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1997 Annual Report
Office of Administrative Services

The Office of Administrative Services (OAS) consists of the Administrative Services Division and the Special Services Division.

The Administrative Services Division encompasses three sections: Community Relations, Resource Development, and Jail and Custody.

The purpose of the Community Relations Section is to promote a working partnership between the Department and the community through programs designed to reduce or eliminate crime conditions.

Operation Safe Home, a collaborative effort of the Community Relations Section and the City’s Housing Division, provides grants to help secure properties against vandalism and other crimes. Section crime prevention coordinators suggest various security improvements and staff from the Housing Division assist low-income residents to qualify for grants through Housing & Urban Development (HUD). This past year, more than 80 residents took advantage of the program.

The Citizen’s Police Academy continued to be one of the Department’s more popular programs. The 10-week academy, taught by police personnel, presents an overview of Department functions and responsibilities. In 1997, there were two classes which graduated. In addition, academy graduates formed the Citizen Police Academy Alumni Association, a non-profit corporation developed by alumni to teach the community about Department functions. Some alumni serve in various volunteer capacities and provide feedback to the Department on police services requested by the community.

National Night Out involves citizens, law enforcement agencies, civic groups, businesses, neighborhood organizations and local officials from 9,000 communities nationwide. The local event is organized by section staff. This year, the Department won a fourth place award for participation in the 14th Annual National Night Out. A photograph of the City parade was chosen for the cover of New Spirit, the official publication of National Association of Town Watch, distributed nationwide. More than 400 residents participated.

Section members coordinated and participated in over 120 community and cultural events, such as Mexican Independence Day at Virginia Park, Coastal Clean-Up Day, Senior Safety Day, Youth Safety Weekend, Purim Festival and Red Ribbon Week. Staff also organized self-defense classes taught by the Department’s Defensive Tactics Team for members of the public.

Approximately 40 Business FAX bulletins were sent to local businesses with general crime and safety information. The Fire Department’s Emergency Operations Team used the Business Fax program to distribute information on "El Nino" safety measures.

Santa Monica’s Big Blue Bus was used in an advertisement campaign reinforcing the Department’s "no tolerance" approach to driving under the influence (DUI). A photograph of Santa Clause (a police sergeant) and a motor officer were depicted on the side of the bus with the campaign slogan: "You’d better watch out! You’d better not drink and drive."

The School Resource Officer conducted presentations emphasizing legal rights and responsibilities of children, parents and educators. More than 30 presentations were conducted with elementary school youth and their parents. Officer Joe was selected as an advisor of the Regional Parent/Teacher Association and participated as an outreach counselor at the Santa Monica YMCA Big Bear camp during the summer. He also assisted in the production of public service announcements centering around youth and general safety information. The announcements were shown on CityTV during the year.

A staple of the section’s outreach is the Neighborhood Watch Program, an effective team approach in which the Department and community work together to reduce crime. Section staff attended 40 Neighborhood Watch Programs and coordinated meetings between Block Captains for exchange of information relevant to area issues and concerns.

The Police Activities League (PAL) is a collaborative effort between the Community and Cultural Services and Police departments which benefits more than 1,800 youth of Santa Monica. PAL is a free citywide program offering cultural, educational and athletic activities for children between the ages of six to 17 years. Two police officers are assigned full-time to the PAL Youth Center located at 1401 Olympic Boulevard. PAL’s goal is to provide an array of programs in a safe environment, offering positive alternatives to gangs, drug abuse and delinquency.

During the year, there were classes in arts and crafts, basketball, boxing, karate, ceramics, computer classes, dance and fitness training, and many special events. The highlight of the winter program was the California Police Activities League (CAL-PAL) State Basketball Tournament. Over 600 California youth competed in the three-day event hosted at the PAL Youth Center. This was the fifth year that Santa Monica PAL hosted the tournament. Ten PAL members participated in the CAL-PAL Karate Championships in Modesto. All of them received awards, including three first-place medals.

