The Sacramento County Sheriff's bi-monthly community meeting was held last night in the big meeting room at Country Club Lanes. Around 90 people were in the audience, an extraordinary turnout for a meeting held on a midsummer weeknight, roughly double that of the normal attendance at these meetings. Not only that, there was a TV News Crew there from Fox40. Something was clearly going on.

So it was, indeed. Attendees brought up the crime problems associated with the current population of unhoused individuals in the Country Club area around Watt and El Camino. As the Sheriff's deputies said at the meeting, being homeless is not a crime, but committing crimes can lead to arrests. Crimes like trespassing, camping on sidewalks, blocking traffic, selling drugs, or using drugs in public. Comments from the audience brought up knife attacks and gunfights, too. Whoa, whoa said the Deputies. We're doing the best we can, they said. Well, maybe. It turns out that our community is in Sheriff's District 4, which runs W-E from the Sac City line to Fair Oaks Blvd. and N-S from the Business 80/I-80 freeway to the American River. District 4 runs  patrols in 3 shifts: a day shift from 6am to 4pm, a swing shift from 2pm to midnight and a night shift from 10pm to 6am. The day and swing shifts have 5-6 Deputies; the night shift has 4-5 Deputies. That's an unincorporated area, populated by maybe 210,000 people, that's protected by two or three patrol cars. There isn't a standard for the number of law enforcement officers needed for a community, but cities across in the Western States tend to have somewhere in the neighborhood of 1.55 officers per 1,000 people. By that calculation, we should have 329 cops in District 4, not the 18-24 mentioned at the meeting. Is it any wonder people here are concerned about their safety?

OK, that's the patrol stuation. What about homelessness? While there were some sweeps and some arrests in the area last week, the truth is there is just a handful of officers (the H.O.T. Team) working on homelessness - one of the largest problems in our area. But they don't work after 5 pm or on weekends. We know the Sheriff's Office has a really high municipal burden, but the lack of attention - consistent attention - has become obvious. There are about 10 abandoned buildings - shuttered businesses and vacant houses -  in a two or three block radius around Watt and El Camino that have been  ignored for some time. The Sheriff says law enforcement will be brought to bear against crimes, yet drug dealing and drug use is clearly out in the open. The community was told the hole in the fence under the Macy's building was fixed, that the building could not be used as a de facto homeless shelter. If so, why was there a bunch of people inside the Macy's building again last night? 

The audience also brought up the code enforcement issues at Country Club Plaza, including the poorly-maintained roof and the apparent toxic mold hazard.  The County has said those are civil matters (between the property owner and tenants), although state law (CA Health and Safety Code Section 26100 et seq) gives counties authority for enforcement of mold problems inside commercial buildings. There was a lot of back-and-forth about whether the County Code Enforcement Dept. was inadequate or was not authorized to take action. So much so that the Deputy running the meeting said the questions had knocked the staff on its heels. He said they would have to look into things and report back. The public was left wondering if customers of the mall may have been exposed along with the occupants of the Macy's homeless shelter.

The Animal Control Officer got a better reception when he described his department's priority (rabies cases) and the steps it takes to deal with "problem" dogs, dead and injured animals and the like.  He said there were 20 officers in his department working 4x10 shifts, with 5 Animal Control Officers on duty for the 100 square miles of county territory (but only 1 on weekends). Hmmm...could it be that County Animal Control is overtaxed, too?

In summary, it was a remarkable meeting. Many people showed up. Many questions were not answered, although the officers did stay for one-on-ones when the meeting was over. Fox40's spin on things was all happy and rosy PR. That was last night. Today is a new day. Has anything changed? No, not really. Our community remains in limbo land: waiting for the drug deals to stop, for the trash and litter to be abated, for solutions to the homelessness problem to kick in, for fear of gun and knife attacks to go away, for speeding and stop sign running to be ticketed, for car deliveries to not block the center left turn lane, yada yada yada blah blah blah. In reality, unless our community has local control, we are stuck with what we have. Be alert, be aware. Your public safety is up to you. Oh, and be sure to call the Sheriff's and CHP's non-emergency numbers for their data base purposes.