Santa Cruz District 1 Candidates Spar Over Public Safety
Danner calls Leopold's opinion piece 'politics at its worst'
by Jessica Lussenhop
The same Saturday morning that the Sentinel published an opinion piece on public safety by District 1 supervisor candidate John Leopold, he and his opponent Betty Danner met in the Capitola City Council Chambers to debate one another on a variety of issues in front of few dozen of the district’s roughly 30,000 residents.
Leopold, whose commentary called for increased law enforcement coverage, illustrated the point that morning with an anecdote from one his neighborhood walks on Koopman Avenue, which had been hit hard by vandals hours before. Graffiti was splashed across garage doors, cars and mailboxes. “It took two hours to get the deputy sheriff out there,” said Leopold. “You don’t have to be a smart criminal to know you’re less likely to be found out if there’s less coverage.”
While the candidates differ on their stances and political style, public safety is one issue on which both would like voters to believe they stand strong. Danner is clearly the law enforcement candidate, distinguished by her former role as director of the Santa Cruz County Criminal Justice Council; she’s endorsed by the Santa Cruz district attorney, former and current county sheriffs, the Watsonville chief of police and the Santa Cruz County Deputy Sheriff’s Association. So when she read Leopold’s editorial Saturday morning, she was none too pleased. “I was surprised. It’s like, what? He has no background in law enforcement, he has no law enforcement endorsements,” she says. “I'm surprised it was printed.”
In the Sentinel, Leopold addresses the chronically understaffed sheriff’s department, which has the sole responsibility for protecting unincorporated District 1, and compares the situation to neighboring Santa Cruz, which has its own police department. “On a regular night,” writes Leopold, “while Live Oak and Soquel might have three or four deputies on patrol, residents in the city of Santa Cruz have twice as many police officers on duty.” He points out that while Santa Cruz crime is being effectively reined in, bursts of violence and graffiti are happening in District 1 with increasing frequency.
Danner says Leopold is playing on people’s fears and downplaying the sheriff’s effectiveness. “I believe that this article is politics at its worst. Saying that one is claiming success and the other is reeling–I think you need to be careful about the sensitivity of making statements like that,” says Danner. “This article gives a sense of anxiousness to the residents. It gives a sense that the sheriff is inadequate.”
Leopold says Danner is just trying to spin his remarks to distract voters from the real issue. “I walked door-to-door, and people want better police coverage. I'm just pointing out what’s going on. I'm advocating more resources for the officers,” he says. “Betty’s just trying to spark a problem that doesn’t exist. It’s kind of sad.”
As to Danner’s calling his article “irresponsible” and “bad for morale,” Leopold responds, “I think mandatory overtime for three years might be a morale problem.”
Sheriff Steve Robbins acknowledges that staffing has been a problem for the county in the last five or six years, since the baby boomers began to retire and the surrounding counties were increasingly able to offer deputies higher salaries and lower housing prices. Coinciding with the dwindling deputy candidates, Robbins has also seen the amount of gang-related activity and graffiti in District 1 increase. “We discovered there was a whole gang of youngsters, 13 to 17, being manipulated by older gang members,” he says. “Gang members in prison direct things and eventually it filters out into little old Santa Cruz County. It’s a territorial battle.”
He says much of the graffiti residents are noticing, such as the number 13 or 14, and in red or blue, are rival gang symbols rather than the work of more innocuous taggers. But due to staff shortages, the sheriff’s department spends the bulk of its time just fielding calls, and does not have the resources to follow up with anti-graffiti or gang task forces like it once did in better times.
At present, Robbins says the county is down 20 deputies but has nine people going through a 16-week training program and 10 in police academy. With a full staff, there could potentially be seven to eight officers in the district at any given time, whereas today that number can be as low as three.
Though he agrees with Leopold’s call for additional staff, he admits he was a bit troubled by the tenor of the article. “It portrayed things correctly, that we need more help, but I don’t want to add to the public’s sense of insecurity and say things are out of control, because they’re not,” he says. “People are feeling insecure enough as it is.”