During the summer, a free lunch program served more than 40 youth a day. Lunches were prepared and delivered to PAL by Santa Monica/Malibu Unified School District staff. Youth and volunteers enjoyed trips to Knott’s Berry Farm, Wild Rivers, San Diego’s Sea World and sporting events. Tickets were donated to PAL for games of the Dodgers, Kings and new WNBA’s Sparks. PAL’s basketball team, ages 10-13 years, won the championship in the PAL/NIKE Swoosh Summer Hoops Basketball League. Swimming activities were held at the pool at Santa Monica College.

The summer program also included a Community Corps Program comprised of five PAL youth ages 11-16 who volunteered in the community. In June, they spent the day taking Santa Monica Westside Special Olympic athletes to events at the annual Statewide Special Olympics held at UCLA’s Drake Stadium. The summer program ended with a day in the park including a barbecue, games and sporting activities.

The Halloween Carnival was held at Santa Monica Airport’s Barker Hangar. PAL staff and over 120 volunteers, including the Chief and City Councilmembers, participated in one of the most successful carnivals to date. More than 4,000 children and families attended. All of the youths who were there received a goodie bag with trading cards, stickers, candy and toys. In November, the Californian Fish and Game Department sponsored a fishing trip with 15 PAL members. The crew aboard the boat made sure the youths had fishing poles, tackle and plenty of fish stories. The final program of the year was the Holiday Workshop. Santa (a police officer) and Mrs. Claus (a PAL Board member) arrived on a fire truck. Santa, Mrs. Claus and their elves spent time talking to and distributing toys to more than 300 children.

The Resource Development Section scheduled police personnel in training courses which focused on Department goals. During 1997, 38 officers attended narcotics and driving under the influence recognition courses, 27 officers attended advanced criminal investigation courses, and seven officers attended gang awareness courses.

Sworn personnel attended Peace Officers Standards and Training (POST) mandated training. Twenty-nine officers completed 24-hour supplementary training on high-speed vehicle pursuits at the Emergency Vehicle Operation Center in San Bernardino, 33 officers received their re-certification in CPR / First Aid at the American Red Cross, and 28 officers received training in Wells Kit Testing at the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department.

Within the section, the Training Unit coordinated quarterly training for personnel. Quarterly training topics included a review of the Standardized Emergency Management System (SEMS), the Department’s pursuit policy, Megan’s Law and dissemination of sex offender information to the public, and the City Manager’s administrative instructions on recognizing and reporting workplace violence. Quarterly training was provided at roll calls and proficiency tests were used to document training.

The Training Unit also hosted seven Department-sponsored training courses throughout the year. Courses included: report writing for instructors, homicide reconstruction/blood spatter, drug and alcohol recognition, bicycle patrol, taser use and tactics, defensive tactics for civilian employees and straight stick baton conversion. A total of 118 employees attended the training classes, in addition to 63 officers from outside agencies.

The Personnel Unit was extremely busy with police officer hiring and non-sworn background investigations. There were 22 open police officer positions. Fourteen lateral transfer police officer backgrounds were initiated which resulted in seven lateral officers hired mid-year. To fill the remaining 15 open positions, 13 entry-level background investigations were conducted and nine police recruits hired. At the end of the year, there were six police officer vacancies. Testing for lateral police officers will begin in 1998 to fill remaining open positions. In addition to police officer background investigations, section staff oversaw the completion of 30 background investigations of prospective non-sworn employees conducted by West Shield Investigations.

The Training Unit has a long history of active involvement with the South Bay Police Training Committee. This year, the Resource Development Sergeant and Training Officer were elected to the Board of Directors Chairperson and Secretary/Treasurer, respectively.

Range training throughout the year was comprised of a standard qualification course, back up weapons training and Interactive Computer Aided Training (ICAT) scenarios. Outdoor range training was conducted at a Place to Shoot. Outdoor courses included tactical shooting with a 9mm handgun, AR-15 rifle training and a shotgun review course.

The Special Services Division consists of crime analysis, automation, records, animal control, identification, property, vehicle maintenance, and the jail.

