Photograph by George Sakkestad
Sgt. Kerry Harris (top) talks with officers Bill Farina (left) and JR Langer during a swing-shift meeting.
By Clarence Cromwell
Sergeant Kerry Harris slows his natural gas-powered police cruiser near a young mom pushing two boys in a double stroller down a Monte Sereno street. "Hey guys, taking your mom for a walk?" he asks, before chatting with the family a few minutes.
After the Saturday-night crowds build, Harris looks on as an officer rounds up a rowdy patron at a Santa Cruz Avenue establishment and hauls him to the county jail.
Later, a motorist flags Harris down; her battery is dead. He uses his cellular phone to call a tow truck.
Any problem that arises in Los Gatos during swing shift, Harris and his officers aim to solve with efficiency and congeniality.
It all costs money.
As the Town Council prepares to whack the town budget, short for the fifth consecutive year, some councilmembers say they're open to cutting Police Department funding.
Among Town Hall observers, the LGPD has achieved something verging on sacred-cow status. The willingness of councilmembers to consider cuts here is a measure of the seriousness of the budget problems. Still, most councilmembers say they would be willing to cut the police budget only if it's OK with local citizens.
The town must pare $288,000 from the operating budget to make room for street repairs delayed since 1990. (An additional $250,000 remaining in last year's operating budget is being diverted for street repairs, as well.) The operating budget will be considered at the May 29 Town Council hearing.
This budget year, the Police Department consumes 40 percent, or $5.2 million, of the proposed $13.5 million town budget, twice the amount per capita that other communities pay the Santa Clara County Sheriff's Department for police services. Cupertino, a third larger in population, spends $4.6 million, and Saratoga, with about the same population as Los Gatos, spends $2.3 million.
Police Chief Larry Todd said the Los Gatos department needs its current level of funding because of its workload and because of residents' expectations for a high level of service.
Todd explained that Los Gatos outspends the sheriff's department because it offers extensive community services and sends more officers on patrol at a given time.
"The whole reason communities [like Los Gatos] incorporate is that they want a higher level of service than the county provides," Todd said. "We have an extensive community policing program. We have an extensive reserve program."
The town's volunteer reserve officers logged more than 8,000 hours during the last fiscal year. They perform many of Los Gatos' community policing services, such as checking residents' homes during vacations.
The department also boasts a speedy response. Town police showed up to emergency scenes in under four minutes, on average, during 1995. Sheriff's deputies arrived within an average of 4.11 minutes in Cupertino, according to Dep. Lindley Zink, and 4.48 minutes in Saratoga.
An important part of the town's strategy for preventing crime is the large number of officers on the street, Todd said.
"When we have larger numbers of people in the downtown area, you have a larger [police] presence there," Todd said. "There is a deterrent effect we have. That is a major part of law enforcement."
Todd called the comparison of Los Gatos to Cupertino an unfair one because, he argued, Los Gatos is a destination town while Cupertino is not. On weekends and holidays, Todd argued, Los Gatos' population can climb from 28,000 to 75,000. He also claimed the weekday population often reaches 45,000.
The town's regional parks and the downtown dining and shopping areas are popular with out-of-towners. In addition to the need to show a police presence to more people, Todd said, the numerous visitors result in more calls for police.
Actually, the opposite is true.
Los Gatos' popularity notwithstanding, Cupertino receives more calls for service. Los Gatos dispatchers answered 12,343 calls for help during 1994 and 12,299 calls during 1995. (Los Gatos doesn't track calls by the budget year.) The sheriff's dispatchers logged 13,023 calls during the 1994-95 budget year. According to FBI statistics, Cupertino's per-capita crime rates are about the same as those of Los Gatos.
On the other hand, Los Gatos officers filed 4 percent more incident reports than Cupertino sheriff's deputies during the 1994-95 budget year. Los Gatos reports totaled about 5,039; Cupertino reports totaled 4,886.
Sheriff's Capt. Bob Wilson agreed the daytime population of a city is important when considering police staffing. But it's not an overriding issue in comparing Los Gatos and Cupertino, Wilson said.
"Look at the population of Cupertino," he said. "With Apple and H-P, the population goes crazy."
The department also has its hands full when 250,000 Christmas shoppers pack into Vallco Fashion Park the day after Thanksgiving, Wilson said.
