Rancho Park District vetoes 24-hour patrols in Oak Park
Grand jury recommendation seen as too expensive
By Kyle Jorrey kjorrey@theacorn.com

WENDY PIERRO/Acorn Newspapers INTERAGENCY COOPERATION- Senior Park Ranger Jerry DeRosa, right, stops to chat with a Simi Valley police officer while both are on patrol. The Rancho Simi Recreation and Park District decided against a grand jury recommendation to increase law enforcement coverage in parks.

Parks in Simi Valley and Oak Park will not get 24hour, sevenday-a-week police coverage anytime soon, despite a recommendation made by a Ventura County grand jury in April.

Last month, the grand jury released a list of responses it received to its report on the law enforcement aspects of the Rancho Simi Recreation and Park District's ranger program.

The program employs three full-time rangers covering 5,394 acres of parkland in Simi Valley, Oak Park and unincorporated Ventura County.

The grand jury's monthlong investigation- an outgrowth of a tour of the park district property taken by members in December 2006- led to six suggestions for improvement, including around-the-clock coverage of parks and better communication with law enforcement and the public. The park board consented to some of the suggestions- but not all.

WENDY PIERRO/Acorn Newspapers KEEPING AN EYE OUT- Senior Park Ranger Jerry DeRosa on patrol in Simi Valley.

Larry Peterson, park district general manager, said the report's first recommendation, to contract with the police or sheriff's department to provide 24-hour coverage of parks, is neither necessary nor fiscally sensible- and park board members agreed.

"That would be an expense that would divert tax revenue toward another function that is not our primary mission, which is providing recreational activities and park facilities," Peterson said. "It is important to have safe parks, and we believe we do, but we have to balance that against economics."

Peterson, who in May had chided the grand jury for reporting that the park district was experiencing a rise in crime and an increase in the number of homeless- an assertion Peterson denied- stood by his original statement. He did say the report had sparked some necessary reevaluations of how the district polices its property.

"I decided, 'Let's use this as a chance to reflect and improve.' I was surprised to receive (the report), but I didn't let that overshadow the opportunity that it represented to take another look at things," Peterson said. "We ended up meeting with the sheriff, meeting with the district attorney, the chief of police of Simi Valley. It gave us an opportunity to revisit how we're interacting with these agencies."

Still, the investigation and subsequent report led to few significant changes.

In its response to the grand jury, the park district said it had implemented a mechanism whereby the police and sheriff's departments report to the ranger program all crimes and incidents that occur on district property: using its business supervisor as a liaison between the park district and law enforcement.

But that line of communication was already in place, Peterson said. "We really strengthened that bond," he noted.

The park district also updated its website to include information about the mission and authority of park rangers, and agreed to place an informative article on the ranger program in an edition of its Reporter, which goes out to every residence in Simi Valley and Oak Park.

The district did not, however, agree to post on its website a "statistical breakdown of crimes and incidents occurring on district property," as was recommended by the grand jury, but said such data is available to residents upon request.

The park district gave its reasons in a written response to the grand jury.

"Significant violations of the law are reported in the records of the police and sheriff departments. Since most of the work of the rangers consists of encouraging park patrons to follow rules through the use of discussion and citations, providing 'statistics' would not give a meaningful picture of the rangers' work and contributions to the community. Furthermore, publication of information on ranger interactions with residents could be detrimental to the reputations of those residents and the organizations to which they belong."

Peterson reiterated the opinion he gave The Acorn in May: Because rangers so infrequently confront serious crimes, the need for such statistics to be publicized, or for roundtheclock police coverage, is just not there.

"You have to remember that the crimes that park rangers are dealing with are crimes like dogs off leashes, skateboarding, maybe public drunkenness- not crimes against persons or personal property," Peterson said. "I have a little bit of a hard time calling those crime statistics."

Peterson did say the district recently purchased digital cameras for all its supervisorial personnel so they can photograph instances of graffiti and quickly transmit them to authorities. But that decision was a result of a spike in instances of vandalism, and not sparked by the grand jury report.

"I wanted to make sure the police were able to identify areas where the frequency of graffiti was increasing so they could focus on those areas," Peterson said.

Don Cody, the grand jury foreman, said the panel was satisfied with the responses to its investigation, which also came from the Simi Valley City Council, the Ventura County Board of Supervisors, the sheriff 's department and the Ventura County district attorney's office.

"All I can say is that they agreed with many of the findings, but they did not agree with some of the recommendations- but that's up to them," Cody said of the park district. "We do not challenge their responses. We make the recommendations and then leave it up to the party whether they can or want to follow them. We can't dictate to them."