Deputies Rene De La Rosa and Paul White strive to be flexible; it is the key to the success of their Special Enforcement Team.  

San Clemente SET responds to calls for service only when no other unit is available. As the name suggests, the primary job is special enforcement. The team cruises by places where gangs and drug dealers hang out and patrol the city for fugitives and lawbreakers. 

“We hunt whenever we can,” said Deputy White, as Deputy De La Rosa perused wanted posters with pictures of felons being sought by the justice system.

So far this year the pair has made 130 arrests, including 85 on felony charges. They have shut down 10 suspected drug houses in San Clemente.

“We don’t go on calls for service but we have to stay busy bringing in the bad guys,” Deputy White explained.

Lieutenant Paul D’Auria, Chief of Police Services for the City of San Clemente finds the team an important element in his operation.

 “Having a team of highly skilled and motivated deputies who can focus on specific problems in town is a vital part of our overall law enforcement strategy,” Lieutenant D’Auria said.

The lynchpin of a recent night’s patrol plan was to find a fugitive who informants suggested was living in a house on the north side of town.  

The team parked their unmarked vehicle a few doors away and on foot approached the darkened home where the subject was said to reside.  They examined the perimeter of the house with flashlights before making contact inside. 

The information was outdated. The subject no longer lived there. 

What to do next: be flexible.

They drove past a suspected drug house in an upscale neighborhood but there was no sign of activity.  

The team is called upon to support gang and drug enforcement teams and investigators. San Clemente is a busy place for the Sheriff’s Department. Both Deputy De La Rosa, a 10-year veteran of the Sheriff’s Department, and Deputy White, a 12-year veteran, came to San Clemente immediately after assignments in the jails. They were selected for SET due to their achievements as patrol deputies.

Both pride themselves with being able to keep things calm while they are arresting criminals, often violent ones. With the scores of arrests they have made on SET duty, mainly felonies, only twice have they resorted to a use of force. Both hope that their record in SET will one day help them earn promotions to Sheriff’s Investigator. San Clemente is a beach community that draws thousands of tourists and it is adjacent to Camp Pendleton, one of the largest military bases in the country.

Lieutenant D’Auria often has someplace or somebody special for them to watch. Sergeant Warner Hartman likes to have those felons keep on coming into the San Clemente substation and off the streets of San Clemente.  

One place they passed slowly was a city park where gang members are known to meet. It was empty. Nobody.  It was cold out that night and the temperature seemed to keep people indoors and criminals out of sight. 

The team stopped by a local transient hotel to see if anybody they were looking for was around. They checked the place out, chatted with a few hotel guests to pick up information. They got a tip on one subject they were looking for but it was vague and the informant may just have wanted to hurry the Deputies on their way.   

The Deputies drove around the neighboring streets long enough to be certain that the car the hotel guest had told them to look for was not parked in the vicinity. Then they drove along Avenida San Luis Rey talking about who else was on their list of fugitives. One name is mentioned just as they crossed over the Freeway and spotted a man exiting San Clemente State Beach on foot. 

“That’s him,” Deputy White remarked, as Deputy De La Rosa pulls to a stop and Deputy White starts to dash after the pedestrian who turned and headed to the dark recesses of the park as soon as he saw the unmarked car.  

Deputy White called to the man and he started to walk faster. Just as Deputy White was gaining on the fugitive, he stopped. 

It was one of their “PALS” known as a “parolee at large.” 

The 48-year old man had served a prison term for assault with great bodily injury. His parole warrant carries the caution that he is armed and dangerous. 

They charged him with violating Section 148 of the California Penal  Code, delaying or obstructing a police officer. 

He claimed he didn’t report to his parole officer because he was homeless. He claimed he wanted to go to a rehabilitation center. 

The fugitive was searched but no contraband or weapons were found. He was placed in the back seat of their vehicle and transported to the San Clemente substation. 

