Policing the Police Contract

Yesterday the Council met to consider the Police contract with the County Sheriff. Unlike most other cities, Lake Forest does not have its own Police Department, but rather contracts with the County for Police Services. The Orange County Sheriff’s Department (OCSD) covers several cities in South Orange County (e.g., MV, RSM, LH) and a few more cities (e.g., Stanton, Villa Park, Yorba Linda). Our contract with the OCSD is the largest single contract we have, and the cost of Police Services is nearly 40% of our operating budget.

HOW “SAFE” ARE WE?

In the staff report, staff claim –

“Through the enforcement efforts of the Orange County Sheriff’s Department and partnership with the community, Lake Forest consistently has one of lowest Part One crime rates (per 1,000 residents) within the County of Orange.”

Lake Forest does not have one of the lowest Part One crime rates in South Orange County, much less all of Orange County. But at least this statement is less exaggerated than the previous lies told by the City Manager and the Mayor, to whit that “we have one of the lowest crime rates in the U.S.”

Here in South Orange County we consistently rank higher in Part One crimes per 1,000 when compared to Irvine, Mission Viejo, Laguna Woods, Aliso Viejo, Laguna Niguel, etc.

Putting aside this deliberate mis-statement of facts, it should be noted that our Part 1 crime rate is a measure of how often we have violent crimes (e.g., murder, rape, assault) in proportion to the number of people we have in the City. Though our crime rate is higher than most of our neighbors, it is still reasonably low compared to crime rates throughout the U.S., but we have nothing to brag about when so many of our neighbors have lower crime rates.

PAYING THE PRICE FOR THE LIE

It’s clear from our crime rate statistics that OCSD does an adequate job, although one has to wonder why our crime rate is higher than most of our surrounding cities. Can it be that by perpetuating the myth that we are such a “safe city”, our officials have in fact created a situation in which people do not pay careful attention, and thus we lend ourselves to more crimes because we are caught off guard by the false assumption that we are so safe? After all, if you are in one of the safest cities in the U.S., or in OC, why would you lock your door, roll up your car window, etc.

THE INCREASE

According to the staff report the increase in the budget for the contract is $874,071 or 6.55%. Given that inflation is less than 1%, an increase of 6.55% is untenable. It brings the proportion of our budget spent on Police services to nearly 40%, a steady rise over the past decade when it was closer to 30%.

CURRENT FUNCTIONING

While it’s clear from our crime rate statistics that OCSD does an adequate job, there are clearly improvements that should be made and savings that should be obtained. For example –

• We have a terrific STARS program in which retired people perform police related administrative and clerical functions, saving us hundreds of thousands of dollars a year. Yet despite the success of this program we do not aggressively advertise nor expand the program.
• We have a Sergeant who costs over $200,000 a year who spends 5 to 10% of his time hanging around at the back of City Hall during Council meetings. Is that how to best use his considerable skills?
• We have neighborhood watch programs that have never been evaluated for their effectiveness, with the excuse that “evaluation is difficult”, although the literature on this issue is replete with cities that were able to evaluate this function and make it more effective.
• We have abandoned the concept of “neighborhood policing” or “problem oriented policing” even while many other police departments have adopted it, or never abandoned it in the first place

It’s clear that we could be doing a better job than we are doing.

CONTRACT CITY OR NOT?

Lake Forest prides itself on being a “contract city” but in order to be an effective and efficient manager of public funds, you need to evaluate all your options. The City Council specifically instructed the City Manager to bring us 3 bids with all of our contracts, but here, in the contract that costs us more than any other contract, the City Manager offers only 1 choice.

OPTIONS

Why is there no bid from the City of Irvine? Irvine has one of the lowest crime rates in the U.S. Why aren’t we asking them to consider expanding their services to include Lake Forest?

The argument was made last night by Councilman Robinson that because Irvine has a higher cost per capita than Lake Forest, the costs of the contract would similarly be higher. But that’s not necessarily true. The costs to Irvine of expanding their service are marginal cost since they already have a complete structure in place. It’s conceivable (in fact, probable) that the marginal costs per capita for expanding to Lake Forest would be cheaper than the original costs of providing services to their own citizens. In any event, what harm would there be in asking?

What about the other cities in Orange County? There are many cities that have their own Police Departments. Why don’t we get a bid for a contact with them?

How about working with our neighboring cities to form our own multi-city Police Department that might prove to be ever better and more economical than OCSD? After all, with OCSD we are clumped in with several North County cities that have higher crime rates than we do. Perhaps if we were working with cities that have lower crime rates than we do our overhead would be less expensive. Working with a few low crime cities like Mission Viejo and RSM we would have significantly lower crime than OCSD now has. In addition, we would still have access to specialized services provided by OCSD as a result of their mandate to service the entire County.

These are all options that should be explored. By giving the exclusive contract to OCSD we are slaves to their every whim. They can offer a style of policing we are not in favor of, but we have no options. They can insist on increases and we must take it.

In fact, at the Council meeting last night, neither the Sheriff nor her assistant Lt. Don Barnes (a former Chief of Police for Lake Forest) even bothered to show up to make their case. They know that we have no other choice than to accept whatever they put in front of us, so they didn’t bother to show up.

Councilman Nick and I asked our colleagues to establish an ad hoc Committee to explore the options for providing Police services so that we could have an equivalent (or better) level of service at a more competitive price. If that committee can’t come up with any reasonable options, then we have no choice. But if they can, we may be able to get better service at a lower price.

Surprisingly, neither Councilman Robinson nor Mayor Voigts voted for this option. Apparently Councilman Robinson already knows the results so he doesn’t need any new information. Both Voigts and Robinson continually portray themselves as fiscal conservatives, but here where we have a chance to lower our biggest single cost, they aren’t interested in even exploring the idea. Both Voigts and Robinson portray themselves are being in favor of local control, but here where we might be able to craft a Police Department where we have more local control, they are not prepared to even explore the possibilities.

The Council does a gross dis-service to the residents by not exploring all the other avenues to giving us a more effective and efficient Police presence.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Dr. Jim Gardner is on the City Council for Lake Forest. You can check him out on LinkedIn and/or Facebook and you can share your thoughts about the City at Lake Forest Town Square on Facebook. His comments are not meant to reflect official City Policy.

Dr. Gardner has office hours every Tuesday from 3 pm to 5 pm at the City Hall. In addition, he holds a mini town meeting every month. The next meeting will be on August 15 at 2 pm at the El Toro Public Library.