Never a dull moment with SLTPD

5/09 tahoe mt. news

By Kathryn Reed

It’s 11:47 on a Friday night. The handcuffs are taken off the 16-year-old South Lake Tahoe girl and she places her hands on her head like she’s told to. The guard at the Juvenile Detention Center searches her.
The teen removes her shoes and socks. Earrings are taken out. She struggles to remove the nose ring.
“Do you have any piercings I can’t see?” the guard asks.
“No,” the girl says.
The guard re-reads her her rights.
The girl must remove her jacket and belt before entering the holding cell – prevention so she doesn’t hang herself.
She will be spending her first night in juvi because officers could not track down her parents to release her to their custody after she was cited for contributing to the delinquency of minors.
It doesn’t matter the age of the supplier – give a minor alcohol and a crime has been committed.
At 10:23pm South Lake Tahoe police Officers Doug Sentell and Robert Autre show up at the girl’s house in the middle of town. A caller had reported a party was going on and said a chemical smell was detected.
A handful of the girl’s friends are in various stages of drunkenness.
“I don’t do anything wrong except I drink,” the girl said. She never seemed to comprehend what the big deal was.
Officers confiscated the half empty booze bottles and a pipe with suspected marijuana in it.
“That’s my dad’s (pipe). That’s not fair. He didn’t do anything wrong,” the girl stammered. The pipe was found in her pocket. Her fluttering eyelids signaled to Sentell she had been smoking weed.
The teens told the officers they got the alcohol by “shoulder tapping” – literally tapping a person on the shoulder and asking them to buy booze.
“So many kids end up in Barton. Some with a 4.0,” said Sgt. Shannon Norrgard. The legal limit for an adult is a blood alcohol content of 0.08.
Parents of the underage drinkers were called to pick up their offspring.
Norrgard, who has a 14-year-old, never wants to be in their shoes. She said it would be her worst nightmare come true.
Some of the kids sound like they’ve made this call before. Some parents thank the officers for the call. Most are visibly upset with their kids.
One of the boys is sober. He doesn’t have parents to call. He’s a couch surfer – a kid whose home is whatever couch he finds that night. It’s a form of being homeless.
First stop for the underage party hostess is Barton Memorial Hospital for a fit for incarceration exam. She’s worried her stomach will be pumped. Her inebriated state isn’t that bad.
“This is actually kind of fun,” she says while sitting in Room 3 of the ER.
“I’m sorry to hear that,” Sentell tells her.
“I’ve never been to the hospital,” she replies. After a slight pause she says, “Juvi is going to suck.”

On the streets

Sentell has been working the streets of South Lake for four years. He was on Clear Lake’s force for two years.
He says morale is improving. The father of four little ones says the switch from 12-hour shifts to 10-hour ones has made a dramatic difference. Plus, he hasn’t had any forced overtime in months.
But not everything is copasetic. Some officers, speaking off the record, say morale is still an issue.
Police Chief Terry Daniels said, “Morale was never as dark as people made it sound.”
He points to the worst time being during negotiations and he was on the city’s team which pitted him against his department’s five unions.
Capt. Martin Hewlett points to the need to “take care of our people.” He offered the tragedy in Oakland earlier this year as an example. “I told the sergeants to talk to the young guys and see how they are and how their spouses are dealing with it.” He bristled at the mention of morale not being good.
Even though staffing has increased significantly in the last year, not always does the scheduling seem logical. Some officers complain not enough vehicles mean officers aren’t always on the streets.
Today full staffing is 44 sworn officers. The department has 42. Testing to hire more officers occurred last month. But with the revolving door of retirements and transfers, it is doubtful staffing will consistently be full.
In the 1980s the department had 57 officers – eight assigned to detectives.
Today there are 27 patrol officers. During the recent lean times that number fell to 18. The department employs 65 employees – not all are sworn officers.
Officers aren’t happy they have to tell burglary victims the crime won’t be investigated because there isn’t a detective to do it.
Daniels said he wants detectives to be fully staffed as soon as possible, which means four officers. One position is not filled, but that equates to being down 25 percent. It wasn’t long ago that detectives was stripped to one person.
Daniels is content he fulfills the department’s obligation to the South Lake El Dorado Narcotics Enforcement Team, especially knowing El Dorado County had to pull its sheriff’s deputy last fall.
If Daniels could have a wish, it’s to have a stable budget and never return to the days of being understaffed.
Hewlett, who runs the patrol division, wants his officers to eventually spend half of their time “dedicated to the needs of the community.” This includes K-9 presentations, working with youth and neighborhood watch programs.
The idea, according to Daniels, is to be proactive instead reactive.
Officers respond to about 36,000 calls a year. Last year crime dropped by 10 percent in the city. Even though property crimes tend to increase in bad economic times, Daniels said that has not been the case here.
“There are only a finite number of criminals in a small town,” Daniels said, adding that segment is about 4 to 5 percent of the population.
Domestic violence and drugs are the issues Sentell says he runs up against most often – with the two often being tied together. He said the biggest abuse he’s seeing is with the prescription med Oxycontin. It’s nickname is “hillbilly heroin.”
“We do have a significant drug problem. Anytime you have a place next to you that gives away alcohol 24/7 you will have alcohol problems,” Daniels said.
He acknowledged the increasing domestic violence problems here. Daniels said the partnership with South Lake Tahoe Women’s Center helps.
He also said he won’t be surprised if when the 2009 crime stats are tallied that drug-alcohol-domestic violence incidents have risen. The economy will be partly to blame.
Another issue out of officers’ control is the influx of people in town, especially during the summer. Staffing is set for the 25,000 residents, not the 60,000 occupants during summer.

