Restorative policing
Ventura leaders discuss a new way to handle homeless issues
By Shane Cohn 12/22/2011
Cpl. John Snowling drove his squad car into Downtown Ventura’s Mission Park, responding to an afternoon vagrancy complaint. A homeless woman was sleeping on the outside of the public restroom façade, her belongings strewn out along the concrete, including empty bottles of vodka and soda. Snowling, the only full-time police officer in Downtown, explained this was a fairly regular occurrence with this woman.
“What’s the answer here? Jail?” said Snowling, making note ofthe overcrowding issues in local jails. After several attempts, Snowling finally woke the woman. Another officer appeared on the scene, helping gather her belongings, and soon she was on her way.
“We can only do so much,” Snowling said, adding a remark about the city’s limited resources. “They have to be willing [to get help], and I don’t run into that too often.”
But the police department and city officials have their eyes set on a new policing program that just might do the trick.
It’s called restorative policing, and it’s been so effective in the city of Santa Barbara for the past two years that Snowling has been riding along with Santa Barbara police to learn how to present the program in Ventura. There are various branches to the program, but essentially, restorative policing involves a team of officers assigned learn about chronic vagrancy offenders, or others who are displaced, and the officers work to best get these people off the street. A restorative court occurs once a week, where representatives from the law enforcement, legal, social services and mental health agencies discuss how to cooperatively tailor rehabilitation efforts most effectively for individual cases.
“Let’s say [a chronic minor offender] gets a citation,” explained Sgt. Ed Olsen, who supervises the restorative policing team for the Santa Barbara Police Department. “Prior to Wednesday’s restorative court, there will be a staff meeting discussing this person’s problems and how we can help this particular person. The judge listens and gets an understanding of what we want to do. Court begins and people are called in one by one. The judge tells the offender about the program, and how all existing violations will be gone if [the offender] can stay clean for six months.”
Understandably, Olsen said, some homeless who are chronic minor offenders decline the restorative program and, if so, they will continue to be dealt with criminally.
“At first, people didn’t want the help,” Olsen said. “But now a vast amount of people have gotten help and come back to us for a program. They’re coming to us now.”
Last week, Ventura police and city officials observed a restorative court session in Santa Barbara.
“It was pretty impressive,” said Mayor Mike Tracy. “It’s a coordinated problem-solving approach.”
Assistant Police Chief Quinn Fenwick was also on board to view the restorative court session.
“The one thing clear to me about Santa Barbara is they have dedicated significant resources to do this,” said Fenwick. “Cobbling together those resources would be a challenge for this city.”
But Tracy believes implementing a successful restorative program in Ventura is not just wishful thinking.
“What they have there is working in their community,” he said. “Eventually, I think we can do something like this in Ventura.”
Santa Barbara currently has two restorative police officers, three restorative outreach specialists and six community service liaisons — all funded by Redevelopment Agency monies — working together to help the homeless get off the street and into a restorative court program. To date, Olsen said, there are 60 pending cases in restorative court.
“Often, the problem is addiction, and we recognize that falling off the wagon is expected,” said Olsen. “So a success for us is the amount of time this person isn’t a burden on the community.”
Recently, the city of Ventura introduced the Safe and Clean initiative, an anti-panhandling and outreach effort designed to allocate resources to fight homelessness, and will eventually reassign two officers from the motor unit to Downtown policing.
For now, Snowling said, he is working with Project Understanding, a nonprofit social services organization, to establish a donation fund that will be used to bus, or fly, a homeless individual back to his or her city of origin, should the individual and family members express the desire.
DIGG | del.icio.us | REDDIT