Dan Cutforth, the School Resource Officer more commonly known as “Deputy Dan” among students, is a deputy sheriff from the Santa Clara County Sheriff’s Office. Cutforth said that he has dealt with issues at Wildwood Park numerous times over the past few years.

Cutforth added that even when problems were occurring, Wildwood Park was not at all a site of daily issues.

“Over the last several years, I can definitely remember some calls at Wildwood Park that involved some drug use and a few fist fights,” Cutforth said. “However, then, like now, the activity was very few and far in between.”

While Wildwood Park has become somewhat infamous for drug and alcohol abuse, Cutworth said that these actually were not the issues that Saratoga residents have complained about too much.

“I did an activity search from our database over the last two months at Wildwood,” Cutforth said. “There was only one call for graffiti, and some noise complaints.”’

However, from a report of Cutforth’s that covers the activity at and near Wildwood Park from Jan. 27 to present, the drug use certainly has been present at Wildwood.

In the report, Cutforth included two incidents of marijuana possession in October 2011 and one in May on Big Basin Street, the street adjacent to Wildwood Park. Additionally, several DUIs were noted in the report.

Public intoxication was frequent as well, with incidents in both April and May.

The department has investigated six total drug busts in Saratoga since Jan. 27.

Interestingly, the city of Saratoga is spending less public safety in recent years. The city’s spending decreased from $140,000 from 2010-2011 to 2011-2012. The number also decreased by about $50,000 from 2009-2010 to 2010-2011.

Administrative analyst Crystal Morrow of the Saratoga City Manager’s Office cited this, adding that communicating with the Santa Clara County Sheriff’s Office is much easier than creating another full department for Saratoga.

“While we are spending less on law enforcement this fiscal year, it is largely due to restructuring, billing and strategically reducing enforcement without significantly impacting services to the community,” Morrow said.

While the local deputies are aware of the issues around Wildwood Park, the decrease in budget intended to deal with such problems suggests that local officials believe the problems in the city can be contained with deputies such as Cutforth patrolling the area.