Stanislaus County deputies hit streets from four offices

A shifting approach to policing that has been years in the making has finally come to Stanislaus County.

The Sheriff's Department completed plans Saturday to shift officers to four offices around the county.

The approach, called decentralization, aims to get officers closer to the neighborhoods they patrol, cutting travel and response time, and increasing their presence in the community, said Undersheriff Bill Heyne.

Officers used to report to a central sheriff's office on East Hackett Road in south Modesto, getting their equipment and being briefed before heading to the streets.

For officers assigned to outlying areas, such as Knights Ferry or Crows Landing, it could take close to an hour to reach their assigned communities. Officers would have to return to Hackett during or at the end of the shift for supplies, to work on reports or to turn in equipment.

The new system changes all that, Heyne said.

Two teams, each with several sergeants and about a dozen deputies, now work out of police stations in Riverbank or Patterson.

Four sergeants and 11 deputies on the Waterford team still pick up equipment at the Hackett office because of space constraints, but they work the rest of the shift from the Waterford police station.

Five sergeants and 36 deputies assigned to central Modesto still will work from the Hackett building.

Detectives, community service officers and probation officers are assigned to the four areas as well, completing the regional approach.

Sharing office space cuts down on costs, Heyne said, and makes it easier for officers with police services and with the Sheriff's Department to share information about problems in the area.

Officers are assigned to beats for six-month rotations, Heyne said, so they get to know the nuances of their communities.

"Deputies will get out there and talk with the farmer and the business owner, and work with them to help solve their issues," Heyne said.

The system is designed to help fill the void created when Sheriff Adam Christianson suspended the department's "community deputies" program, removing seven deputies from small towns such as Empire, Denair, Keyes, Hickman and Westley and returning them to patrol.

More than half of the sheriff's departments in the state have been decentralized.

Fresno went that direction in 1983, said Fresno County Sheriff Margaret Mims, in some ways hearkening back to a system when communities each had an elected constable. The constables became part of the Fresno County Sheriff's Department in 1973 and "the communities lost their personal contact with local law enforcement," Mims said.

"When I first started, we all came downtown and briefed and went out to our areas. Sometimes the drive time was an hour to get to our beat. And it's not like that anymore," she said. "It's just a way of life. Most of our deputies know of no other way of doing business."

Residents can walk into local stations, talk to detectives about their cases, make counter reports or buy copies of reports, rather than having to drive to a distant office in another part of the county.

"The community is much happier now that they have something closer," she said. "The idea is to try to get as close to feeling like local law enforcement as possible."

Bee staff writer Emilie Raguso can be reached at 578-2235 or eraguso@modbee.com.