Hollister councilmen ride with Gilroy police as HPD installs new
computer system for tracking
With a sense of urgency not seen in local leaders for years, the
City Council has been busily researching the growing regional gang
problem and how it can be stopped from spilling blood in
Hollister.
With a sense of urgency not seen in local leaders for years, the City Council has been busily researching the growing regional gang problem and how it can be stopped from spilling blood in Hollister.
Meanwhile Hollister Police Department brass say they will begin working more closely with surrounding law enforcement agencies and are formulating a way begin tracking known gang members.
Last weekend, Mayor Brian Conroy and Councilman Tony Bruscia took a ride-along with an anti-crime team in Gilroy. Conroy and Bruscia also want to see what Salinas – the other neighboring community with a serious gang problem – is doing to contain the situation.
“I know our police department works really hard, but I think we can learn from Gilroy and do it on a smaller scale,” Conroy said. “We’re starting to get a problem, and I think it would be good for us to get a handle on it.”
Gilroy has dedicated an eight-officer team that costs more than $1 million per year to fight their gang problem. Conroy said a smaller team, even if it’s on a part-time basis, must be assembled with people from the Sheriff’s Office, the HPD and the Probation Department.
While the gang problem is largely based within the Latino community, Conroy said it’s important that people realize all kinds of people are involved in gang-type activity, even skateboarders.
“It’s not limited to any one ethnic group,” Conroy said. “It’s all kinds of kids out there tagging,”
Both Bruscia and Conroy said they were impressed with how much information is collected and entered into the GPD’s computer system. Gilroy officers showed them how the information can be cross-referenced to uncover crime patterns.
Bruscia said it’s also important the city begin looking for more resources from state law enforcement agencies.
“(The GPD’s) got a state parole officer once a week riding along with them,” Bruscia said. “Even if it was once a month that would help if we had that here.”
Bruscia and Conroy want to meet with city management to learn how a new computer can help the HPD track gang activity. Sheriff Curtis Hill already sends detectives to regional gang taskforce meetings. They also want HPD to begin working more closely with other agencies and taskforces, something Chief Bill Pierpoint said is already in the works.
“The new (computer) system is in the process of being installed,” Pierpoint said. “The order is being submitted. We’re hoping to have it up and running in January.”
But Pierpoint cautioned that it would take more than just a better computer system. He said the HPD needs more officers if the city wants to see the level of policing rise.
“I think Gilroy has a relationship of less than 1 officer per 600 people,” he said. “We’ve got 37 officers for 36,000 people.”
The research performed by the council is just the latest in a series of responses to an article recently published in The Pinnacle outlining how gang activity is growing more violent in San Benito County.
District Attorney-elect John Sarsfield met with local police leaders two weeks ago and part of their discussion centered on increasing gang suppression. Councilwoman Pauline Valdivia asked the HPD to formally assess its resources to fight gangs and the scope of the problem. They will report back within the next two months.
Hill also recently said his office would begin going through data collected from inmates entering the county’s jail system. In the future, when gang members commit crimes they would serve a minimum 85 percent of their sentence.
