The Old Spanish Days Fiesta appears to have been a relative success for the city of Santa Barbara, but the Santa Barbara Police Department has not yet released statistics on arrests or citations.
Santa Barbara Police Commander Nate Beltran told the News-Press that overall Fiesta felt “pretty safe” with a larger crowd than in recent years.
The Santa Barbara Police Department has not yet released crowd estimates or crime stats.
The department moved away from reporting numbers by “word of mouth,” and are instead vetting physical records through a database for review by the city’s police chief.
This process can take several days, he said, but the department wants to make sure its details are accurate.
“It’s a change of pace from years prior,” Beltran said.
There have been no instances in the past where the department has given out inaccurate numbers on arrests and citations, and in previous years the numbers have come out earlier, Beltran said.
Recently the records bureau at the police department has been dealing with issues that have prevented them from getting the statistics out sooner, and the department has one crime analyst to sort through reports.
“We want to make sure we have accurate numbers,” Beltran said.
The department had help from local law enforcement like the county Sheriff’s Office, the Lompoc Police Department and the Santa Maria Police Department.
Beyond the county, the San Luis Obispo Police Department and the California Department of Alcohol Beverage Control helped the city with law enforcement during the five-day event.
Beltran said that the event was “successful.”
For businesses downtown, Fiesta brought “economic infusion” and has been a “boon” for stores each year, wrote Robin Elander, executive director of the Downtown Santa Barbara Improvement Association, in a statement to the News-Press.
Last year a man was stabbed to death on the 500 block of State Street outside of Baja Sharkeez after a fight had broken out during the Fiesta weekend.