In order to provide the level of protection Todd described, the department employs 42 sworn officers, including the chief, two captains and nine sergeants.
The figures boil down to $187 per resident in Los Gatos, versus $99 per resident in Cupertino and $74 per resident in Saratoga.
One reason sheriff's services cost less is that fewer deputies answer a larger number of calls. In Cupertino, a city with 41,100 residents, 27 full-time deputies are assigned. In Los Gatos, 30 officers patrol a town of 28,000.
The sheriff further cuts costs by spreading administrative expenses over several cities, according to Wilson, commander of the westside substation. Wilson does the same job as a police chief, but for three cities, he said. The substation has six sergeants, three fewer than Los Gatos, although it covers four cities and adjacent unincorporated areas.
The sheriff's department offers communities a large detective bureau, booking facility, narcotics enforcement and its dispatching center, services that some small cities couldn't otherwise afford. Los Gatos operates its own dispatch center, detective bureau and booking office.
"Everybody has the advantage of a larger resource bank, but they only pay for what they use," Wilson said.
Town Councilmember Steve Blanton has said contracting out some of the work of town departments could trim the budget down. Asked if that might include the Police Department, he replied that it could. In any case, Blanton said he would first ask the town's departments to bid for the work they currently do.
"At a minimum, what it will do is every department where they must submit a bid to save their jobs, they'll be very efficient," Blanton said.
But most officials, including Blanton, wrinkle their noses at the prospect of cutting services residents want, including police protection.
Other councilmembers said they would listen to a contract service proposal, but would only approve it if another agency could offer the same level of service as town employees for a lower price. And only if residents accepted the change.
Mayor Randy Attaway suggested he would reduce police services.
"I think it's going to depend a lot on what the public wants," Attaway said. "If the public is willing to take a lower level of service, we'll be open to that."
Councilmember Linda Lubeck, at an April 22 council budget session, had also suggested cutting some sergeants, patrol officers or parking and community service personnel. She explained that she hasn't scrutinized police operations yet, but thinks the town should look there, among other places, for budgetary fat.
Although councilmembers resist cutting the police budget, there have been some cuts in the past--and criticism of the department and the chief from some corners of the community.
Last year's cut of a motorcycle traffic enforcement officer, the second motorcycle position axed, left the town with just one motorcycle officer.
Motorcycles and rangers' trucks are the only vehicles small enough to answer calls along the Los Gatos Creek Trail, and rangers don't carry guns. Todd also said traffic accidents increased after the elimination of two motorcycle traffic patrol positions for budget reasons.
The department stopped donating an officer to a regional narcotics enforcement team in 1995, leaving the town with no undercover anti-drug operations.
Todd said the department now has fewer employees than it had in 1988.
A fiscal flap over new police cars and a loan for the chief's house have dogged the department, as well.
Last year, the town received a $230,000 grant from Bay Area Air Quality Management District and a $33,000 PG&E rebate to equip 11 police cars with compressed natural gas tanks. The town had to pay for the cars. Cleaner-burning CNG is safer for the environment and easier on the car engines.
But critics chided the town for what they called an unnecessary purchase.
Unfortunately, the cars haven't been running on natural gas for about four weeks, according to Todd. A defect covered by the warranty requires replacement of a part in the natural gas systems of some of the cars. Harris, the police sergeant, said the danger of an explosion led the department to use gasoline in the cars until the repair could be completed.
The chief's $350,000 housing loan came in November 1991, when the Town Council decided that the chief should live in town. After the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake, Police Department employees who commute through the Santa Cruz Mountains were trapped away from work for three days. Todd lived in the mountains then, but was at work when the quake struck. The council decided he should always be at hand, should a quake strike in the middle of the night.
The loan was criticized, in particular, by one-time councilmember Egon Jensen, who elevated the loan to a campaign issue during the recent successful effort to defeat Measure C, the utility-users tax. Jensen spearheaded the No on C campaign. The mere mention of the loan riles Todd.
"The benefit is to the community," Todd said. "The benefit is that your police chief lives in the community and shares the same experience and is available in an emergency."
After this year's first budget hearing, Jensen called for more police cuts.
"It's time to take a look at the Police Department," Jensen said. "The Police Department has been a holy cow."
This article appeared in the Los Gatos Weekly-Times, May 15, 1996.
©1996 Metro Publishing, Inc. All rights reserved