Almost 5 months in, Menifee PD is making a difference

Chief Pat Walsh addressed the audience during a ceremony launching the Menifee Police Department July 1.

Photo courtesy of Menifee PD Facebook page

By Doug Spoon, Editor

Menifee Police Chief Pat Walsh stopped his patrol car behind a supermarket in the Cherry Hills Plaza, the decades-old shopping center in the Sun City community. A homeless man known to many on the force was lingering with his shopping cart next to a utility cabinet covered in graffiti.

“He’s one of the regulars around here,” Walsh told a reporter riding along with him. “We’ve moved a lot of them along, but he doesn’t care. He stays.”

As a precaution, Walsh calls for backup. The man has known to be aggressive at times, he said. Walsh just wants to make contact, let the man know the police will always be around.

A backup officer arrives and the two have a brief chat with the man. Convinced that he did not add to the graffiti and is not breaking any laws, they let him go on his way.

“He’s a meth addict,” Walsh said about the homeless man. “He’s actually very strong. He shadow boxes when he’s high. We all know him and he knows us.

"We’ve arrested him so many times. We’ve offered him drug treatment, housing … he’s not interested. He’s not intimidated by us one bit.”

Granted, there are ongoing challenges faced by Menifee Police Department officers as they near the end of their fifth month of service after taking over from the Riverside Sheriff’s Department. But for every individual who continues to pose a problem, many others have been effectively dealt with -- sometimes merely by the sight of and interaction with the increased number of officers on the street.

The department’s proactive approach to those in the community – both in areas of safety and of potential danger – has made a big difference since its July 1 launch date.

In the first 12 weeks (July 1 through Sept. 22), Menifee PD made 2,457 proactive calls – those calls other than service calls from the public. That’s an average of 29 per day. As expected, the greatest number was traffic stops – 770. However, the total of proactive calls also included 383 business checks and 605 extra patrols, increasing police presence in the city.

“Proactivity is what makes me really proud,” Walsh said. “We had almost 2,500 proactive stops that we weren’t called to. Our officers were actively doing it themselves.”

Walsh believes the constant presence of police vehicles in local neighborhoods and business centers is helping to deter crime as well as develop positive relationships with the community. As he drove a reporter through the Cherry Hills Plaza, he pointed out places where homeless once hung out but have all but vacated in recent months.

That Sun City shopping center has been the source of complaints in recent years because of increasing homelessness and crime.The center's size and unconventional configuration with many alleys behind buildings can make it a challenge for police to patrol.

Criminal activity seemed to decrease when the Sheriff’s Department opened a substation in the center. Staffed by community service officers, it was designed mostly for residents to make reports and pay fines without having to drive to the Perris station.

But when the City of Menifee’s contract with the Sheriff’s Department ended and the substation was vacant for a short time, complaints about the homeless increased again. The reopening of the station under the new Menifee PD and the increased number of patrol vehicles in the area by the larger police force is turning things back around, Walsh said.

“It was pretty bad when we first started,” Walsh said, driving his patrol car past a bus stop near the Sun City Library. “We’ve worked at cleaning it up. We’ve arrested a couple of these people 7 ,8 ,9 times. Usually there would be 2-3 guys here on this bench. They always had needles [drugs] there. You’d see them at the coffee shop. You don’t really see them there anymore.”

The Cherry Hills Plaza is part of Beat 4, one of four patrol areas identified when the Menifee PD took over. In the first 16 weeks of Menifee PD enforcement (through Oct. 20), that portion of the Sun City 55+ community accounted for an average of 40 calls for service per day – the most of the four city beats and 38 percent of all calls for service.

Yet although the number of homeless seen in that area appears to have sharply decreased, calls for service actually have increased in recent weeks. From Oct. 1-31, Menifee Police officers responded to an average of 65 calls for service per day – or 42 percent of all calls for service in the city.

CFS = Calls for Service

 
The Menifee PD has been able to handle such a volume of calls because of its number of officers in the field at any one time. The first shift starts with five officers and two sergeants on patrol and increases to an average of 12 officers by mid-afternoon, Walsh said. The second shift starts with 5-7 officers and is boosted by the arrival of the night crew at 9 p.m., adding another 3-4 officers and a sergeant.

By contrast, the Sheriff’s Department averaged five officers per shift, according to city documents.

The increased number of officers has been so valuable, in fact, that multiple patrol vehicles showed up for what some might consider routine calls the first few weeks of Menifee PD service.

