Comments (0) An editorial in the San Francisco Chronicle today criticizes the City of San Carlos’s efforts to outsource the police department. The Chronicle advises the council not to be blinded by numbers: Sonoma outsourced their police department, and found in the long run, it did not save money.
As always, White Oaks Neighborhood Organization is AGAINST outsourcing.
SFGate.com referred to San Carlos as “the broke city” this morning in an article San Carlos’s idea of “outsourcing” its police department is covered on the front page of SFGate.com this morning.
The Chronicle describes the plan as “all but unheard of move of dissolving police force, outsourcing duties.
Once again, surveillance video has proven to be critical in a San Carlos police investigation – this time resulting in the arrest of a suspect in the December armed robbery of our Best Buy store.
According to detective Sgt. Marti Overton, San Carlos investigators distributed still photos of the gunman to Bay Area law enforcement agencies. One detective noticed that the suspect resembled a man in a wanted photo from another jurisdiction, for a different crime.
San Carlos officers then obtained a $1 million arrest warrant and the suspect, Anthony Byrd, 24, was arrested at his East Bay home on Sunday by Hayward Police. San Carlos detectives searched the residence and found numerous pieces of suspected stolen electronic items, including flat screen TVs, computers and gaming consoles, said Overton.
On the evening of Dec. 29, the robber entered the Best Buy store at San Carlos Marketplace on Industrial Road, loaded a cart with selected items from the shelves and headed for the rear exit. When he was confronted by a store employee, the man brandished a handgun and made his escape.
Faced with a 25 percent rise in major crimes in the city during 2009, San Carlos Police have chalked up a series of key arrests lately. The department has a clearance rate of 75 percent for violent crimes – nearly twice the California average. And just a few weeks ago, police cracked what they believe was a highly organized burglary ring after a house in the Oak Creek area (upper Eaton) was entered and $30,000 worth of goods was stolen.
These successes come as the city council is considering a city staff recommendation to dissolve the police department and outsource all law enforcement functions to the San Mateo County Sheriff’s Department.
Daily Journal staff report
At least 10 cars had smashed windows and items taken during a crime spree in San Carlos Tuesday night between 6:17 p.m. and 11:32 p.m., according to police.
Police believe one person or party is responsible for all the break-ins.
One woman’s purse was stolen with $700 inside. GPS devices and other electronics devices were also taken, said San Carlos police Cmdr. Jon Read.
The spree was primarily contained to the western edge of the city in the hills, Read said.
A vehicle on the 2800 block of Brittan Avenue was the first to be burglarized just after 6 p.m. Tuesday. Police responded to another call at 7:34 p.m. in which personal items from the passenger-side floorboards were taken from a vehicle. Police responded to several more calls that night including one on the 900 block of Crestview Drive at 7:47 p.m. in which a backpack and sunglasses were stolen.
The burglar or burglars struck again on the 200 block of Crestview Drive when police responded to a call at 7:57 p.m.
Police responded to another call just two minutes later on the first block of Maple Way where a car’s window was smashed and an iPod stolen, according to San Carlos’ police media bulletin.
Police responded to a call on the 500 block of Emerald Avenue at 8:07 p.m. and then were called back to the scene of another auto burglary at 8:10 p.m. on the 100 block of Crestview Drive.
The last call police responded to that night related to the crime spree was at 11:32 p.m. on the 3300 block of Brittan Avenue. A makeup bag was removed from the vehicle, searched and discarded nearby.
San Carlos police are working with neighboring law enforcement agencies to see if any other cities have seen an uptick in these types of crimes and whether a suspect has been identified. Read reminds residents to not keep valuables locked inside their cars.
It’s getting painful to continue to hear the City’s constant retort of “we have no money.” Well, homeowners don’t either. We pay embarrassing amounts in property taxes and yet live in a city constantly crying for more money and considering turning off half of its street lights while these crimes continue unabated.
