Editor's note: This is the last of a three-part series about the Campbell Police Department (CPD), its police chief and the city's crime statistics. This installment reports on a recent ride-along with a CPD officer.
Campbell Police Department (CDP) officer Darwin Okamoto is behind the wheel of marked patrol car number 1327. The first call from the police dispatcher alerts him of a 415, the penal code for a disturbance, at the Campbell Plaza.
Every time Okamoto chooses a destination to do a patrol check, he announces his badge number, saying "9L58." The nine designates him as a Campbell patrol unit, and L58 is his badge identification number.
It's a 10-12 tonight, meaning Okamoto has passengers in the patrol car for a ride-along.
He drives to 2523 Winchester Blvd., where he speaks to Salah Al-Ayube, owner of the Nebraza Brazilian restaurant, who called the CPD dispatcher to complain about a couple fighting outside his business.
Okamoto drives around for a couple of minutes, but the couple and the car they were driving are gone.
Driving along Camden Avenue, a driver is trying to get his attention. The driver alerts Okamoto about an abandoned vehicle in the middle of the street at the intersection of Camden and Bascom avenues. Okamoto quickly locates June Palma, the vehicle's owner, gets her behind the wheel and carefully pushes her car with his police car to the nearest gas station. This is what Okamoto calls "friendly police contact."
Then he heads over to the Rasputin Music store, at 1820 Bascom Ave., to take care of a 459 auto, the penal code for an auto break-in. A vehicle's window has been smashed and Robert J. Carter's briefcase has been stolen, with his passport, personal court documents and wedding ring inside.
The 35-year-old Okamoto, fully dressed in his police uniform, quickly completes a police report about the incident and takes some photos. Then he drives around the area, trying to locate the missing briefcase or any suspects, using special high-intensity spotlights mounted on his patrol car.
Then he heads over to the 7-11 store at 2335 S. Winchester Blvd., where an older, white-haired man is intoxicated and asking customers for money. Okamoto, wearing latex gloves, gets out of the patrol car and carefully approaches the drunken man.
Okamoto checks the man's ID, handcuffs him and then drives him to the Santa Clara County Sobering Station, next to the Santa Clara County Jail. "Lock me up; let's go," the man tells the officer.
Okamoto is one of several CPD officers who is on field patrol April 26. They're all under the supervision of CPD Sgt. Charley Adams, patrolling the city of Campbell, which has been sectioned into three beats or sections. Other officers are called "rovers" and end up being evidence collectors or assisting officers when serious crimes occur.
Okamoto's 12-hour police shift begins at 6 p.m. and ends at 6 a.m. He calls it the "late shift."
Okamoto usually rides solo. But as part of the CPD ride-along program, which allows civilians a closer look at police work, he sometimes takes one passenger for a couple of hours during his shift.
He always likes to ride with both car windows down in order to hear outside noises and stay alert, but tonight he keeps them up to keep the chilly air out and his passenger warm.
Photograph by Jacqueline Ramseyer
Patrolling the Streets: Campbell police officer Darwin Okamoto spends 12-hour shifts driving through the streets of Campbell, making sure they're safe from crime.
The patrol car
It's a loaded, powerful weapon on wheels.
Inside, CPD officers have access to photographic cameras to take pictures of crime scenes for evidence, first aid kits, spike strips, pursuit bags, Slim Jims, fingerprint kits, pepper-ball guns and bean-bag shotguns and a video camera, a shotgun and an assault rifle, a radio and a scanner to monitor adjoining police agencies.
It's the CPD patrol car, which has been on the roads since February of this year. It smells new, looks new and it's equipped with the latest police technology--including a mobile computer mounted on the vehicle's center console--making police work much easier than in the past.
The computer connects the officers with the dispatchers. It also allows them to see what other police units are doing. When a call comes in, the officers can read the information on the screen. Okamoto can also type messages to his partners and dispatch using the computer.
Lucent designed the technology, which is now featured in most of Campbell's police cars.
But the car isn't comfortable.
The back seat has a hard, black plastic surface, and there's hardly any legroom. The back doors can't be opened from the inside. The floor is made from a black rubber material, which is easy to clean.
Patrolman: Campbell police officer Darwin Okamoto joined the Campbell Police Department in 1997.
Photograph by Jacqueline Ramseyer
The CPD has nine regular patrol cars, including two "slick tops"--patrol cars without the light bars on top designed for the traffic division. It also has two Tahoes--one for the watch commander and one for the CPD's special weapons and assault tactics team (SWAT)--and two unmarked sedan patrol cars, which look like regular cars.
Like most police departments in the Bay Area, the CPD uses a 10 code, a number beginning with 10 that quickly identifies a crime by a number, thereby limiting radio traffic. "An intoxicated person," for example, would be a 10-51.
Some officers don't know the code as well as Okamoto so they use plain English, which is allowed, but not preferred.
At only 6.4 square miles, and with a population of approximately 38,000 people, Campbell is a busy city, Okamoto says.
"We try to keep it as safe as possible, but it's surrounded on its three sides by the city of San Jose, so everything that happens in San Jose happens in Campbell," he explains.
Married, with one child, Okamoto joined the CPD in 1997. Before becoming a police officer, he taught high school for a brief period of time. He also worked for Mervyn's as a loss prevention investigator. A San Jose police officer sparked his interest in law enforcement while he was working at Mervyn's. He started applying to a few police departments in the Bay Area, passing a written exam, a physical agility test, an oral board exam, a psychological and medical exam and then graduating from the South Bay Regional Police Academy at Evergreen in June of 1997.
At the academy, Okamoto spent about 800 hours or six months of training learning a variety of law-enforcement skills, from how to write a police report to how to search a building.
After graduating from the police academy, Okamoto returned to the CPD and passed field training. "That's where I learned a lot, not at the academy. It's pretty stressful."
He adds: "In the beginning it was, 'Oh my God! What am I doing? Am I going to make it?' If you can put class work together and apply it to the streets and realize that things aren't so black and white... the stress level drops," he says. "You become more confident in your decision making. But the stress level is pretty high."
Okamoto says he chose to become a police officer because he wanted to help the community in some way. "I wanted to serve. I wanted to be the guy wearing the white cowboy hat. I wanted to be one of the good guys."
He remembers that right after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, people were unusually friendly toward law enforcement officials. He went to the 7-Eleven to get something to drink and a man he had never met shook his hand, thanked him for his service and bought him a cup of coffee.
Campbell, California
