Chasing Away the Bad Guys is a County, Personal and Private Industry Effort

Community Prevention

The bad guys don't seem to hang around Fair Oaks as much as other communities, according to county statistics, and much of the reason may be the combined efforts of the Sacramento County Sheriff's Service Center, private security companies, and ordinary citizens who assume their roles as crime fighters with vigor, and with a commitment to making a difference in the community.

The Sacramento County Sheriff's Department Service Center is part of a community crime prevention program spearheaded by Sacramento County Sheriff Glenn Craig. With eight centers for the entire county, Fair Oaks is covered by the District Three Center, located at 8091 Greenback Lane in Citrus Heights.

Of the over ninety people who work at the Service Center, only five are full-time paid employees. Area Commander Lieutenant Jan Hoganson oversees three sworn deputies, a full-time Crime Prevention Specialist, and more than eighty volunteers, who come from all age groups and all walks of life. Reinette Fairweather, a particularly dedicated Center volunteer, has logged in over 2000 hours. Tim O'Neil, a volunteer of the District 2 Service Center, located in Carmichael, has put in over 4000 volunteer hours.

The Service Center operates 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. daily, and during that time the volunteers take phone calls for crimes and possible crimes, such as burglaries, thefts, vandalism and harassing phone calls. The volunteers write crime reports, and provide information for the deputies to use when following up on particular incidents. The Greenback Service Center receives over 500 calls a month, more than any other Service Center in the Sacramento area, "because we're open more hours than the other centers," laughs Lt. Hoganson. The Center wrote 6845 reports in 1995.

Besides taking calls for crimes reports, the volunteers also perform surveillance operations and often participate in the arrests of criminals. Surveillance operations include standing on the rooftop of Sunrise Mall to monitor the parking lot for potential problems, and staking out locations in the community where illegal activity is suspected. On their first day of operation, the Service Center volunteers assisted in the arrest of a rapist.

The dedicated men and women of the Service Center also perform sweeps to enforce the 10 o'clock curfew, and during one shift netted 31 juveniles in one night, in which they processed the kids at the Service Center, and contacted the parents. They have netted over 100 kids since the program began in March. Working closely with the Department of Alcoholic Beverage Control, Center volunteers perform a decoy program, in which underage juveniles attempt to purchase alcoholic beverages from liquor and convenience stores. "The stores around here will be surprised when we do it with cigarettes," says Lt. Hoganson. "Nobody's ever done that before, but we think it will be a very fruitful and prosperous operation."

All volunteers are required to work in teams of two and are required to keep detailed records of their observations. They receive training in the methods of protocol for observing and reporting crimes, and in safety procedures to avoid injury when working on higher profile cases.

The Service Center is not all about crime happening. It is also dedicated to education and crime prevention. Wise, the Crime Specialist, and Lt. Hoganson, spend a lot of their time giving seminars. One of the most recent seminars is for property managers, and the ways in which they can avoid renting to trouble-makers, and how to handle problem tenants. The staff also makes regular presentations on topics that include: personal safety, rape awareness, child abuse, gangs and drug abuse.

Wise remains particularly busy coordinating 407 Neighborhood Watch programs that fall inside the district boundaries of the Greenback Service Center. Over 7000 people participate in Neighborhood Watch.

Future plans for the eight Service Centers in Sacramento County include staffing probation and welfare officers. Though in the formative stages, Lt. Hoganson hopes to initiate a Neighborhood Accountability Board, in which people from the community would sit on a tribunal panel with an official from the Department of Social Investigation to determine the community service punishments for juveniles who violate curfew, purchase cigarettes, and other misdemeanors. The plan is to provide punishment, while allowing the offender to maintain a clean record.

One drawback to the Community Service Centers is money. All eight centers are funded by federal grants. All it takes to put a Center in a community is free rent, furniture, computers and phone lines. The problem is finding people who want to provide the site and equipment necessary to make a Service Center operational. "It's not staffing that's a problem," said Lt. Hoganson. "If we build it, the volunteers will come. The problem is that we operate on grants. Everything is donated. Once we receive the proper donations, the problem is solved and we can put up a Center in any community."