The Crime Analysis Unit (CA) gathers, maintains and disseminates crime information and crime trends to Department personnel and the community-at-large. It plays an integral role in effective and efficient deployment of police personnel through statistical analysis of criminal activity by geographic district, day of week and hour of day.

Serving as a repository for all available crime information, the unit routinely assists investigators in identifying and apprehending criminal offenders. In addition, the unit provides crime information to the general public by responding to inquiries and provides information for Neighborhood Watch meetings.

The unit publishes the weekly Crime Analysis Bulletin distributed to all Department employees and numerous neighboring law enforcement agencies. The publication has proven effective for reporting existing crime patterns and trends; disseminating critical information on wanted persons and specific crimes to investigative and operational units; and allowing administration to communicate critical facts. As a supplement to the bulletin, unit staff publish Special Bulletins which contain timely information on crimes and suspects soon after they occur.

During 1997, the unit published 53 Crime Analysis Bulletins and 33 Intra-departmental Communication Bulletins. A total of 330 special reports were completed, 219 for Department personnel and 111 for external requestors, requiring approximately 408 hours of staff time. Most requests from citizens were for calls for service or crime activity for specified areas or locations, many of which were from prospective new residents inquiring about crime activity in particular areas. Overall, unit staff handled more than 491 telephone inquiries during the year.

The unit played an integral role in the Department’s Goals and Objectives program to suppress selected crimes. Staff published 33 crime summaries analyzing incident and call activity involving targeted crimes, 49 updates of robbery incidents providing suspect descriptions and modus operandi and 17 profiles and composites of known offenders and persons wanted for targeted offenses. The unit also provided 11 trend analyses of current robbery incidents.

Throughout the year, staff completed noteworthy research projects and reports as follows: five-year analysis of crime and calls for service in Beat 8 (Pico Neighborhood); two-year breakdown of homeless-related municipal code violations; workload study of the Homeless Liaison Program (HLP) unit; call and offense history of Edgemar building businesses; three-year traffic accident study of Neilson Way; study of traffic accidents involving overturned vehicles; Beat 8 summertime calls for service study to assess deployment needs; summary of citations related to street performances on Santa Monica Pier; two-year report of all alcohol-related incidents to supplement a Vice Unit grant application to enforce liquor law violations; six-month analysis of auto thefts and recent gang activity for deployment of morning watch personnel and a bait vehicle by the Taskforce for Regional Autotheft Prevention (TRAP), multiple studies of call activity for City Attorney and/or Section 8 Housing staff conducting nuisance tenant investigations; a three-year summary of transient-related calls for service; 12-month update of citizen and officer initiated calls for service and crime in selected reporting districts; year-to-date analysis of crimes against persons on the Pier, 3rd Street, and SM Place; and a multi-year analysis for the Office of Special Enforcement (OSE) to ascertain most frequent robbery times and locations.

In December 1996, the Automation Unit (AU) was created to identify, research and implement automated processes to maximize the Department’s efficiency and effectiveness. The first major project for the unit was the automated/mobile report writing system. When implemented, the automated/mobile report writing system will enable personnel to spend less time preparing written reports and more time on field related duties. Officers and other personnel, whether in the field or at the station, will be able to prepare written reports using specialized report writing software . Field personnel will have the ability to transmit the reports via a modem to a network server inside the police facility. The report will then be electronically forwarded to appropriate personnel for review and processing, eliminating the need for printing the report on paper.

AU staff established a Department wide Technology Committee to facilitate sharing of information on technological developments. Committee meetings allow staff members to discuss various projects they are working on. This ongoing communication has proven very effective in minimizing or eliminating duplicated efforts by staff members assigned to diverse work units.

Another function of the unit is maintaining the Department’s World Wide Web site. The Web site (http://www.santamonicapd.org) has been on-line since October 1996 and receives a number of e-mail messages daily. If messages are directed to a member of the Department or questions cannot be answered directly by staff, they are forwarded to appropriate personnel through the City's internal e-mail network.

