By Sarah Burge
The Press Enterprise
A Lake Elsinore mother says her family doesn’t feel safe on the lake after they were attacked on a Tuesday afternoon last month following a day of waterskiing.
Sandra Soderquist said she was surprised to learn afterward that there are some days the Sheriff’s Department does not patrol the lake.
Curtailed lake patrols, however, are nothing new.
Daily summer patrols fell victim to city budget cuts in 2008, said Riverside County Sheriff’s Capt. Dave Fontneau, who serves as the city’s police chief.
The department now focuses patrols on Friday through Sunday and holidays, when the lake is busiest. Deputies patrol randomly on other days of the week, Fontneau said.
They do not publicize the lake patrol schedule for fear of inviting bad behavior on days when deputies are less likely to be on the water, he said.
Pat Kilroy, director of lake operations, said it was not cost-effective to have a sheriff’s boat on the lake when there were few if any people on the water.
Instead, Kilroy said, there are deputies on each shift who are trained to launch a boat in emergencies.
That’s what happened when deputies had to rescue a woman who crashed a stolen car into the water during an early-morning police chase in April, Fontneau said.
Lake Elsinore Marine Search and Rescue, a volunteer group, also assists with some lake emergencies, Fontneau said.
Soderquist’s family had to call for deputies on June 15, when her daughter’s 19-year-old boyfriend was attacked in the cove area on the southern end of the lake while her husband ferried other members of their party to the boat launch.
Another boat was driving fast through the cove, where Soderquist and other family members were bobbing in life vests.
The boyfriend, on the beach nearby, cursed at the men on board, telling them to slow down.
The men jumped out of the boat, ran up the beach and attacked him, she said.
Soderquist and her daughter tried to intervene and were both injured, she said.
The men took off when her husband returned. The investigation is ongoing.
Sheriff’s officials said such incidents were not common.
Lt. Mathieu Burden said that in the month of June, the department received a handful of calls Mondays through Thursdays.
As is usually the case, calls increased on Fridays and spiked on the weekends, he said.
The vast majority involved vessel inspections, requests for medical aid or assistance such as tows, Burden said.
This fiscal year, $275,000 is budgeted for lake patrols - about 2,170 work hours, Kilroy said. Sheriff’s Department safety guidelines require a minimum of two deputies per boat.
City officials are considering using a boat with a single park ranger instead of deputies for some patrols, Kilroy said.
Despite the cutbacks, there have been few deaths on the lake in recent years.
This year there has been one: a 5-year-old who was killed when he and two others were flung from a speedboat on a windy Sunday in May.
That accident is still under investigation, Fontneau said.
Kilroy urged lake-goers to keep security concerns in perspective, adding that he feels as safe on the water as anywhere else in town.
“These kinds of incidents can happen anywhere,” he said. “There’s not always going to be a sheriff on every corner.”
Copyright 2010 The Press Enterprise, Inc.