The Carpinteria City Council has directed Sheriff's officials to investigate allegations of an off-the-books arrangement between Oxnard state parole officers and the Santa Barbara County probation department that neighbors claim is responsible for the sustained high crime rates in and around the Motel 6 on Via Real. Parole officers, the allegations go, often drop off recently-released prisoners travelling into Santa Barbara at a nearby 7/11, then direct them to stay at the Motel 6, where they are contacted by probation supervisors. State and county officials strongly insist no such arrangement exists. Similarly, a Sheriff’s lieutenant told the Carpinteria council on Monday: “There is no official protocol of dropping parolees off from another jurisdiction. … I can tell you I am fairly confident that this isn’t happening.”
Celinda Valeur lives on Venice Lane behind the 7/11. At around 11 a.m. on Wednesday, July 27, she and her three-year-old son were tending their chickens in their backyard when they were startled by a man jumping over their fence. He was being pursued by Sheriff’s deputies who had just conducted a drug bust at the Motel 6. After the man was apprehended, Valeur asked a deputy about the break-ins, drug use, and fighting that seems to happen with startling frequency in her neighborhood. The deputy, Valeur claims, quietly informed her of the parolee hand-off, said Sheriff’s officials are similarly frusterated with the trouble it causes, and advised her to make a formal complaint. She did, and has since been rallying other neighbors to speak out.
“We’re getting terrorized, burglarized, and robbed on a regular basis,” Valeur said before repeating her concerns to the Carpinteria City Council on Monday. Her neighbor, Pat Compton, stated in a separate interview, “They have these things that are arranged, and as long as people don’t complain, they’re happy.” The home of Compton’s next-door neighbor, an elderly woman, was recently robbed when thieves slashed through her window screen. A business owner down the block claims to have repeatedly interacted with parolees, who say they're from Oxnard. And a former Motel 6 employee, who worked night shifts for four years and spoke to the Independent on the condition of anonymity, said deputies respond to calls at the motel two to three times a week. He claimed that when he worked there, deputies would often cross reference a parolee manifest they carried with his guest list, which would invariably show a number of former prisoners booked among the motel’s 120 rooms.