About 4,000 Gilroy volunteers pledge their services in the name
of garlic every summer but the Gilroy Police Department can barely
rally eight people to donate a few hours each weekend to help
patrol the downtown corridor.
About 4,000 Gilroy volunteers pledge their services in the name of garlic every summer but the Gilroy Police Department can barely rally eight people to donate a few hours each weekend to help patrol the downtown corridor.
“Our volunteer numbers are low for the size city we are,” said Sgt. Kurt Ashley, who heads the department’s neighborhood resource unit. “It’s been very difficult to fill the slots.”
With a force of only 25 Volunteers in Policing for a city of more than 51,000 people, an initiative Mayor Al Pinheiro has seen other cities pull off so well isn’t off to a good start, Ashley said.
Pinheiro’s vision of putting extra eyes and ears on Monterey Street to patrol, answer questions for shoppers and give people an added sense of security hasn’t yet been realized, but he’s still optimistic.
“Our eye is still on the ball but the ball’s rolling very slowly,” Pinheiro said.
With the city’s financial woes infringing on the graffiti abatement program among other city services, volunteers help lighten the load for uniformed police officers, freeing them up to respond to calls for service.
“The VIPs are extremely valuable,” Ashley said. “They make the police officers’ and city employees’ lives much easier because they’re helping out in records, with vehicle abatement and traffic control. As things get tougher due to budgets, volunteers will become more and more important.”
As valuable as the current volunteers are, Ashley still needs more people to donate a few hours of their time to get the weekend downtown patrol program up and running. Shifts run from 2 to 6 p.m. and 6 to 10 p.m. Saturdays and 12 to 4 p.m. and 4 to 8 p.m. Sundays. For each shift, Ashley needs two volunteers, whose duties will include patrolling from Third to Seventh streets along Monterey Street, including alleys, to report suspicious behavior and keep in touch with local business owners. Volunteers walk in pairs and are provided with city-issued cell phones. They do not respond to a crime in progress but rather learn how to accurately report the incident to police. In addition, office space donated by local developer James Suner is available as a “home base” for volunteers, Ashley said.
Police hope to develop the donated office space, which sits three doors down from the old City Hall, into a more permanent fixture where people can stop in to get information about Gilroy or ask for help, Ashley said.
“The downtown needs a police presence,” Suner said.
As president of the downtown association, Suner’s learned from focus groups that people don’t feel safe downtown, he said.
“It’s a perception and something we’re working very hard on to correct,” he said. “But with budget cuts, we’re becoming more and more dependent on volunteers.”
Ashley hopes to boost his volunteer base up to at least 40 people and add patrols on Friday, Saturday and Sunday nights. But since the formal kickoff of the program during the downtown holiday parade, the police department hasn’t been able to consistently get volunteers on the streets during the weekends, Ashley said. The next Citizen Police Academy begins in April and Ashley hopes to welcome several new recruits into the VIP program.
Potential candidates for the City of Gilroy Citizen Police Academy must:
* Be at least 18 years old
* Live or work within the city limits
* Have no felony convictions
* Have no misdemeanor arrests within the last year
* Have final approval from Police Chief Denise Turner
Details: Community Service Officer Maribel Gutierrez at 846-0523
