Saturday, July 12, 2008

BFPD given cookies, kudos by Peraltans happy with service

Sandy Battin News-Bulletin Editor; sbattin@news-bulletin.com

Peralta When Mike Rouckus arrived for work one morning last week at Motor Car Mall, his Peralta business, he was surprised to find a Post-It note from the Bosque Farms Police Department stuck on the front door.

The note informed him that the police had walked around and checked his building at 3:15 a.m. "It makes me feel really good," he said. "This has never happened before."

Rouckus spoke before the Peralta Town Council on Wednesday, and another business owner echoed his story. "I'm ecstatic at the police presence," she said. "I've been asking for 10 years for the police to circle my business once a week."

But, until Bosque Farms took over police protection in Peralta on July 1, it rarely occurred, she said. "I did receive a note as well. It's great."

Others added that similar notes had been left on the doors of the local post office and pharmacy. "It never happened before," a woman said.

The new policing agreement got a round of applause from the small crowd at the meeting.

"The police have gotten thank you letters, cookies, calls," Peralta Mayor Bryan Olguin said. "So, if you see them riding down the road, wave at them — the friendly wave."

Awarding the contract to the Bosque Farms Police had been a controversial decision. A packed crowd had appeared at a June 11 meeting to debate the merits of a police contract for the state's newest municipality with either Bosque Farms or the Valencia County Sheriff's Department, which had been providing law enforcement services before Peralta's incorporation.

Some residents said they were happy with the service provided by the sheriff's department and criticized what they saw as Bosque Farms' overzealousness in writing traffic citations. But other citizens had argued that that is exactly what Peralta needed and furthermore said that response times for emergency calls would be faster if the contract went to Bosque Farms.

The Peralta Town Council voted unanimously to pay Bosque Farms $85,000 per year for police service.

Officer Jeff Hogan of the Bosque Farms Police appeared on Wednesday to talk about the new arrangement.

About three to five calls per shift have come in from Peralta, he said, and, so far, everything's been running smoothly.

"(N.M.) 47's the autobahn," he said, referring to German freeways that operate without speed limits. "We'll keep working on it."

But Town Councilor Joseph Romero, who lives on the highway, said he has seen a noticeable difference in the number of speeders on 47.

"It's pretty much zero tolerance," Hogan said.

Fire Chief John Dear said that flashing lights at the fire station are designed to stop traffic so that fire engines can pull out quickly when they're heading out on a call. "Nobody pays attention," he said. "We've suggested to the police department that, when they hear our alarm go off, they come down." It's something the police have already done.

"They did stop a vehicle and they got her (the driver) out of the car and showed her the lights. She said she didn't see them, that she was watching the fire trucks."

In a telephone interview Friday, Bosque Farms Police Chief Joe Stidham said the agreement has been "going extremely well. So far, it's lived up to be everything we anticipated it being. We had done our due diligence prior to taking it on. We had tracked calls from dispatch (to Peralta) for several months."

The added work hasn't been overwhelming, he said. "To date, we haven't had any major calls for service, but obviously we know that day is coming." And he said he believes that Bosque Farms residents are still getting the same coverage they were before.

The business checks that so impressed the Peralta entrepreneurs are part of a program implemented by the Bosque Farms Police about three years ago. "We check doors and windows and make sure everything is locked," Stidham said. "We have a yellow Post-It that has preprinted information on it. It has a couple of blank spots for officers to write their names, the date and the time that they checked the business."

Stidham said he and Bosque Farms Mayor Wayne Ake have received numerous telephone calls from Peralta residents thanking them for the service. "Last week, a business owner from Peralta brought a big platter of cookies and goodies for the officers to snack on," he said.

He acknowledged the public perception about Bosque Farms police writing tickets; he says that their actions "are not as bad as the reputation that is out here.

"Highway 47 is a dangerous highway. Even as many traffic citations as we write, I think we had 77 traffic crashes last year in the village. Even with the amount of traffic enforcement we do, we still have a traffic problem. I believe in excess of 40,000 vehicles go through 47 here a day," he said.

He said his officers have written out "a moderate amount" of tickets in Peralta since July 1. "The bulk have been in the areas they wanted us to concentrate on — on the cut-through streets where people are running stop signs. The other morning, one officer wrote nine tickets," Stidham said.

The chief said he knows it's frustrating for commuters because N.M. 47 really can't handle the amount of traffic that needs to go through it daily. "But people have to realize that the cut-through streets were designed to be residential streets. The people who live along them have the right to have their kids play in their yards and be safe. We've got to try to slow traffic down and get people to obey the speed limits."

Stidham said that it's been "so far, so good. We promised the council and the residents of Bosque Farms we wouldn't let their service lapse, and I don't believe we are. I think we're accomplishing the balance we set out to do."

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