New police unit dedicated strictly to youth
By Darleen Principe darleen@theacorn.com

The Simi Valley Police Department is rethinking the way it deals with the community's troubled teens.

In an interview this week with the Acorn, Police Chief Mike Lewis said law enforcement wants to focus more on delinquent behavior prevention and youth outreach and less on punishment and probation as a means of dealing with the city's younger offenders.

A reorganization of the police department is currently in the works to make room for a newly created Youth Services Unit- a team of six officers and one sergeant that will work with local students, parents and school administrators.

"The mission I've given them is to coordinate our delivery of services to the youth in Simi," Lewis said. "We want to respond to at-risk kids before they get started in criminal activities."

Lewis announced the creation of the Youth Services Unit two weeks ago at the Police Chief's Luncheon. At that time, he named Sgt. Dwight Thompson leader of the newly formed team.

According to Thompson, the current arrangement of the department- with three DARE officers for elementary schools and two Student Resource Officers in the high schools- leaves Simi middle schools underserved.

"We want to pick up the slack for what's happening in the (middle schools)," Thompson said. "There's not that much guidance there. What's happening is that when the students leave elementary school, they enter a time with the biggest amount of peer pressure but with the least amount of (police) guidance or contact."

According to Lewis, each DARE officer will take additional responsibility for one of the three middle schools as soon as the unit is complete.

"They'll know all those kids," Lewis said. "They can use those relationships they have in place to stay in touch with what's going on."

Currently, the two SROs and the three DARE officers are assigned to different units, making it difficult to effectively coordinate their efforts.

The Youth Services Unit, which includes the new position of Youth Service Officer, will allow all six to unite under one team. Current SROs Arnold Baynard and Jacquelyn Sagely will move into the unit along with DARE officers John Hughes, Michelle Bertsch and Don Anderson.

Officer Glen Ellis will be reassigned from his current position to become the new Youth Service Officer once his replacement is selected in late January, Thompson said.

As Youth Service Officer, Ellis will be dedicated exclusively to dealing with at-risk and troubled youth, acting as another resource before putting kids on probation.

"Right now we're just doing a bunch of brainstorming," Thompson said. "We're coming up with ideas of how to work with at-risk kids, those who have the potential of being bad but are not yet there. The idea is to complement what probation is doing."

Thompson said he also plans on incorporating concepts from successful social programs, like parenting skills classes, into his outreach strategy for the unit.

"A lot of times, when kids are on the verge of falling into gang or drug situations, the parents really don't know what to do next," he said. "Usually it's a good idea to enter the kids back into structured lifestyles and guide them into certain behavior rules."

Thompson said he's already scheduled training for his officers and expects to have a complete rollout of the Youth Services Unit by early 2008.