“The first week, I noticed a lot of chatter on Facebook: ‘I saw three cars here, four cars there,’” Walsh said. “We’ve been very adamant about backing each other up, because you’re going to use less force in numbers. We use team tactics; we use a very hands-on, ‘put them on the ground’ approach. That minimizes injury to the person you’re arresting and yourself.”

The department gave out an average of 14 citations per day in the first 16 weeks for a total of 1,583. Of that total, 1,098 were the result of traffic stops and 203 were for DUI.

“I said to our officers in the beginning, don’t go out and write a ticket,” Walsh said. “Give a lot of warnings. We were at a 5-1 ratio on warnings in the beginning. Now we’ve changed that. People drive pretty bad around here.”

The increased police enforcement is also enabling the department to better address part 1 crimes in the community. In the month of October, 202 part 1 crimes were reported – an average of 7 per day. Violent crimes accounted for 29 percent of those, while property crimes accounted for 71 percent. These crimes make up the department’s Uniformed Crime Report statistics for the more serious crimes – homicide, rape, robbery assault, burglary, domestic violence, vehicle theft and arson.

“A lot of people have been stuck at home [during the pandemic], and that leads to more domestic and neighborhood issues because people are getting on each other’s nerves,” Walsh said. “There’s a lot of thefts. We’re dealing with what every other city is dealing with. We’re keeping up with it, but it’s quite busy.”

Walsh drove past a low wall under a shade tree adjacent to a parking area by a liquor store and fast-food restaurant in the Cherry Hills Plaza.

  

UCR = Uniformed Crime Report

“This is where all the drug dealers came and parked,” he said about the area, now vacant. “Everyone would come by. It was almost like a drive-through. I haven’t seen them in weeks.”

Walsh then turned out of the shopping plaza and headed west on McCall Boulevard, then turning off the roadway onto an access road bordering the closed North Golf Course. He checked to make sure no one was camped out in the drainage channel that runs under the roadway, then drove along the back of houses that line the abandoned fairways.

“Just checking places where these guys go and hide,” Walsh said. “They’ve all but stopped. We drive back here a lot, just to let them know we are patrolling.

“Over there is the old clubhouse and golf store. When we first started, this is where all the homeless ran. Now they don’t come here anymore. They were prying every window off. Now it’s all boarded up and they know we come by.

“You go where the problem is. If we drive on a golf course, I’m OK with that. People see us and they tell all their friends. I haven’t seen anybody out here since July. It takes you five minutes to do, and it’s worth it.”

Walsh said officers have also spent a lot of time in Quail Valley, which has its own challenges in its rural location above Canyon Lake.

“They’ve expressed they’re pretty happy with the police presence,” Walsh said. “The biggest problem out there is the way people drive on Goetz Road.”

The police enforcement has also been strong in Romoland, where several crimes have been reported.

Walsh continues talking to a reporter as he drives back toward police headquarters from the Sun City community, which continues to be a special focus for officers.

“We have a whole map of Sun City where people go to buy drugs,” the chief said. “[The resident’s] mom or grandma died and they have a house and they shouldn’t be there [because of the age requirement].

“There’s a couple homes in Sun City where the grandchild that has control of the house will let the homeless people come into the house and charge them 30 bucks a day. We’re getting calls that there’s 10 people living in the house and none of them are over 55.

“The [Sun City Civic] Association does a good job, but their bylaws are from the 1950s, so the fines are from the 1950s. In order to change that, they have to go to an election in Sacramento to change their bylaws. That’s like 20 or 30 grand. They are working on that and we are as well, because there are people there who are feeling a little terrorized in some of the areas.”

In the midst of the adjustments made by officers coming to Menifee from departments throughout the western U.S., department heads were waiting to see whether a ballot measure to remove the 1 percent public safety sales tax would be approved. With the final votes being counted, Measure M is being soundly defeated, meaning the 2016 Measure DD tax will continue to fund the efforts of the Menifee PD.

“We’ve started a PD and we have high morale,” Walsh said before the Nov. 3 election. “We’ve gotten zero complaints about officers to date. I feel like it would be kind of yanking the carpet out from underneath us.

“Most people are very supportive. They want a high caliber police officer and the kind of protection you can only get if you pay for it. A lot of stuff we’re talking about, other agencies don’t have the time to do.

“We are still adjusting processes, but we’re getting better. They [the officers] took a risk coming here and they get it, they have to be flexible. They have a great spirit about them. Morale is very high and they’re working hard.”

The large area and unconventional configuration of the Cherry Hills Plaza sometimes presents patrol challenges.