Cerritos Station is incorporated within a 28,000 square foot facility that is connected to Cerritos City Hall. Cerritos Station was built in 1997 to provide high-quality public safety services,
emphasizing community oriented policing. Cerritos Station is staffed with 63 sworn and 23 civilian employees who serve a culturally diverse community spanning a
geographical area of approximately nine sq
uare miles. In addition to providing the
traditional law enforcement services, the city's Community Safety Center is also housed in the same facility with Cerritos Station. This partnership joins city and Sheriff's Department personnel in a central location to better address community issues. The Sheriff's Department has provided law enforcement services to the city of Cerritos for more than 45 years. The establishment of a local Sheriff's station, funded by the city, underscores this longstanding relationship and solidifies the commitment to the community shared by the two governmental entities. In December 2001, the city of Cerritos and Cerritos Sheriff Station developed a program to provide the community with a higher level of service and quicker responses to collect latent fingerprint evidence. The city of Cerritos wanted to provide an increased level of service, which included a more rapid check through CAL ID for property crime incidents. Likewise, the city wanted to provide station detectives with the identification of suspects to solve more crimes and hopefully recover stolen property as rapidly as possible.To that end, the city of Cerritos contracted for its own full-time Forensic Identification Specialist II (FIS II) to be assigned at the station and the Sheriff’s Department arranged for the installation of an Automated Fingerprint Identification System (AFIS) workstation at Cerritos Station. Additionally, the city hired Community Safety Officers (CSO) who were then trained by Scientific Services Bureau in latent fingerprint recovery. The CSO’s respond to all requests for latent fingerprint involving property crimes. Since the inception of the Cerritos Station fingerprint program, almost all latent fingerprint searches have returned with a match or no record within 48 hours. The Cerritos fingerprint identification program also services the cities of Norwalk, La Marada, Artesia, Lakewood, Bellflower, Paramount and Carson on a cost recovery bases.
