Thread: Gang suppression costs Oceanside $2 million annually

http://www.nctimes.com/articles/2007/01 ... 1_5_07.txt

Gang suppression costs Oceanside $2 million annually

By: PAUL SISSON - Staff Writer

EDITOR'S NOTE: This story is part of an ongoing series about gangs in Oceanside, how city and community programs are working to end gang violence and what remains to be done. See additional stories Sunday in the North County Times.

OCEANSIDE ---- With the recent slaying of Oceanside police officer Dan Bessant, many civic leaders have called for the city to spend whatever it takes to combat gangs and keep youths from joining them. But the city's budget shows that it is already spending nearly $2 million a year on gang-related police enforcement and neighborhood outreach centers that target gangs where they live.

Today, Oceanside's gang unit has a total of nine full-time officers, including four detectives, three uniformed gang officers and a supervising sergeant.


Oceanside also provides one full-time detective to the North County Regional Gang Task Force. The total cost of employing those nine personnel, including salary and benefits, is about $1.2 million, according to the Oceanside Human Resources Department.

Lt. Tom Jones, who runs the police department's special enforcement section, said this week that even more gang officers are needed. He cautioned that the salary figure is misleading, because gang detectives often end up executing search warrants and assisting the department's narcotics officers.

Likewise, the narcotics squad will often assist gang officers, so "it's not perfectly clear-cut," Jones said, exactly what percent of the department's $47 million annual budget is spent on gang enforcement.

Additional time and money is spent every year on four neighborhood resources centers, located where gangs have taken root.

Margery Pierce, director of the city's Housing and Neighborhood Services Department, which oversees the centers, said it costs about $500,000 a year to keep the centers open.

Pierce said she believes that the centers have had significant success in keeping kids out of gangs.

"I am sure there are many children who have not fallen through the cracks because of the services that are provided at these resource centers," she said.

Oceanside has long had its share of gang problems, and many point to 1995 as the peak of gang activity. There were 25 killings in the city that year, nine of which police investigators said were gang-related.

In 2004, there were eight homicides in the city, at least three of them gang-related, officials said. That spurred a fresh round of debate in civic circles regarding the need to crack down on gangs and also embrace new programs aimed at keeping kids from joining gangs in the first place.

But it has been the deaths of two young Oceanside police officers, Tony Zeppetella on Dec. 13, 2003, and officer Dan Bessant on Dec. 20, 2006, that have brought the loudest and most insistent calls for more resources to be spent on gang suppression and diversion.

Prosecutors have said 17-year-old Meki Gaono, accused of shooting Bessant with a rifle from roughly a half-block away, told investigators that he is a gang member. One of three charges against Gaono alleges that he committed the crime for the benefit of his Oceanside gang.

In the Zeppetella slaying, prosecutors said Adrian George Camacho, who was convicted and sentenced to death for that murder in February 2006, was a documented gang member. However, no gang-related charges were filed in that killing.

While the city already maintains a significant anti-gang effort, Lt. Jones said more officers on the street would help cope with the city's more than 621 identified gang members.

"I would like to have six detectives and six uniformed officers," Jones said Thursday. "That would allow us to be out there seven days a week."

Because Oceanside officers work four 10-hour shifts per week, there are three days each week when the gang unit is not roving the streets of known gang neighborhoods.

"(More officers) would give us an increased presence. I don't believe it would stop gangs completely, but it would help," Jones said.

In June 2004, responding to a report that showed the city had the fewest police officers per capita in San Diego County, the Oceanside City Council agreed to add 16 officers to the force, to be hired in 2005 and 2006. The council's most recent two-year budget, approved in June, calls for 12 additional officers to be hired in 2007 and 2008.

Capt. Dave Heering said the additional officers have been spread across the department; some were used to create the uniform gang detail, while others went to beef up patrol and investigations.

Heering said that the department simply does not have the luxury of throwing all new resources at gangs. He said residents typically list traffic enforcement as their top priority.

"We can't just focus on one area," Heering said. "We need to beef it up everywhere."

A 2006 report published by the San Diego County Association of Governments shows that the city's policing ratio now stands at 1.11 officers per 1,000 residents. That number keeps Oceanside below the countywide average of 1.28 officers per 1,000 residents. Oceanside is tied with Chula Vista for the fewest officers per capita.

C.C. Sanders, a retired Oceanside police officer and former chair of the city's Police and Fire Commission, said he believes the city's efforts to curb gang activity, from increased policing levels to diversion programs, largely have done their job.

"The overall crime rate has dropped for nine years," Sanders said.

He recalled the bad old days in the mid 1990s, when it was not uncommon for gunfights to erupt between rival gangs on a daily basis and said today's gang activity pales in comparison.

While he said he is shocked and outraged at the deaths of two Oceanside police officers in the past four years, Sanders said those deaths do not necessarily mean previous gang efforts were for nothing.

"I don't think it's an epidemic. These shootings resist a simple explanation like 'blame it on the gangs,' " Sanders said.

Oceanside's four neighborhood resource centers are perhaps the city's longest-running attempts to keep youths out of gangs.

Located in a strip mall on Vandegrift Boulevard, just a short walk from the site of last month's Bessant shooting, the San Luis Rey Resource Center opened in 1993. According to the city's Web site, the reason for the center was to "provide a place for children that was free of gang activity, drugs and street violence."

The Chavez Resource Center, on San Diego Street in Oceanside's Eastside neighborhood, opened in 1994. A third center, on Division Street in the city's Crown Heights neighborhood behind Oceanside High School, followed in 1996. The Libby Lake Community Center on North River Road opened in 1998.

The four locations are each run by one full-time city staff member and are used by a range of community groups to provide after-school programs, health care and supervision for neighborhood children.

Pierce said the city's existing programs generally work with youths after school. She said that a child's home life is the biggest determining factor in whether he or she will join a gang.

"If the parents are not home because they are working all the time, or if there are too many people packed into a home and a child has no bed to sleep on, then you see more problems," Pierce said. "I think we need to look at the bigger picture of the total health of the family, not just at after school."

Capt. Heering has spent his career in Oceanside and has seen gang activity ebb and flow over the years.

Though he said there is a definite need for more police officers, he also agreed with Pierce that the true solution lies not in suppression, but rather in diversion.

"To me, it starts with the parents," Heering said. "We need to hold our own kids accountable for the things that they do."

In the Zeppetella slaying, prosecutors said Adrian George Camacho, who was convicted and sentenced to death for that murder in February 2006, was a documented gang member. However, no gang-related charges were filed in that killing.

Of course they don't mention that the murderer of rookie police officer Tony Zepetella was a Mexican illegal alien, who had been convicted and deported several times prior to killing officer Zepetella in cold blood.

When pulled over after a routine traffic stop, Camacho shot and downed the rookie officer, then using the officer's own gun proceeded to shoot him again and again in the back of the head and body, a total of 13 shots fired into the officer, in broad daylight, in front of a crowd of dozens, before fleeing to his wife's parent's home, and holed hinself up before surrendering.

Of course, in his trial, his attorneys called him a poor victim of drug abuse, and the jury was never told of his prior convictions on drug, weapons and assault charges or his numerous previous deportations back to Mexico, before coming back to the U.S. where he often told friends if any cops tried to arrest him and get him sent back to Mexico, he would waste them.

I wonder if this is the kind of person Bush wants to give amnesty to? After all, other than breaking a few minor felony laws and just one teeny, tiny, little cold blooded murder of a cop, he really is an honest, law abiding, family values, salt of the earth, hard working young man who just wants to put food on his family.