And when we are victims of crime, we are resigned to there never being any resolution, because of course there is no money. (Yes, we’ve heard.) So we’ve lost our property and a little faith, and we’re left with a city that wants more money while homeowners see more crime.
Seriously… what the hell?
By Shaun Bishop
Daily News
Posted: 02/24/2010 09:27:58 PM PST
Updated: 02/25/2010 12:45:28 PM PST
Three people have been arrested in connection with two of the 19 residential burglaries reported in San Carlos over the past four months, police said.
Jessica Lawler, 18, was arrested Feb. 16 and charged with committing two burglaries that occurred in January, including one in which three handguns were stolen, said police Cmdr. Jon Read.
San Mateo County prosecutors charged Lawler, of Sunnyvale, with two counts of residential burglary, three counts of grand theft and two counts of attempted residential burglary, all felonies, said assistant district attorney Karen Guidotti.
Lawler pleaded not guilty last week and is in custody on $100,000 bail. She faces about nine years in prison if convicted on the seven charges, Guidotti said.
Read said the two burglaries occurred in January, about a week apart, at homes in the southwest area of San Carlos near Eaton Avenue. He declined to name the exact locations, citing the “complexity of the case.”
Two men were arrested on suspicion of possessing stolen property from the burglaries. Damien Vaka, a 31-year-old Belmont man, was arrested Feb. 9 when a probation search turned up one of the stolen handguns, Read said.
A third suspect, an East Palo Alto resident, was arrested about a week ago on suspicion of possessing stolen property from one of the burglaries. Read said he did not immediately know the man’s name because he was arrested by the San Mateo County Sheriff’s Office street crimes unit. The sheriff’s office could not be reached for comment.
Detectives are analyzing evidence to determine whether the three suspects in custody have ties to 17 other burglaries that have occurred throughout the city since November. It is possible police could turn up additional suspects, Read said.
“Whether or not (Lawler) committed all 17, we don’t know, but we’re obviously going to be looking into this to see if she did anything else,” Read said.
Vaka pleaded not guilty Feb. 11 to three felony charges — possession of a controlled substance while in possession of a firearm, possession of a firearm by a felon and possession of concentrated cannabis — and possession of drug paraphernalia, a misdemeanor.
He remains in custody on $125,000 bail and faces about five years in prison if convicted, Guidotti said.
I keep seeing letters and press comments from San Carlos residents who feel that years of budget cutbacks have not compromised our police and fire departments, and that these agencies may have been “overstaffed.”
To anyone who believes that, here are the facts:
• The San Carlos Police Department is so thinly staffed that it must frequently call for outside assistance from neighboring police agencies. This happens regularly when we have weekend bar brawls as well as shootings and armed robberies. Serious crimes in this city, by the way, increased 25 percent in 2009, according to a recent report to the City Council from Police Chief Greg Rothaus.
• Successive cutbacks in the number of sworn officers, combined with unfilled vacancies, illnesses and court appearances, mean that 12-hour shifts and compulsory overtime are frequently the norm. Tired officers are too often faced with stopping suspicious vehicles late at night without the availability of a second officer as backup, and when is that going to lead to disaster?
• If you compare San Carlos Police Department with its counterparts in four other comparably-sized cities — Burlingame, Belmont, Foster City and Los Gatos — San Carlos has the lowest number of officers per capita: 1.1 per thousand residents. In Burlingame and Foster City, it’s 1.4 officers per thousand.
• In the Belmont-San Carlos Fire Department, the combined staffing of the city’s only two fire stations is six for each shift. There can be situations, as in a recent fatal residential fire, when this is not enough, especially if people need to be rescued. Thus, precious minutes are wasted waiting for reinforcements to come from Belmont or Redwood City.
• Belmont-San Carlos Fire Department Chief Doug Fry confirms that Station No. 13 on Laurel Street downtown has no firefighting capability this year, and thus there is no first-response protection to the entire north and central part of the city from this station — a truly worrisome state of affairs. That’s because the station has only one large ladder truck that carries no water, no hose and no pumps. Although it was never designed to be a first-response vehicle — but to work in tandem with a pump engine — in fact the ladder truck is all that’s available for this section of town. The truck is rotated each year between Belmont and San Carlos, and this year it’s San Carlos’ turn to man the vehicle.
