Jury: Lack of deputies ‘threatens the public safety’
LAKE COUNTY — An ongoing staffing shortage at the Lake County Sheriff’s Department should be prioritized by the board of supervisors as a public safety issue, the 2018-2019 Lake County Civil Grand Jury argues in a report released last week.
“The Board should prioritize adequate staffing levels in the Sheriff’s Office as a California Constitutional mandate by making changes requested by the Sheriff that will assist in retention and recruitment,” the grand jury writes.
The grand jury argues that the Lake County Sheriff’s Office, which has seen vacancy rates as high as 36 percent in recent months, is unable to provide the security to Lake County that its residents deserve.
“The budgetary and resultant severe staffing shortfall in the Lake County Sheriff’s Office threatens the public safety of Lake County’s residents and visitors,” the jury writes.
A May agreement between the LCDSA and the board of supervisors changed the way the county pays its share of the health insurance costs for deputies, with the county now paying 80 percent of all plans. While this raised the out of pocket cost to single deputies, those with family plans—some of which had been paying thousands of dollars each month for insurance—were relieved of much of their financial burden. That agreement, however, is set to expire at the end of this year.
The grand jury notes that while the board of supervisors was enthusiastic about adopting the new agreement, the board “initially resisted” approving other changes, “choosing instead to await the outcome of the ‘Classification and Compensation’” study that will review the salary structure of all county departments. That study is expected to be completed in September, the grand jury writes.
“We’re having some luck” hiring new recruits to the department with the new agreement in place, Sheriff Brian Martin said Monday. Martin also noted that a recently implemented hiring bonus is helping attract new deputies. The changes have “stemmed the outflow of people,” he said.
“We’re not seeing the tremendous exodus of people that we had before,” he added.
The grand jury applauded Martin for his efforts to remedy his department’s crucial staffing problem, noting that the sheriff has been “proactive in attracting new recruits.”
Yet the office continues to be understaffed, meaning, among other things, that just three or fewer deputies are on patrol in the unincorporated areas of the county at a given time, making triage of responses to emergency calls necessary.
Some of the data listed by the grand jury explaining the staffing situation at the department had changed by the time of the report’s publication, Martin told this newspaper.
For example, the current staffing shortage is now at about 20 percent, up from 36 percent. This doesn’t mean scores of new deputies have been hired, Martin said. Instead, much of that change is due to a recent board of supervisors-approved department restructuring that cut 23 unfilled positions at the sheriff’s office.
The department currently has 37 deputies on staff, not including management positions, said Martin. Of these, five are assigned to Hill Road Jail to fill a staffing shortage there. Another deputy is on permanent assignment to dispatch.
As of this week, Martin added, a long-time employee of the department who was employed at the jail is leaving for a position in the Sacramento Valley. Since the time Martin has been in office, he said, his department has lost “probably all in all hundreds of years of experience” to the outflow of officers.
The grand jury states that “the Sheriff’s Office has been losing employees in large part due to the County’s non-competitive salary and health insurance costs,” and that “the lack of available patrol officers leads to community insecurity and decreased trust of the reliability of the Sheriff’s Office by the residents they are entrusted to protect.”
The grand jury goes on to recommend, among other things, that the board “fund the Sheriff’s requested restructuring of management staff in Dispatch and the Jail,” that the board consider giving new sworn officers relocation funds, and that the board extend its recently adopted agreement with the Lake County Deputy Sheriffs Association.
August 8, 2019
Lake County Record-Bee
By Aidan Freeman
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