Community meets to address robberies

The message at the public forum hosted by Mineral County Neighbors for a Safe Community last week was to be aware.

Residents from Superior and the surrounding area filled up the multipurpose room at the high school last Wednesday night to talk about the burglaries that have been taking place and what can be done to take steps to prevent occurrences from happening in the future.

Organizer Mary Jo Berry said that the purpose of the meeting was to learn about what was going on, to learn what can be done and to learn how to help law enforcement.

Superior Mayor Mike Wood said that he was pleased to see such a large turnout at the meeting.

“I think all of us here are concerned about break-ins and this is a small community and we want to feel safe,” Wood said. “The community should be safe. It’s a huge part of quality of life.”

Wood talked a little about how the town contracts with the sheriff’s department for 48 hours per week, which he described as “not very much.”

“I think we need to work together to figure out how we can solve this problem,” Wood said.

Berry pointed out that a lot of what happened took place before Sheriff Ernie Ornelas took office. She is going back to May of 2009, where Ornelas is only going back five months. Berry said that while they know that the law enforcement team is small and can’t possibly cover everything that needs to be covered, she said that “we are here.”

“If we’re driving down the street and we see something that’s not appropriate or doesn’t look right, we need to call it in,” Berry said.

Berry made it clear that the meeting was in no way meant to lessen the respect nor the confidence that they have in the county’s law enforcement.

In the last five months, Ornelas says that he doesn’t feel that there have been a large number of burglaries. As for thefts around the county, he said that there have been complaints of people having the gas taken out of their cars. He said that as far as thefts go, there is usually something happening.

Ornelas said that with some of the burglaries that have taken place, individuals were looking for drugs. He noted that in the recent ones, jewelry has been taken. He said that with a lot of jewelry now you can just send it into the mail and get cash back.

During the meeting those in attendance wrote down their questions and thoughts. Many people noted that there are no incident reports put out to the public to let them know what’s going on. Whether published online or in the community newspaper, the public doesn’t have access to a list of the calls the sheriff office responds to in a given period of time.

Another concern is that there are no follow-up calls. Several residents pointed out that they’ve called the sheriff’s office before only to hear nothing back.

Ornelas said that a lot of the problems that residents have with the sheriff’s department is that they don’t have enough manpower. “We have do all of it. There’s a balance. We can’t just focus in on one area,” Ornelas said.

Ornelas said that he encourages people to call when something is happening that looks suspicious, but he reminded them that if the officers are out on a call of higher priority they won’t be able to respond.

“We do want to respond,” Ornelas said, “but we have to take the calls with the highest priority.”

He said that he still wants to get a citizen patrol program together, but again reminded citizens that it could take up to a year.

“And it comes down to money,” Ornelas said. “I have to have vehicles for the volunteers, fuel and workman’s comp.”

Ornelas said that he’s been trying to make contacts so stuff can start happening, but he also is still taking care of a lot of things that are overdue from the previous administration.

Ornelas said that of course they have suspects, but the problem comes when they have to take it to court. Deputy Bill Pandis expanded on that saying that if they don’t have any evidence to go on and pursue a suspect, a person can be a “suspect all day long.”

“We have to have enough evidence to get a search warrant for someone’s car or property,” Pandis said.