Sergeant Hartman was busy, its 9:30 and there are now four arrestees at the substation. Luckily, it was Friday night and there was a Reserve Deputy available to transport some of the arrestees to the IRC in Santa Ana. 

Those in the substation included a domestic violence offender and a methamphetamine user. The methamphetamine user was trying to turn informant. Another Deputy was trying to get a judge on the phone to authorize an order of protection for the family of the domestic violence offender. 

Once Deputies De La Rosa and White were informed that the Reserve Deputy was  enroute to take their PAL to the IRC, they returned to the car. 

They started to drive from the substation but before they even got out of the parking lot of the substation, an informant called De La Rosa on his cellphone. She offered them some possible drug information. 

Following the lead, they searched for and found the parolee and known drug user, walking down the middle of the street with a flashlight swaying from side to side with a female following. 

The Deputies parked their car and determined the two were associated. They separated the two.  Each Deputy talked to one of the couple and each was given a field sobriety test. They both passed. Apparently they were having a fight. 

No physical assault has taken place, just harsh words. The boyfriend was told to stay away for the night. They escorted the woman back to her apartment to ensure that she was safe. She suggested that she put her boyfriend’s clothes on the porch and that she text him to come and them. 

Deputy De La Rosa told her that he had warned the boyfriend to stay away from her apartment that night. If he returned he could be arrested. Texting him to get his clothes would just cause trouble. 

All settled, all peaceful, the Deputies returned to their patrol. 

They did not get far before a small gray car passed them going the other way at a high rate of speed and sporting illegal tinted windows. 

When De La Rosa made a U-turn and puts the blue and red lights on, the subject’s car made a sharp left turn.   It was parked near the corner and the passenger jumped out and started walking fast up the sidewalk. 

The passenger came back when called and the driver was ordered out.  Both were just shy of 20 and when searched the two admitted they have drugs: marijuana and heroin. 

The passenger, who wanted on a probation violation warrant, was carrying heroin. The driver had a small amount of pot in his car. He had a record for paraphernalia possession but was not on parole or probation. The driver had a suspended license. Both were from Dana Point. 

The driver was given a citation and instructed that he must not drive the car or he faces arrest. The drug evidence was tagged. 

The passenger was taken to the San Clemente substation but he didn’t go quietly. It turns out he was arrested by Deputies White and De La Rosa before, he had 14 grams of cocaine the last time. 

Now he’s offering to turn in half the city if he can avoid going to jail. He has knowledge of every drug dealer in the city and can help build as many cases as the entire Sheriff’s Department can handle. He can help seize hundreds of pounds of marijuana and enough heroin, cocaine and meth to drain the city dry.

The problem was that the subject was on formal probation and the terms of his probation preclude his being an informant. A call was made to narcotics detectives but they have the same restriction. 

There was also the factor that his offer more likely was a tall tale than a legitimate offer to help law enforcement. 

Deputy White asked if the arrestee wanted to just give information as a good citizen but the arrestee had no interest in doing that. He wanted a deal. He is facing 16 months in state prison. 

Deputy De La Rosa said that one of the keys to success is recognizing faces, studying the wanted flyers and being able to immediately know when he sees a fugitive. The first arrest of the night would not have taken place had it taken an extra 15 seconds for the Deputies to realize the man at the pedestrian gate of the state park was one of their “PALS.” 

“It’s the same crooks all the time,” Deputy White said of the arrest of the heroin user for the second time. “We get a lot of information that helps us get the bad guys but we are always cruising, always keeping our eyes open.”

Captain Mark Billings, of Field Operations said, “The Special Enforcement Team is an important part of our strategy to proactively deter crime rather than to just respond to calls for service.  A small percentage of a city’s population accounts for a large percentage of the crime. The SET deputies know the criminals in the community, and the criminals are deterred from committing crimes because they know the SET deputies are vigilant as a supplement to our already great patrol forces.”

Captain Billings added that SET Deputies are experienced and know and interact well with city officials, community businesses, schools, residents, and visitors as part of our community based policing model.