Ventura's anti-vagrancy campaign working, officials say

Source: Ventura County Star, Calif.儲存Oct. 01--Nearly two years ago, the city of Ventura launched an initiative aimed at recapturing parks, a prominent shopping center and boardwalks along and near the beach.The six targeted areas, including Mission Plaza, South Seaward and Plaza Park, had turned from destinations to places to avoid or move from quickly.The effort now includes an ordinance requiring businesses to monitor shopping carts and touts an anti-panhandling campaign. Called the Safe and Clean Public Places Initiative, the effort is working, those involved told the City Council on Monday night.Safe and Clean Public Places aims to cut down on behaviors and actions, said Community Services Manager Peter Brown."What it's not, is a policy on homelessness," Brown said.Since the initiative launched in earnest, calls for vagrancy have dropped by 25 percent, Police Chief Ken Corney said.Police increased their presence downtown, creating a Safe and Clean team. The team of six includes a sergeant, corporal and four officers, including two officers who had been part of the traffic/safety division.The department used to average 600 calls per month, but that's dropped to between 400 and 450 per month, Corney said."That's still a lot...but reducing it 25 percent was a great achievement," he said.Corney said it hasn't just been the extra police."A big part of that's been the partnerships formed," he said.That includes Community Intervention Court, which the city began last December in coordination with Ventura County Superior Court and social service agencies.The program offers repeat offenders of small crimes (think public drunkenness) the opportunity to avoid jail and fines in exchange for working on issues that could include mental health or substance abuse issues.To help with the vagrancy issues, the city began promotin儲存倉 an anti-panhandling campaign. Instead of giving panhandlers cash, it suggests giving donations to social service organizations that work with the chronically homelessness, underemployed people and those on the brink of becoming homeless.Brown also updated the council on the status of activity along both the city's rivers.Last September, the city, the county and and others with stakes in property along the Ventura River cleared out longstanding homeless encampments.Brown said he recently took a helicopter ride along the river to see the effort a year later."The lack of presence of built camps is striking," he said.Having fewer people down there was credited with the drop in fire-related calls, from 132 in 2012 to 32 so far this year, according to city fire officials.The county plans to remove more nonnative arundo this week, Brown said.Officials remove the arundo both because the species is a water guzzler, thus choking out native species, and because people had used their thick stalks as cover for their encampments.In the more recent effort along the Santa Clara River, the city and students from California Lutheran University picked up more than 61 tons of trash.Three or four camps have returned since the August clearing out, Brown said, and the city is working to remove those along with others that have moved up river.In 2012, there were 48 fire-related calls. So far this year there have been 33, fire officials said.Salvation Army Director of Social Services Rob Orth said what the city and others have done in the effort has been an "amazing thing....It's not an easy thing to do, to remove people's homes, even if they are illegal," Orth said.Copyright: ___ (c)2013 Ventura County Star (Camarillo, Calif.) Visit Ventura County Star (Camarillo, Calif.) at .vcstar.com Distributed by MCT Information Services迷你倉最平