Watsonville’s homicide record at all-time high

The city of Watsonville is seeing a record it doesn’t want — the homicide rate is at an eight-year high. Since the start of 2014, the Watsonville Police Department has investigated a record nine homicides. Four of those remain unsolved.

Two of them have happened within the last month. On Friday, 24-year-old Ivan Avila was shot near Callaghan Park in broad daylight. On Thanksgiving, 15-year-old Jason Reyes was shot on Airport Blvd. He was a self-identified gang member. His death was one of six that were gang-related.

Police say some of the crimes are just shocking. Officers responded to another gang-related incident on Monday night. Two juveniles, including a 12-year-old, were busted carrying a concealed firearm and ammo.

“It’s even alarming to us,” Watsonville Police Lt. Saul Gonzalez said. “We are getting younger and younger kids commiting violent crimes or being in the atmosphere where crimes are being commited.”

The pattern behind these crimes is as scattered as the crime scenes.

“Usually we can identify whether its retaliation based on the area or based on the victim,” Lt. Gonzalez said. “This time, we are having a hard time doing so. Maybe isolated, maybe related, we haven’t gotten that in depth into the investigation to tie them all together. That’s something our investigators are doing.”

Meanwhile, other Watsonville officers are trying to be more proactive, doing compliance checks on known gang members and building relationships with kids even before they reach middle school.

“We are going into elementary schools and catching them younger and younger and steering them in the right direction with our youth-based programs,” Lt. Gonzalez explains.

One of the most popular is the Police Activities League or ‘PAL.’ The organization helps kids in athletics, academics and gives them something fun to do. A group of kids enrolled in the program recently went on a trip to Disneyland.

Another local program is the recently opened ‘Digital Nest.’ Since opening a few weeks ago, enrollment has grown to more than 150 members and at least 40 regularly show up to learn the tricks and trades of the tech world. The skills they learn today could help them in the future.

“I don’t think people realize how much tech potential there is currently,” Justen Maltinsky, volunteer coordinator, said. “There’s a huge need for people in ag. A lot are hired outside the area, we want to keep the jobs here.”

Digital Nest sees a lot of high school kids but they do work with college-aged students as well. It’s been such a hit, members have asked them to expand their weekday hours and they’ve been offering weekend workshops.