Campbell cops fighting crime on foot

By EMMALEE C. TORISK

etorisk@vindy.com

CAMPBELL

The Campbell Police Department is tackling an old-school problem with an equally old-school solution.

To combat the rash of thefts and break-ins that have plagued several of the city’s neighborhoods as of late, officers, dressed in ordinary clothes, are taking to the streets almost anytime the sun isn’t out.

And like the criminals they’re trying to stop, they’re on foot.

“Sometimes in police work, we look to technology to solve all of our problems — when, in fact, some criminals are simple,” said Drew Rauzan, the city’s police chief. “We cannot lose sight of the fact that simple solutions can solve simple problems.”

He said, too, that the problem of “derelicts walking around the city at night, checking for open car doors and whatever they can steal” is not unique to Campbell.

It’s also not limited to just one or two neighborhoods in the city.

“We have great neighborhoods with great people,” Rauzan explained, “and we have the same problems as every other community.”

In addition to providing a police presence in the area, a five-member foot patrol netted a felony drug arrest and two disorderly conduct citations between 10 p.m. and 2 a.m. July 30.

A handful of foot patrols have been conducted since then, and will continue to be “done as often as possible” until crime is on the decline, Rauzan said. Even when that happens, the foot patrols won’t cease.

If it were up to him, a foot patrol would always be on the streets — looking for people walking on the roadways, or checking abandoned houses, or talking to anyone who might be around, simply to get a feel for what is happening in the neighborhood.

“We’re going to be out there,” added Rauzan, who intends to soon take part in the patrols. “We’re going to be making contact.”

He noted that the police department’s use of the foot patrols began during this past holiday season. Uniformed police officers made nightly stops at the 20-some businesses along the half-mile stretch of McCartney Road, or U.S. Route 422, from 12th Street to Sycamore Drive.

Their objective then was to help deter thefts and robberies at those businesses.

“Criminals like to rob to get their holiday cash,” Rauzan explained. “We wanted everyone to see us walking around.”

Even back in December, Rauzan said he was looking into extending the foot patrols in the future, depending upon how residents responded to them.

Joe Pavlansky — an officer who participated in the holiday-season patrols and is part of the current patrols, as well — said the community, generally speaking, is very much in favor of the police department’s taking “a proactive stance against any type of criminal activity.”

By instituting regular, but random, foot patrols, the police department’s officers are stopping crime before it has a chance to start, Pavlansky said.

City residents “really like seeing us going above and beyond our regular patrol duties, being out in the neighborhood and doing what we can to look out for them,” Pavlansky noted. “They like that we are out there, cleaning up their neighborhoods.”