Public Safety in Almaden Valley
December 2005
Bob Boydston, Past AVCA President
and Trent Engler, AVCA Public Safety Advisor

Fire Department

The Almaden Valley has the services of two fire engine companies located at Bose Lane and on McKean Road.  Each station has four firefighters on duty, twenty four hours a day, seven days a week.  A minimum of one firefighter at each station is a paramedic; the others are Emergency Medical Technicians.

Eighty-five percent of the emergency calls are for medical reasons; the rest are fires.  The job of the engine companies, in case of a fire, is to bring and apply water.  The Bose Lane engine company is Station 22.

For jobs involving people trapped in collapsed buildings or automobiles, a fire truck company is called with assistance from the other engine companies.  The fire truck company is located at Pearl and Branham, and consists of six firefighters with special training in operation of special extraction equipment.

There is a movement to have fire engine companies also provide ambulance service.  Station 22 on Bose Lane also has a Medic Ambulance that responds along with Engine 22.  This Ambulance is for transporting critical patients to the hospital when AMR Ambulance is delayed in getting to Almaden Valley.  Whenever an ambulance service is called in a medical emergency, the fire engine companies are also notified because they are located to be the first on the scene and are Paramedic trained.  Station 22 responds on over 1,000 Emergency calls a year, while the McKean Road Station 28 responds to about 500 Emergencies every year.

When a structure fire is dispatched, San Jose sends 3 Engines, 2 Truck Companies, 2 Chiefs, and 1 Paramedic Supervisor for a total of 26 Firefighters.  San Jose currently has 31 Fire Stations, but several more are being built as San Jose continues to grow.

A good example of good work done by the fire department was the Hillside Fires in 1997.

See a map of fire station locations and fire department statistics.

Police Department

The San Jose Police Department is organized into four divisions, with sixteen districts and sixty beats; plus one district at the San Jose Airport, with four to six beats per district; and four or five districts per division.  Each beat is a patrol car with one policemen.  In addition, there may be one to three additional roaming patrol cars per district.  The main office is located at 201 W. Mission.  A field office serving the Almaden Valley is located in the Westfield Oakridge Shopping Center

The Almaden Valley is largely located in Beat number five of the "Adam" district, in the Southern Division.  Our district, the Adam, which contains the Almaden Valley, is consistently the lowest in reported crimes citywide.

The boundaries for Beat Five are:

San Jose Police Department Home Page

Police protection in the Valley is fluid and can be changed depending on the changing number of calls for service and housing density, but at this time, the Almaden Valley is considered a low crime area, and one police car is ample.

Megan's Law provides the public notice of sex offenders living in their area.  There are such persons living in the 95120 postal zone.  Information about the name, a description, and a photo of each such person is available at the San Jose Police Crime Protection Unit at 277-4125.  This information is also available at the new Westfield Oakridge Mall police substation, as well as online.

Thanks are given to Theresia Adikara of the San Jose Police Crime Statistics Department and Gigi Gonzales of the Crime Prevention Unit for supplying this information.