The CotoBuzz Journal, Community Journalism

May 2008 ISSUE

We do not make jokes, we simply watch the LA Times, the Orange County Register and CID/HOA board of directors and report the facts!

The New and Improved OCSD – Letter to Orange County Supervisor Pate Bates

April 29, 2008

To: OC Board of Supervisors, Ms Pat Bates

As you may know, the CotoBuzz Journal is committed to public safety.

To that end, for the last five years we have worked with the CHP, the OCSD the FBI and the Department of Justice developing what we refer to as public safety management tools and have reported on anything and everything related to public safety, from crime and vandalism to traffic accidents. Our focus is the Canyon areas, including the communities of Coto de Caza, Ladera Ranch and Dove Canyon

In general, we have received tremendous support from the various law enforcement agencies. However, getting the information from the OCSD is a struggle- see below. In the past we have paid for programming charges. If you are familiar with programming charges, once a program is in place, you simply activate a key and out comes the report. Effective immediately, the OCSD has informed us that we need to pay recurring programming charges for said report. We do not mind, but this implies there is something wrong, either with the IT management or the operations side at the OCSD.

Any help you can provide is appreciated.

For reference, the “new charges” were implemented immediately after a CotoBuzz Journal reader questioned the validity of the OCSD supplied data.

Note received from CotoBuzz Journal forwarded to the OCSD follows:

Hello,

When you are reporting the crime rates, you need to remember that OCSD was accused of “doctoring” the reported crime rates. This is a major problem in many law enforcement agencies. One example I can give you:

There is a police department in OC that misreports their homicide rate….

The agency reports one homicide per location, meaning if there is three dead bodies at one location and they are all related, the agency only reports the homicide to the FBI as “one” crime…. Their attitude is “because we only use one “report number,” we only report one death…. This is different from a “missing person report.” On a missing person report, it is law that each missing person shall be reported on a separate “report number.”

The reason for this is it is possible that three people go missing (run away) and one of the people return. The agency then has to remove the missing person from the NCIC, but the other two missing persons will be outstanding. Another example is, a stolen vehicle, they are reported separately because if there was four cars stolen from a dealership they might locate one of the vehicles and the other three vehicles will still be outstanding, but they need to clear the one recovered vehicle and remove it from the computer system (SVS) “stolen vehicle system.”

I just wanted to give you a little insight on how they “pad” the crime rates……

You are wasting your time with Supervisor Pat Bates. Even though Bob Varo inappropriately endorsed Ms. Bates as CZ President, she has done absolutely nothing for our community that I can see. And, she does not respond to e-mails or any other communications. This is just another case of an incompetent politician who collects a good salary and accomplishes nothing important for her constituents. When we see some money to fund the maintenance of our essentially public sports park we will know that Supervisor Bates is in touch with our community. Until then Ms. Bates is missing in action. Joseph Morabito, former member CZ board of director

Hi Joe:

You may be right about Supervisor Bates,

As evidenced by everything we have published in the CotoBuzz Journal, we have supported the OCSD unconditionally. The Grand Jury investigation in the murder of inmate Chamberlain has revealed a pattern with the OCSD we have personal experience with and want to see how it can be addressed.

When we get immediate response from every other law enforcement agency, the OCSD is for the most part unreliable.

For example, we have written multiple times to Lt., Bill Griffin, who authors the Chief’s Corner in the CZ Newsletter – no response.

The only time we have heard from interim sheriff Jack Anderson is to reply about a CotoBuzz reader warnings about potential crime and vandalism figures “padding” by the OCSD.

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