighten their presence in known gang-banger turf and to aggressively arrest gang members for violations to let them know they are being watched, the chief said.

Officers may also talk to the families of gang-bangers to seek their help in preventing further violence. “Sometimes they have influence on family members who are gang-bangers,” Gonzales said. “Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t.”

The chief said he believes Santa Paula’s first slayings of the year were related because they occurred within half a mile of each other and 12 minutes apart in the early morning of Feb. 9. Ignacio Henry Castro, 23, and Gustavo Ramirez Jr., 21, were shot after a fight started at a party attended by more than 100 people on the north side of town. No arrests have been made.

Oxnard police have arrested one suspect in its four shootings, which include the Feb. 7 death of Miguel Solis, 27. He was shot after a confrontation over a parking space, allegedly between his brother and another man.

“These are very difficult to predict,” Hookstra said. “People arguing over a parking place. How do you predict something like that?”

Like Santa Paula, Oxnard deploys a special enforcement unit to prevent further violence in the aftermath of a gang-related shooting or other major crime, Hookstra said.

When a slaying occurs, any number of detectives can be pulled from other units to support the department’s four full-time homicide investigators. By assigning more detectives to the front end of a case, Hookstra said, they can home in on the scene while the crime is still fresh, canvassing neighborhoods and following multiple leads simultaneously.

“It depends on how much field work has to be done,” he said. “The first 72 hours are the most important to an investigation.”

Overtime costs rise when around-the-clock attention is placed on an investigation, Hookstra said. But Oxnard has been generous in its financial support of the department, granting it 11 new hires this year, he said. The city also agreed to chip in $60,000 to help pay for a full-time prosecutor to work with the department’s gang-suppression unit.

The other four killings in the county occurred in areas patrolled by the Sheriff’s Department. Those crimes include the fatal shootings last month of Levi A. Orellana, 32, and Francisco Orellana Miranda, 37, near Point Mugu.

The immigrants from El Salvador and Honduras were found shot along Pacific Coast Highway near Sycamore Cove State Beach. A woman who was with the two men was critically wounded. No arrests have been made, and detectives are trying to determine what happened that night. The other two slayings, in Thousand Oaks and Fillmore, also remain unsolved.

Despite the recent surge in homicides, overall crime in Ventura County has declined for 10 straight years, dropping by 2.8% in 2001 compared with the previous year.

Figures for 2002 have not yet been released.