Sheriff’s Office
Opens Rural Crime Station
After a lot of hard work by the Sheriff’s Office and concerned community members, we were proud to officially open the Sheriff’s Rural Crime Station at 562 Casserly Road , Watsonville, on Friday, June 18th. Our open house was well-attended by neighbors, farmers, ranchers and growers, and County Supervisors Tony Campos and Ellen Pirie. This project has been in the planning stages for about 2 years when we realized the extent of agricultural and rural crime that was occurring in various areas of the county and farmers and ranchers would not report crimes because they felt it would be a low priority for law enforcement. Nationwide, only about 1 in 10 farm crimes is reported.
As Sheriff’s staff researched the extent of the problem and conducted meetings with concerned members of our agricultural community, we discovered that Santa Cruz County had experienced over a $220,000 loss due to thefts of tractors and trailers. On top of that, we found there were thefts of farm equipment, fuel, flower bulbs, and other crops as well as vandalism on rural properties. This problem needed to be immediately addressed and recognizing that agriculture is the second largest industry in Santa Cruz County producing over $400 million annually in agricultural commodities.
This year, the Sheriff’s Office and District Attorney’s Office received a grant as part of the Central Coast Rural Crime Prevention Program that funds a part-time deputy sheriff and part-time assistant district attorney dedicated to agricultural crimes. The deputy assigned to our Rural Crime station is Deputy Brian Erbe. He was assigned in 2005 to be a liaison with the farming community and writes a monthly article in the local Farm Bureau’s magazine. Sergeant Christine Swannack, assigned to our South County Sheriff’s Center, is the supervisor for the Rural Crimes program. Sergeant Swannack and Deputy Erbe have been driving forces in getting our rural crime program developed and up-and-running. The overall program is supervised by Lieutenant Jim Skillicorn, a native of Watsonville and familiar with farm crime issues.
In addition to the Rural Crime program, the Sheriff’s Office, District Attorney, and county agriculture commissioner have partnered with other counties in the ACTION project (Agriculture Crime Technology Information and Operations Network) where members share equipment and access to a database that records Owner Applied Numbers placed on farm equipment. These unique numbers make tracking and recovery of stolen equipment much easier for police. This project has been extremely successful as law enforcement has found that thieves frequently take stolen equipment across county lines to sell.
Recently, our Rural Crime unit placed a “bait” generator supplied by ACTION in rural fields and watched thieves steal this piece of equipment only to be confronted by deputies. In addition, deputies have stepped up crime prevention efforts by meeting with local metal recyclers to inform them about state regulations requiring sellers of scrap metal to identify themselves with proper identification. Due to the high price of copper and other metals, many counties are experiencing extensive thefts of wire which are then brought to recyclers for cash. It is such a problem that there is current proposed state legislation tightening the rules on the sale of metals to recyclers.
This much-needed rural crimes program is just in its infancy. We will to continue to work with growers, ranchers and farmers, to expand our services in the coming years and have full-time staff devoted to agricultural and rural crimes. We realize that there are many farmers and growers that are located throughout other areas of our county and hope to meet their needs in the future. Already, farmers have commented that our mere presence in a rural area of Watsonville has helped.
Trained Sheriff’s volunteers operate a weekly program that will stamp and register farm equipment in the ACTION database for free. So far, about 40 farmers and growers have participated in our new crime prevention program. If you have a need for this program or want to discuss a rural crime problem, please call our Rural Crime station at 768-9350 or our South County Sheriff’s Center at 763-4420.