Police checks on homes offer peace of mind for traveling Santa Rosans

Santa Rosa residents headed off on vacation now can have police volunteers come by to check on their unoccupied homes, rattle their doors and look for signs of trouble.

It’s a standard service offered by most of Sonoma County’s other law enforcement agencies but a new one in Santa Rosa, the county’s largest city. Petaluma will soon launch a similar service.

“We make sure everything is OK,” said Dave Tacla, who now checks Santa Rosa homes as part of a two-person police volunteer team.

Home burglaries, one of the most common types of crime, but not typical headline grabbers, can deeply affect residents.

“The sense of security that’s lost when someone enters your house and looks into your private things, it’s very traumatizing. It’s an important crime to prevent if we can,” said Santa Rosa police Sgt. Josh Ludtke, whose detectives work burglary cases.

Ludtke said the vacation home check program was an important step in the department’s attempts to forge new relationships with residents and spread the word about home-burglary prevention while offering “good peace of mind” for residents.

More than checking windows, Ludtke said, signing up for the vacation checks means the resident will get a packet from the city that includes numerous tips police recommend are taken prior to a vacation. They range from not letting your newspapers pile up to having motion sensor lights outside and having neighbors park in your driveway. “There are small things you can do to prevent your house being targeted,” Ludtke said.

Unlike other local police agencies, which have patrol officers or paid community service officers checking on temporarily vacant homes, Santa Rosa is using its 11-member volunteer patrol force for the job. The checks involve unarmed two-person teams equipped with radios.

Tacla and Ken Coker frequently work together on assignments. Late last week on a rainy morning, the two checked on a Washington Street home in downtown Santa Rosa. Wearing blue uniforms they arrived in a patrol car marking them as police volunteers. Their check included testing doors, going through the backyard and making sure windows remained intact.

Coker, an architect who volunteers on days off, picked up a newspaper in the driveway. A ?tip -off, he said, that residents could be gone.

Everything looked fine. Volunteers returned to the house the next day to check it again.

Santa Rosa’s program is similar to several others in the county and involves residents filling out an application in advance and signing a waiver. The information alerts volunteers to a variety of particulars at the home.

Will there be cars out front, and what are their plate numbers? Home alarm? Backyard accessible? Anyone coming and going while residents are away? Pets left behind?

“We know exactly what we’re walking into,” said Tacla, who is retired from a 33-year career in management at Safeway.

Any signs of trouble so far?

“Not yet,” Coker said. If they ever do find signs of a break-in, the volunteers know to leave the property and radio for an officer.

Prior to the late 1960s, vacation checks were standard in Santa Rosa, retired Santa Rosa police Cmdr. Rod Sverko said. But as the city grew, police officers became busier and it was dropped, he said.

A growing number of Santa Rosa department volunteers meant city employee Tricia Mason could redevelop the program, which kicked off in August. So far, about 20 residents have signed up for the free checks.

“We hope it keeps us busy and we can continue to grow the program and get more people involved (who) feel confident when they go on vacation,” Mason said.

That was the reaction of a McDonald Avenue neighborhood resident who signed up for the program.

“They sent a report that they’d been out here five times, which was good. We were gone 2½ weeks,” said the woman, who didn’t want to disclose her name because her family travels frequently. “It totally made me feel better. There’s a presence here when we’re gone.”

Vacation home checks have been part of small-town policing for decades, and police officials in Cloverdale, Healdsburg, Sebastopol, Windsor, Sonoma and Cotati said it is a routine service they provide.

“We’ve always done it,” said Windsor community service officer Bill Mikan, who conducts many of the home checks. “We walk the property, go around back, make sure the doors are secure. They appreciate it,” he said of the residents. “They’re happy to know we do this service.”

It’s also offered by the Sonoma County Sheriff’s Office, extending the service to residents in the county’s most rural areas.

Jennifer Abrao, a Sheriff’s Office crime prevention officer, said such checks are done by deputies when they have time but that all deputies working in an area are alerted that the residents are gone. “We do whatever we can … it puts it on the radar for the person working in that zone,” Abrao said.

Petaluma police Lt. Ken Savano said a citywide program conducted by volunteers will start in that town after the first of the year. Rohnert Park public safety Cmdr. Pat Strouse said the city doesn’t offer vacation checks but hopes to in the future.

For more information on Santa Rosa’s program, go to the police department’s website at http://ci.santa-rosa.ca.us/departments/police/Pages/default.aspx or call the department at 543-3550.

For information about services offered by other law enforcement agencies, contact your local department.

You can reach Staff Writer?Randi Rossmann at 521-5412?or randi.rossmann@press?democrat.com. On Twitter?@rossmannreport.