Program to force criminals to reform or get out of town by
listing top seven troublesome individuals not as active as it once
was
Gilroy – Eight years ago the city was riddled with violent gang activity. Drive by shootings were not just an incident seen on television shows.
So city officials and police created the Lucky 7 program to force parolees, probationers and gang members to either reform or get out.
Patrol officers were briefed weekly with information and photographs of seven individuals police deemed the most troublesome, before sending the officers out on the streets. The Lucky 7 list was not released to the public.
“It’s primary purpose was to provide patrol officers with information about people who we consider are causing most of the problems in the city, so they could know who they are and what they were about,” said Gilroy Police Sgt. Kurt Svardal. “There’s nothing that says we can’t go over and knock on someone’s door and say hello. A few people didn’t like (the added attention) and moved out of the city.”
By 2003, the program had an 85 percent success rate – where police either busted those criminals violating the terms of their probation or parole, or the individuals reformed and were taken off the list. Some just left town altogether.
Former Mayor Mike Gilroy explained the impetus behind the program.
“We had our first drive by shooting when I was on the city council,” Gilroy said. “We were afraid it was going to be the norm, not the exception. Something had to be done. (Lucky 7) wasn’t the only thing. It was one tool in a variety of policing.”
But the Lucky 7 program has become less active in recent years, partly because the criminal climate has changed, and partly because of manpower.
“In the early ’90s we had significantly more gang violence,” Svardal said. The Anti-Crime Team was called out once a week, at a minimum, he added.
Despite recent incidents in the city, gang activity is not occurring on the same scale as in the past when drive by shootings happened – when San Ysidro Park, Rogers Lane, Forest Street and Fairview Avenue were different places altogether, he said. “If we were getting back to the point where we were in the mid-’90s, it would be a tool we would use routinely.”
But the environment isn’t the only thing that’s changed over the years.
Eight years ago, the city council made a concerted effort to retain a 1.5 officers to 1,000 residents ratio, said Gilroy.
During the 1990s when gang activity was at its peak, the Anti-Crime Team was established to suppress gang activity and staffing ratios were kept above the 1.5 marker.
As the city has expanded that figure has slipped to 1.36 per 1,000. Currently, the department is lacking seven positions, Assistant Police Chief Lanny Brown has said.
And until city and state finances stabilize, hiring additional police officers does not appear to be on the horizon.
Police argue that new officers are needed to respond to service calls so they can put patrol officers back where they belong – on the streets to perform pedestrian and traffic stops and parole and probation checks.
As the city population grows, police receive more calls for service. They received 750 more in 2005, than in 2004, and a recent regional report by the Morgan Hill Police Department indicates that the Gilroy Police Department is one of the busiest agencies in the county – averaging about 893 service calls per officer each year.
According to 2004 statistics, Gilroy houses the most parolees per capita in the county.
The Gilroy Police Department is a proactive department, and tries to stop crime before it happens, Svardal has said. The Lucky 7 program is an example of a suppression method, designed to get criminals off the city streets.
When the program started it had two purposes: to let criminals know police had their eye on them and to unify the patrol officers with the Anti-Crime Team’s efforts, Gilroy Police Chief Gregg Giusiana said.
“We were trying to get our city organized behind the work of dealing with gangs,” he said. “The patrol guys were worried about patrol more so than the gang projects. They weren’t as in tune with gang issues as we would have liked them to be.”
As a result of the Lucky 7 program, patrol officers learned more about who the gang members were, where they lived and what the different gangs were about.
“It did two things for us. It pressured the people we were looking at and helped everyone get in line with the policy,” Giusiana said. “Now, everybody’s dealing with it.”
The Anti-Crime Team still uses the program on a sporadic basis, police said.
According to Giusiana, the Most Wanted list has in some ways replaced the Lucky 7 program and makes information available to the public.
But compiling the information takes time away from officers who could be out on the streets.
“Lucky 7 is a great tool and it’s something that’s still there … (But) it’s a different time right now,” Svardal said. “We just don’t feel it is as necessary. It creates additional work. It’s like the Most Wanted list, it takes time.”