Private Security

Shortly before 11:00 p.m., the patrol car radio crackles with a report of two teens being detained at an apartment complex for possession of drug paraphernalia. Jack Ward presses a little harder on the accelerator and arrives at the scene to find that two of his troops have the situation under control. At the same time, the officers apprehend a man who stole a bicycle that afternoon-a bicycle that had been given to a boy for his birthday just that morning.

Just another day's work for Sacramento County's finest? Nope.

Ward used to be a policeman. He spent eighteen years as a Sheriff's Deputy in the counties of Los Angeles and Sacramento, and as undercover vice in L.A., but now he is the founder, owner, CEO and the commanding officer of Security and Investigative Agency (SIA), a private security and investigations firm based in Fair Oaks.

With the shortage of money and donations needed for Community Service Centers, and the shortage of county patrolmen and the increasing complexity and danger of the situations in which they find themselves-situations that too often require more than one uniformed officer-commercial centers and residential neighborhoods seek help from private companies to provide the security so desperately wanted and needed in our communities.

SIA, begun in September, 1995, now operates with 48 armed officers and 60 cars, all equipped with radios, speaker systems, and many with lights. Ward and his team have already made a tremendous impact in the past year to solve and prevent crime in and around Fair Oaks.

"I'm a problem-solver," Ward says. "You give me a problem and I'll take a shot at it. Most of the time my guys and I will provide a solution."

So far, Ward and his team of 48 officers boast an impressive record. Recently, Sunrise Auto suffered a rash of burglaries in which the suspects escaped into the Lakes Apartment complex. The following day, SIA assigned four undercover officers to stake out the area. That same day, Jack Ward's team made an arrest that cleared up four of the burglaries.

Aric Resnicke, owner of Aric's Java Cafe and the newly opened Aric's Java Cafe II, works with and depends upon both sides of the community protection programs. He hired Jack Ward's team to help stop the aggressive behavior happening in the evenings near his Greenback Cafe. "I had to do something," Resnicke said. "I needed security, but I went through three companies in a year, four in just the past two years." Resnicke credits the Service Center and Jack Ward's company for helping to provide safe atmospheres around his coffee shops. "I get the best of both worlds," he said. "Jack's team did a wonderful job for me, and I keep in very close contact with Lt. Hoganson and the Service Center. It's a shame that I have to do both, but the Service Center still needs a lot of volunteers and more community support to beef up their manpower." Resnicke also serves on the Advisory Panel for the Community Service Center. "I get to be an active participant in the efforts of the Service Center," claims Resnicke. "Not like the people who volunteer on the phones and the stake outs, but with the time that I have available I get to do my part."

Personal Commitment

Craig Yost is another private citizen who spends his spare time, and his working time, fighting and preventing crime. As a licensed real estate appraiser, Yost is always equipped with a camera, and he generously volunteers to photograph graffiti in the Fair Oaks and surrounding areas while conducting business. He works closely with other volunteers of the Greenback Community Service Center, who assemble his photographs for court presentations.

"My main reason for doing it," said Yost, "is to give back to the community what I've taken from the community." Beside his work in curtailing graffiti, Yost participated in an operation that was responsible for shutting down a liquor store that provided alcoholic beverages to underage girls.

In Yost's opinion, graffiti and other crimes have gone down. "I think because curfews have helped, and because the volunteer groups, as they grow, are getting the word out that we won't tolerate crime."

Directly, or indirectly, the marked cars of the Community Service volunteers and those of Jack Ward's team provide a deterrent to crime. "The bad guys think twice when they see marked cars patrolling our neighborhoods," says Ward.

Lt. Hoganson echoed the sentiment. "Word spreads. And the word has gotten around that we're out there. Anything visual, like the marked cars of our volunteers, will set a bad guy moving off from an area. Our goal is to put a Service Center in every neighborhood. That way the bad guys will have to leave altogether."

To get in touch with the Greenback Community Service Center about a crime, or to get information on how to set up a Neighborhood watch program in your neighborhood, call 721-4000, or fax 721-7426. The Service Center also has an e-mail address: ssc3@mail2.quicknet.com.