Compared to 2019, 2020 was a relatively good year for crime in Lompoc. According to 2019 data from the FBI’s Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Program and 2020 data from the Lompoc Police Department, murders ticked down from seven in 2019 to four in 2020. While total assaults went up, rapes, robberies, and aggravated assaults all decreased. Personal property and motor vehicle theft stayed roughly the same.
While the drop in murders is an improvement for the city, it’s still a far cry from 2016, 2017, and 2018 when there were zero, two, and one murders, respectively. With 2021 already off to a violent start—including multiple shootings and one homicide so far—Mayor Jenelle Osborne said the bigger picture shows that Lompoc’s crime problems remain intact.
From Osborne’s perspective, one of those root issues is a decrease in proactive policing. To understand where Lompoc’s public safety stands now, one needs to start a few years back, the mayor said.
“In 2016 we were at what we at the time considered fully staffed,” Osborne said of the police department. “We were at 44 officers, and in 2017 we were at 46 officers.”
In 2018 the police force was about the same size. But in 2019, it dropped to 38, and in 2020 stayed roughly the same at 39 officers. Some of those losses were to surrounding cities, Osborne said, especially after Santa Maria passed its Measure U sales tax, which invested in public safety.
“There was this attraction to go to a community that paid better, had shorter shifts, less stress,” Osborne said.
As the city’s police force shrunk, Lompoc Police Capt. Kevin Martin said, the city’s gang task force and other specific crime units had to be dissolved. Rather than responding to calls for service, these units typically go out to high crime areas to “stop crimes before they happen,” Martin said.
“The backbone of any police department is patrolling. They’re the ones that respond to 911 calls,” Martin said. “So it has been the primary priority of Chief [Joseph] Mariani that we support and staff patrol to the best of our abilities. As staffing starts to drop, we have to pull officers from proactive roles in the police department and assign them to the patrol side of the operation.”
From Martin’s perspective, proactive police work is a tool to prevent crime, but the Lompoc Police Department doesn’t have the capacity it once did.
The city’s gang task force was dissolved in 2017, and with it, proactive gang-related investigations began to drop. While the department initiated 2,077 gang investigations in 2015, that number fell to 772 in 2017 and 593 in 2018, Osborne told the Sun. The team that was “dedicated to preventing [crime] through investigations and building relationships and identifying potential activity and working to reduce it or eliminate it,” was gone.
Osborne believes that 2019’s high crime rates reflect the decrease in this proactive police work. And while 2020 saw crime decrease in some areas and stagnate in others, Osborne is concerned that this may have been only temporary.
“As we’ve entered 2021, we’ve already had gang activity and shootings,” she said.
According to the city’s police bulletins, there have been nine shootings in Lompoc so far this year. A Jan. 18 shooting was believed to be gang-related; others were reported as unknown.
While Martin said there’s no easy or simple solution to violence in Lompoc, he believes “getting back to our allotted staffing levels” is an important first step, so that proactive units can be reinstated. Osborne is hopeful that it can happen in the near future.
“We’re authorized at 47 [officers]; we’re currently staffed at 39,” Osborne said. “But we’re well on the way, if things continue, to be fully staffed by early next year, and then look at more of our senior, experienced officers to start to stand up some of these special investigative teams again and be more proactive.”
Lompoc’s city budget runs on a two-year cycle, so City Council discussions around the 2022-24 budget are already underway.
“I think what really we need to do is something Councilmember [Gilda] Cordova said on Tuesday night while giving direction for the budget,” Osborne said, referring to a Feb. 16 City Council meeting. “Which was, ‘Instead of just looking at it as bodies and filling positions, what are the staffing levels we actually need?’”
Martin also emphasized the need to redistribute some responsibilities away from the police department, particularly mental health response.
“These are long-term problems that need to have somebody manage them over months, if not years,” Martin said. “That’s not the role of a police department. So any time we can have partnerships in our community to help us address those issues, the chief and I are all for it.”
Chuck Madson, a leader in developing substance abuse treatment programs in Santa Barbara County, is also the co-founder of Future, a nonprofit with a goal of supporting Lompoc youth. Madson and co-founder Tim Harrington envision Future as a physical location where young people in Lompoc can come to find the resources they need. Before the pandemic, the duo conducted focus groups directly with youth in the community to figure out how to best support them.
“What we’ve discovered is, by providing those options and providing opportunities for our youth, ultimately we’re affecting the overall environment of our community, which is our goal,” Madson said.
While reasons for crime are nuanced, Madson said, “I do know that addiction, homelessness, those that make the decision to engage in gangs are the issues that need to be addressed. I believe those issues can only be addressed if we support those individuals younger, kind of a proactive instead of a reactive community.”
While COVID-19 presented some setbacks to Future’s youth center opening, Madson said he and Harrington are still moving forward and are confident in their vision.
“The beautiful part of Lompoc is that it’s still a small enough community where we can change the outcome of what’s been happening,” Madson said. “By supporting our youth when they’re younger, so that they don’t ultimately make these decisions which will affect the crime.”
Reach Staff Writer Malea Martin at mmartin@santamariasun.com.
This article appears in Mar 11-18, 2021.