SANTA MARIA VALLEY - The most common rural crime recently has been fuel theft.
The Santa Barbara County Sheriff's Office Rural Crime Unit has investigated more than 15 cases involving thousands of dollars in stolen fuel and other agriculture equipment.
It led to the arrest of four men in the Santa Maria and Nipomo areas.
The Sheriff's Department says it found 350 gallons of stolen fuel at one of the suspect's ranches in Nipomo.
"It's very costly", says Richard Quandt who represents farmers and growers in Santa Barbara and San Luis Obispo Counties, "often times you see it out in these fields unsecured, its very difficult to move all these tractors and all these equipment to a location where they can be secured every night."
Quandt says the Sheriff's Rural Crimes Units in both counties employ new tactics and procedures to protect agriculture, information that is shared throughout the state.
"Often times we'll get alerts from the Sheriff about a theft or a major theft say over in the Central Valley and they will send an alert to the Central Coast", Quandt says, "having a statewide system to communicate stuff like that is very helpful."
Rural crime increases the cost of doing business for farmers, growers and ranchers, a cost increase that ultimately gets passed on to consumers.