• Our present reduced staffing of three firefighters per vehicle is not enough for any first-response team to enter a burning building, even if the structure could be saved in the initial minutes of the blaze. That’s because state safety regulations require the presence of four firefighters — two to go in and two to remain outside as backup. So the first company to arrive has to wait for a second company and, in that time, even if it’s just 30 seconds or a minute, it may be too late to save a building.
Make no mistake about it, we are playing a dangerous game of Russian Roulette with our public safety agencies by thinking that we can continue to chop with impunity.
Ken Castle is the organizer of White Oaks Neighborhood Watch in San Carlos.
KGO-TV (Channel 7) covered a meeting of the the San Carlos Transportation and Circulation Commission last night when the commission discussed the Public Works department’s proposal of turning off half of San Carlos’s street lights to save money.
Residents featured in the video segment are against the proposal, as is the White Oaks Neighborhood Organization. Councilman Matt Grocott also expressed that he does not approve of the proposal, and he suggested seeking other areas to cut, such as City employees’ salaries. Thank you, Matt.
Sources at the meeting tell us that the commissioners blamed the residents of San Carlos for not passing Measure U (as if newcomers aren’t already paying very high property taxes to begin with), and that they took issue with our blog “disparaging” them. (Note to commissioner: On Google, search for “US Constitution, First Amendment.” And we don’t disparage anyway.)
February 15, 2010, 03:30 AM By Michelle Durand
Nearly half the streetlights in San Carlos could darken and traffic safety requests deferred indefinitely under a list of proposed cuts by the Public Works Department meant to meet its share of a $3.5 million shortfall.
“It’s going to be a very different form of city government if these cuts go through. It will be a real radical change,” said Public Works Director Robert Weil.
Weil needs to cut $125,000 from his budget to meet the target set by City Manager Mark Weiss of all city departments. While the chop is far from the hundreds of thousands of dollars potentially coming from other areas, such as parks and public safety, public works is challenged by not having as many places to cut, Weil said.
But like its departmental counterparts, public works also contributes to the quality of life by keeping streets lit, sewers flowing and both pedestrians and motorists safe.
The biggest proposed cut is turning off 45 percent of the city’s street lights for a cost savings of $75,000 annually. Ironically, flipping the power will first cost the city $60,000 but the savings will begin the second year.
No specific locations are suggested; the proposal is just a figure used to reach the required number, Weil said.
San Mateo Daily News
January 28, 2010
BY WILL OREMUS
Daily News Staff Writer
At 5:39 p.m. on Jan. 6, on the 300 block of Louis Road, Palo Alto police arrested a 19-year-old woman from St. Clair Shores, Mich., who was selling magazines door-to-door. She had already been warned and cited for soliciting without a permit, a violation of Palo Alto’s municipal code.
So this time, the officers took her into custody and booked her into Santa Clara County Main Jail in San Jose.
It might sound like a harsh penalty just for selling magazines, but police Sgt. Wayne Benitez said the department is trying to send a message to the young woman’s employer.
Magazine solicitation, Benitez explained, isn’t always as benign as it sounds. In many cases the salespeople have been linked to other, more serious crimes. And often they’re victims of exploitation themselves, lured from troubled homes with promises of easy money by fly-bynight companies that treat them poorly and cut them loose if they don’t perform.
The problem isn’t new, but authorities in at least two Peninsula cities said it seems to be on the rise. As in Palo Alto, police in San Carlos said they’re starting to get tougher on offenders in hopes of stemming the practice.
Continue reading 'Palo Alto Going After “Magazine” Solicitors'»
KTVU’s December 16 newscast featured a spot on the budget cuts facing San Carlos. A little disconcerting is the police saying that San Carlos is going to become a police-free zone.
Audio and video are out of sync in this clip.
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