The San Benito County Sheriff’s Office will use a four-deputy
team patrolling every Friday and Saturday night to combat gang
activity in Hollister and other parts of the county, Undersheriff
Pat Turturici said this week.
The San Benito County Sheriff’s Office will use a four-deputy team patrolling every Friday and Saturday night to combat gang activity in Hollister and other parts of the county, Undersheriff Pat Turturici said this week.
Sheriff Curtis Hill is fed up with the gang-related violence that has plagued the city in the past year, Turturici said.
“There’s been too many shootings, too much violence going on,” Turturici said. “We’re going to go out and fight it aggressively.”
The four-deputy team – which includes a sergeant – will patrol the city and county on eight-hour shifts, Turturici said.
Gang activity in unincorporated parts of the county has remained relatively static, Lt. Roy Iler said.
“We’ve seen it in the city, though,” Iler said of increased gang violence.
Turturici said the office would like to work with the Hollister Police Department as much as it can, but will still be aggressive if patrol officers are unavailable.
“The sheriff’s responsible for the county, and the city’s in the county,” Turturici said.
On Feb. 29, such a team was deployed from 7 p.m. until 3 a.m. Saturday, Iler said.
The team stopped suspected gang members and collected information that helps officers later identify them as such, Iler said. During the shift, the team made four arrests.
A 16-year-old Hollister boy was arrested for a probation violation and resisting a peace officer about 9 p.m. Friday on Westside Boulevard in Hollister, Iler said.
During a traffic stop, deputies arrested three people for felony drug sales at 11:30 p.m. Friday in the 4000 block of San Felipe Road, Iler said.
“We recovered 3.3 grams of methamphetamine on that one stop,” Iler said.
Arrested during the stop were a 29-year-old Hollister man, 39-year-old Hollister woman and a 25-year-old Hollister man, the sheriff’s office reported.
None of the three suspects were gang members, Iler said, but the 39-year-old woman was wanted on a warrant for multiple felony burglaries in Santa Cruz County.