During 1997, the Web site received more than 41,000 visitors. The most frequently visited sections of the site were Employment Information and Wanted Suspects. Staff continually worked with the City's Web site committee, formed to help reshape and manage the City's current Web site, and with personnel from the City’s Information Systems Department. The staff member assigned to the unit received an award from the Santa Monica Rotary Club for his exemplary service to the Department and the community.

The traditional role of the Records Section is to index and store master case files of complaints and crime investigations, and to disseminate information from case files to authorized agencies and individuals. In the decade of the ‘90s, the Records Section has moved away from a clerical support function to a specialized role in the technical and investigative agenda of the Department. These changes have evolved from two sources: aggressive law enforcement-related legislation and advances in technology and information management.

The task of interpreting, writing procedures, administering and ensuring compliance with crime information and reporting statutes is typically assigned to the Records Section. Statutes added or revised in 1997 include: Missing and Unidentified Persons (MUPS) reporting laws, Domestic Violence Restraining Order (DVRO) and stalking laws, and the statewide Supervised Release File (SRF) which grew, in part, out of Megan’s Law;

New technology requires higher levels of user and administrator skills. Working in a fully automated organization, members of the Records Section must understand system networking and protocol, know how to access information using complex data base retrieval methods, and be able to do basic problem resolution before calling in outside technicians. During 1997, the Records Section coordinated Department-wide training and implementation of the County’s new Consolidated Criminal History Reporting System as well as several Departmental information systems.

Increasingly, crime investigations are an interagency effort, relying heavily on California Department of Justice (DOJ) and FBI databases which are accessed by telecommunications networks. The principal networks are California Law Enforcement Telecommunications System (CLETS) and National Law Enforcement Telecommunications System (NLETS). The CLETS Agency Terminal Coordinator, a section employee, coordinates and implements new user procedures, trains Department personnel on system security and use, maintains training records, conducts internal security audits, investigates suspected system use violations, and represents the Department at annual on-site inspections by DOJ and FBI auditors. During 1997, the coordinator tested interface programs, developed internal procedures, trained employees, and oversaw local implementation of two major CLETS programs: the Violent Crime Information Network and Supervised Release File.

The Records Manager ensures that the Department has the latest document and information processing resources available. Projects completed in 1997 were a failsafe document recovery program, a special homicide report retrieval system, and workstation upgrades to Microsoft Windows for imaging and CLETS applications. In 1998, the ad hoc forms committee redirected its strategy from paper forms design to assisting the Automated Projects Unit with development of an automated report writing system.

Section employees analyze and data enter all crime reports prepared by patrol and investigations personnel. During 1997, the Records Section processed 16,902 crime, incident and traffic collision reports. Of those, 7,562 were cases which qualified for reporting to the California Department of Justice and FBI Uniform Crime Report (UCR). The section prepares the monthly indices of crime, including national UCR statistics and the Department’s comparative analysis of crimes in Santa Monica. Data for these reports are extracted from the Records Management database. A Records Section internal audit of 1997-database integrity revealed a statistical error rate of less than .0004% (six errors in 16,902 reports).

The Records Section prepares and posts the daily logs of calls for service and arrests, in compliance with the Public Records Act. Working closely with the Chief’s Press Liaison Officer, the Records Manager evaluates exceptional Public Records Act issues to ensure that victim privacy and the public’s right to know are in balance.

The Animal Control Section investigates all calls and complaints regarding animals and operates a shelter for unclaimed animals. In 1997, more than 3,000 animals were housed at the City’s Animal Shelter until they could be claimed by an owner, adopted or euthanized. The Santa Monica Animal Shelter has one of the highest percentages of animal placement in the United States.

The section operates a reserve officer and volunteer program. Reserves are qualified residents interested in volunteering their services to the shelter. They are called reserve animal control officers and have been trained by animal control officers to assist with their duties. Volunteers perform various functions from clerical tasks to exercising and grooming animals, thereby releasing animal control officers for more field time. Without their donated services, animals would be difficult to place. Volunteers also seek and collect funds to aid in the care and treatment of sick or injured animals.

