By Khalida Sarwari
Though Saratoga routinely makes the lists of the safest cities in the state, the city continues to be plagued by residential burglaries and property theft. With the year only half over, the city is on track to surpass last year’s figure, according to city Councilman Rishi Kumar.
Just this week, Saratoga came in 16th on a list curated by consumer website Niche.com of the 100 safest suburbs to live in California this year. The study was based on crime rates for murder, assault, rape, burglary statistics and data from the FBI and U.S. Census. In Santa Clara County, only Monte Sereno and Los Altos Hills ranked higher.
In the case of Saratoga, the statistic to pay attention to, according to Kumar, is the one pertaining to residential burglaries. By May, the city had recorded 58 burglaries, he said. Compare that to 98 burglaries in all of 2014, a figure that jumped to 123 the following year.
“As a community, we like to believe we are safe,” said Kumar. “And we are safe compared to many other neighboring cities around us. But given the fact that we leave our car doors open, we leave our patio doors open, the word has gone out that, ‘Hey, this is a community that has low-hanging fruit.”
Kumar is setting out to raise awareness the old-fashioned way: through the Neighborhood Watch program, which law enforcement deems beneficial both to the community and police because it encourages residents to work together and supplements the work that officers do.
In fact, one of the first things he did after moving to the city in 2001, said Kumar, was launch a neighborhood watch program in the DeHavilland Cox neighborhood after learning that a neighbor had experienced
a break-in. He said he divided the neighborhood into 11 different zones and assigned a captain to each zone.
“Did that mean no more break-ins? No, but what it did, it basically galvanized our community together,” he said. “We had 88 homes in our neighborhood. It led to a point where we all got to know each other.”
He applied the program in the Blue Meadow Court neighborhood and is working on launching it in the Wardell-Cox neighborhood. His plan is to bring the program to at least 15 more neighborhoods this year.
Kumar is also advocating for modifying the city’s landscaping and lighting ordinance to include the installation of surveillance cameras at the entrance of neighborhoods through a small property tax hike. Such systems are already in the Southern California cities of Moreno Valley, Redlands and Lynwood. The proposal to extend Saratoga’s ordinance is in the discussion stage right now, said Kumar.
In February, the Santa Clara County Sheriff’s Office announced a few resources for residents to protect against crimes. For one, there is the sheriff’s office vacation patrol check program where residents can request a deputy to keep an eye on their home while they are away on vacation. The sheriff’s office is also offering a residential security service where a deputy can come inside a home and survey it for any areas of weakness as well as give recommendations to improve security.
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Is Saratoga among the safest cities in California? Yes, but …
