Task force panel recommends assigning two deputies to Moorland area

A proposal to assign two Sonoma County sheriff’s deputies to the neighborhood where a 13-year-old boy was fatally shot by a deputy more than a year ago surfaced Monday night among the first recommendations from a county-appointed task force studying law enforcement issues.

The deputies would be based in the Moorland Avenue neighborhood for at least five years each under a proposed Moorland Neighborhood Pilot Project outlined in a 29-page report by a subcommittee of the Community and Local Law Enforcement Task Force.

It was one of seven recommendations in the subcommittee’s broader call for emphasis on the concept of community policing as a means to improve communication and establish trust between residents and law enforcement at a time of nationwide protests over police misconduct in the death of unarmed civilians.

Brien Farrell, a subcommittee member and retired teacher at Elsie Allen High School, said the Moorland project would follow the model of the Sheriff’s Office’s Roseland substation, which was terminated by budget cuts years ago.

In those days, the deputies ate tacos at Roseland restaurants and “began to feel it was their neighborhood and their community,” said Farrell, who is also a former Santa Rosa city attorney.

Farrell noted that Moorland neighborhood residents have voiced a desire for increased patrols and for an improved relationship with the Sheriff’s Office.

The 21-member task force was established by the Board of Supervisors in December 2013 in response to community outcry over the fatal shooting of Andy Lopez, the teen shot and killed by Sheriff’s Deputy Erick Gelhaus on Moorland Avenue on Oct. 22, 2013. Gelhaus, a veteran deputy who has since returned to patrol duty, mistook the airsoft BB gun Lopez was carrying for a high-powered assault rifle.

Gelhaus was cleared of any criminal wrongdoing by the District Attorney’s Office in July.

Monday’s report by the subcommittee, one of three established by the task force, marked the first draft of policy recommendations after nearly a year of work by the task force.

Two other subcommittees are also fashioning recommendations with the intention of presenting final proposals to the supervisors in April.

The proposed Moorland project ran into some objections and questions from task force members.

Irene Rosario, a longtime Moorland Avenue resident, expressed dismay that neither she nor any of her neighbors had heard anything about the proposal. “I’m really disappointed,” she said, faulting the subcommittee for lack of outreach to the neighborhood. “It’s not a long street.”

“The point’s well taken,” Farrell said. “There’s a serious flaw.”

Task force member Eric Koenigshofer said that community policing would be more feasible if the Moorland area were annexed by Santa Rosa, and he chastised the city for leaving Moorland out of its plans for taking in the Roseland area.

Koenigshofer, an attorney and former county supervisor, said he “cannot fathom how Moorland is not included in the annexation,” adding that the committee should tell city officials “you need to rethink the scope of your reach for annexation.”

Caroline Banuelos, chairwoman of the task force, said the county supports the Moorland area’s annexation by Santa Rosa and that her subcommittee will address the issue.

Sheriff’s Lt. Mark Essick, a task force member, said the Moorland area is currently included in a “local beat” patrolled by two deputies who cover 50 to 60 square miles of unincorporated area surrounding Santa Rosa. The deputies respond to calls ranging from the Larkfield-Wikiup area south to the Todd Road-Stony Point Road area, he said.

Task force member Judy Rice complained about the lack of cost estimates in the subcommittee’s proposals, and Brian Vaughn, a task force staff member, said that cost is “on the radar” but could not be determined in time for the subcommittee’s draft report.

Subcommittee member Jeanne Buckley, a retired Superior Court commissioner, said the two deputies serving the Moorland area would cost about $400,000.

Joe Palla, a task force member and Cloverdale city councilman, suggested that the Sheriff’s Office might restore the resident deputy program that was also eliminated by budget cuts. That program included incentives for deputies to live in the areas where they served, but Palla, a former Healdsburg and Cloverdale police chief, said that arrangement now would be “a little more challenging.”

Other proposals in the subcommittee’s draft report included:

Improving response to critical incidents by dispatching a non-uniformed member of the investigating law enforcement agency to the scene to act as a liaison between officers and the family and community members.

“Rapid communication with the community is essential to avoid the development of rumors and conjecture,” the recommendation said.

It also suggested that all available information - including any video and the dispatch tape of the incident - should be made public within a week of the incident, or that “specific reasons” should be given for why the information cannot be released.

Hiring a consultant in the Sheriff’s Office to work on increasing the pool of Latino applicants for sheriff’s patrol deputy positions, leading to “a more diverse patrol workforce.”

The recommendation noted that Latinos hold 17 percent to 23 percent of the jobs in other county law enforcement classifications, compared with 9.5 percent of the patrol deputy jobs.

Adoption of use of force policies by local law enforcement agencies that are aligned with “national best practices.”

“In several instances over the past decade, events where deadly force has been used have had a deep eroding effect on the trust between communities and law enforcement,” the report said.

The subcommittee’s draft recommendations are available at http://sonomacounty.ca.gov/Community-and-Local-Law-Enforcement-Task-Force.

You can reach Staff Writer Guy Kovner at 521-5457 or guy.kovner@pressdemocrat.com. On Twitter @guykovner.