Altering course

Hewlett said after a hiatus of a couple years cops will be returning to bicycle patrol this summer. The four to six officers will primarily work the beaches and campgrounds on mountain bikes
The boat program is set to go, as well.
Two officers will be on motorcycles.
“One goal is to reduce traffic accidents in 2009 through focused enforcement,” Hewlett said. “Last year we had DUI enforcement. Arrests increased and traffic accidents and fatals at night decreased.”
A goal of Daniels’ since he took the reigns of top cop a few years ago was to bring back the Police Activities League. Nearly 20 kids – boys and girls – are in the boxing program. Some are gearing up for competitions, other have the potential to box at the collegiate level.
Through the bike program kids are repairing two-wheelers that they’ll eventually be able to pedal.
PAL volunteers took kids to a basketball game at UNR. Fishing, sledding and skating are other activities.
The department is an integral player in the Youth Task Force (www.tahoeytf.com), a coalition of community groups whose focus is all about kids in the community. Information about PAL and a community calendar are on the website.
Daniels said the goal is to get kids involved in something positive, show them parts of the area they’ve never seen and expose them to activities that help them set positive goals.

Union concerns

Robert Autre, president of the SLT Police Officers Association, isn’t thrilled with some of management’s decisions. The seasoned officer who crossed the state line a couple years ago after retiring from the Douglas County Sheriff’s Office, is not shy about voicing his concerns.
He shakes his head when talking about the training and vehicle budgets being cut. Autre said it will be two years before SLTPD gets new vehicles.
Autre said cutting the training budget can make a city liable when an officer is sued for some incident.
“There is no excuse for a department our size to be in the predicament it’s in,” Autre said. “It’s all about money. They are refusing to properly man, they are failing to properly train and they are failing to properly equip.”
Autre said if what happened in Douglas County recently when three officers were shot in an eight-month period were to have happened in South Lake at the same time, the department would not have had the coverage to handle it.
“What the community fails to see when they see four cop cars and think it’s a waste of manpower is that we get paid for what we might have to do,” Autre said.

Troubled times

Sgt. Jeff Regan is on administrative leave following his DUI arrest in Nevada on April 17. This is not the first time he has been on the other side of the law. In 2005 he was accused of domestic violence, though those charges were dropped.
Officer Johnny Poland, who is on paid administrative leave while the city challenge’s his reinstatement, had his April 29 Superior Court date canceled.
Poland said he and his attorney have until May 15 to respond to the city’s appeal.
May 29 is the next date to watch for. As of press time it was not known if both sides would be in court if a decision would be made then.
Poland was spending the end of April and early May composing documents for the El Dorado County grand jury.
“There were plenty of things said and done that will create a hostile work environment. I need that addressed. I need the grand jury to say that it is wrong,” Poland said. “I can’t expect the city manager or police chief to look into it.”
Poland was fired in June 2007 after a November 2006 incident at South Tahoe High. A three-person arbitration panel last fall ruled he should be given his badge back. The city is appealing that decision without the unanimous consent of the City Council.
“We have put out a gag order. We don’t talk about (Poland),” Chief Daniels said.
Daniels has heard the rumor that Poland’s personnel records have been leaked to the Tahoe Daily Tribune. A copy is kept at the department and one with human resources at city offices. It is a misdemeanor in California to publish such files of peace officers.
If the Poland case is strung out another year, he would have to go through police officers standard training again.
One officer who spoke off the record isn’t worried about Poland coming back. “What worries me more is some other officers. Some of whom are getting promoted and have some black marks against them like totaling cars and others covering for them,” the veteran officer said.
In another incident, Jim Smith who owns Nik-n-Willies Pizza reportedly has gone to the Department of Justice seeking an investigation into Daniel’s behavior from several years ago.
Supposedly Smith has a recording of Daniels making a less than professional call to his business.
“I’ve never called him, so that’s a lie,” Daniels said.
Smith said, “I’m not talking to anyone at this point. I have been advised by my legal counsel not to talk to anyone.”