City to take aim at high-tech criminals
By Sophia Fischer sfischer@theacorn.com

An increase in high-tech crime is forcing police to undergo special training to successfully investigate such cases.

To ensure there are enough trained investigators the Thousand Oaks City Council approved a $40,207 payment last week to help fund three new computer forensic examiner positions in the Ventura County High-Tech Task Force.

"Just about every investigation conducted these days seems to have a correlation to computers," said Thousand Oaks Police Chief Dennis Carpenter.

According to a city staff report, devices including computer hard drives, digital cameras, cellphones and personal digital assistants (PDAs) can all contain evidence necessary for law enforcement to retrieve in solving crimes.

As computer storage capacities have grown, so has the time it takes investigators to conduct a forensic exam of a computer.

Two years ago, the average computer forensic exam took 20 to 40 hours. Today it takes twice as long--40 to 80 hours.

Every city in the county together with the unincorporated areas are contributing financially to the cost of the new positions.

Contributions are based on population, and the total to be provided by all of the cities combined in fiscal year 2006-07 is more than $259,000.

The only city providing more funding than Thousand Oaks is Oxnard, which has a population of nearly 181,000, compared with the 127,000 residents in Thousand Oaks. Oxnard will kick in nearly $59,000 to help fund the task force.

The training of a computer forensic examiner is extensive and can cost as much as $60,000, according to a Southern California Hi-Tech Task Force report.

"The shared cost allows the city of Thousand Oaks to enjoy the benefit of the full program," Carpenter said.

Councilmember Claudia Billde la Pea suggested that the costs be determined by the number of crimes committed in a jurisdiction rather than by population size. Oxnard, the largest city, also had the highest number of crime investigations by the high-tech task force, according to Carpenter.

Thousand Oaks has received assistance from the Ventura County High-Tech Task Force many times over the past several years. In 2004 the service was used about five times, in 2005 about 22 times, and 15 times to date this year, Carpenter said.

The council voted unanimously to provide the funding.