The City offers three public dog parks where owners may exercise their dogs in a designated off-leash area during specific daily hours. Animal Control officers monitor these areas to ensure the safety of both the public and the animals using the park. The off-leash dog parks are available for Santa Monica residents who have a current license for their dog. The dog park ordinance helps monitor registrations and current rabies vaccinations.

A Humane Education program is run by Animal Control officers who instruct students on animal care and safety. Officers also advise utility companies and postal personnel on issues relating to animal safety on their jobs. Officers visit schools and youth service agencies, offer animal shelter tours and participate in community events. Animal Control personnel assist in the care and maintenance of the Department’s Mounted Patrol horses while they are boarded during their seasonal operation.

The Identification Section (ID) provides technical expertise needed for photographing and processing crime scenes for evidence. Identification Technicians (ID Techs) photograph, collect, process and preserve scene evidence, then identify fingerprints, tool marks and shoe prints connecting possible suspects to the crime. Following this process, they prepare evidence and displays needed by investigators and prosecutors for court. Once the evidence goes to court, they may give testimony related to physical evidence that they have recovered. ID Techs are court-qualified experts in the area of latent fingerprints (fingerprints that are found at crime scenes) and palm print comparisons.

Identification Technicians are instrumental in solving cases by identifying suspects’ fingerprints or palm prints left at a crime scene. The process of searching and identifying unknown fingerprints has been enhanced with the use of special computer systems. Computers allow staff to search every criminal fingerprint card in the state to match fingerprints from crime scenes to possible suspects and can be used to enhance the quality of the latent prints, increasing the probability of identifying suspects. Graphic computers are also used for digital photography and imaging. For example, photographs and videos of armed robberies may now be enhanced. When suspects have altered their appearance with mustaches or beards, computer technology can add or remove facial hair to help witnesses identify suspects.

Section staff fingerprint members of the public for purposes that are not crime-related. Over 5,000 people were fingerprinted in 1997 for day-care positions, teaching credentials, business licenses or other reasons.

The Property Section is responsible for receiving, keeping and releasing evidence and property. Evidence is held for use in court to help secure convictions. The Property Room received 12,342 items during 1997, including all evidence, safekeeping and found property, and 189 guns of all types. The section processed 645 items for the Crime Lab. A total of 1,802 items were taken from Property to court, to the Identification Section for processing or to a detective for further investigation. Of these items, 133 were entered into court. Staff released or purged 9,679 items.

During 1997, two police auctions were conducted. Total revenue generated from these auctions amounted to $13,748.00.

The Vehicle Maintenance Section provides minor repairs and servicing and arranges for major repairs on the fleet of police vehicles. A trial program in which the Fleet Maintenance Section at City Yards maintained 12 vehicles will continue for several more months of evaluation. Though the program appears to be successful, Fleet Maintenance requested to evaluate the program into 1998 before making it permanent.

The method of rotating vehicles through the patrol fleet begun in 1996 has proven to aid in preventive maintenance. Not only are the vehicles lasting longer, but many of them can be left in patrol service longer than expected. Section personnel are continually evaluating equipment and its installation in order to reduce down time of police vehicles.

The Jail and Custody Section maintains custody of suspects until arraignment in court, transfer to county facilities or other disposition. During 1997, Jail personnel completed 4,964 bookings. That number included processing 1,396 felony and 3,391 misdemeanor arresttees and 177 juveniles detainees.

The section operates under the close scrutiny of the California State Board of Corrections, Los Angeles County Department of Health Services and Presiding Judge of the Juvenile Court. All of their inspections and surveys found the jail facility to be in compliance with requisite guidelines governing arrestee meals, medical screening and juvenile detention.

For the seventh consecutive year, the Jail Manager received a certification of appreciation from the Board of Corrections. The certificate was for outstanding achievement in complying with mandated selection and training standards for jail personnel.

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This page was last modified on 01/26/2008