Thousands of Car Thieves, Dope Dealers and the like get little or no jail time due to overcrowding. This is because of what law enforcement call a “fed-kick”, meaning a get out of jail free card for a convict due to the State’s refusal to build Prisons.
And so, faced with a pile of drugs and a mountain evidence, Zamudio confessed to drug trafficking. A judge sentenced him to 3 years behind bars.
One day later, on June 28, Zamudio walked out of the Riverside jail a free man. The jail was too full, so he got to go home. Forty-two other inmates were also let go early that same day – including five more drug dealers, four car thieves, three burglars, three fraudsters, a domestic abuser who a violated his probation and a bookkeeper who had embezzled more than $65,000 from a construction company.
So what has Sheriff Sniff done about this disturbing situation?
Mass Layoffs and hyperbole in an attempt to get his own way in a budget fight? In 2011, he issued 800 Pink Slips and left 500 Prison Beds Vacant in order to try and gain leverage in a budget fight.
Earlier in 2011, after much debate about the location of a new jail (which is still under construction and being argued about), a little gem popped out near the end of the article:
Ironically, the county recently completed an $80 million upgrade of the Larry Smith Regional Detention Facility in Banning, ten miles west of the Whitewater site. The expansion added 582 beds to the Banning jail. County Sheriff Stan Sniff announced this month he would be closing 500 of those new beds due to budget cuts.
Ouch.
Currently in 2017, the Sheriff ran a huge deficit even after getting another $18 Million from the County.
Worse, the Sheriff said he is going to leave the brand new jail empty. Does he care at all about the “Fed-Kick” problem? Or does the desire to assert his authoritah over the Riverside County Board of Supervisors govern his actions?
The jail is being counted on to add capacity to the county’s overcrowded five-jail system. To free up space, the county is expected to release almost 6,000 inmates early this year to comply with a federal court order to relieve overcrowding, according to sheriff’s officials. That problem will worsen, Sniff said, when the existing Indio jail is demolished and the new one stays vacant.
Sniff “needs to stay vigilant,” Jeffries said. “But he also needs to look internally and start moving sworn deputies out of administrative desk jobs and back into the field.”
“With our budget projections, he has to meet us halfway. We need the new jail opened and staffed. We need more deputies on patrol,” the supervisor added.
“Just like the Board of Supervisors, the sheriff is also at a crossroads. We either all find new ways to cut costs while still providing essential services or we all go bankrupt arguing about whose fault it is.”
So not only is Sniff ignoring legitimate and helpful advice, those that actually are working in the jail are having issues. Check out this story in the local media about sexual harassment. Please note the off-the-record sources I am talking to have told me tons of stories about Captains, Lieutenants and the like having sexual relationships with subordinates and it severely affecting the delivery of law enforcement services. The culture under Sheriff Stan Sniff is rampant:
The civil lawsuit claims that one recent supervisor – Sgt. Aaron Martin – began flirting with Smoak after initially offering a chance for possible promotion by mentoring her.
Smoak admitted to flirting back, but said that Martin told her he just wanted to have sex. When she refused, Smoak said, Martin allegedly began verbally abusing her and cutting back her overtime, a financially devastating development for the single mother of two.
“That put a strain upon her financially because she wasn’t able to make ends meet,” said Manuel Corrales Gilleon, Smoak’s attorney.
See the pattern? We’ve written a lot about retaliation, intimidation and shattered morale under Stan Sniff’s reign of terror. It is pervasive and everywhere.
The results? Monster increases in crime. IT is time to hold Stan Sniff accountable and retire him at the ballot box.
Hopefully, Smoak’s lawyer is turning down the monetary offers they have thrown her to make this go away. Let her win lottery paycheck AND keep her job!!
Kudos to her for stepping up, it’s not easy, but if there were more like her exposing the corruption that has become the 2nd Floor, our department might be worth looking up to again.
Now it is a laughing stock to other agencies, from Snuff ignoring traffic laws and bullying his way out of citations, to his marionettes showing up at Bianco campaign meetings to spy on whose who in the zoo.
Pitiful.
Corrections has always been a problem for all agencies across the state. Gov. Brown’s AB 47 hasn’t helped California law enforcement. In fact, it took the teeth out of the machine and there are plenty of criminals that know it.
But AB 47 has nothing to do with Snuff’s financial shell game he plays to manipulate our numbers. Even an outside auditor couldn’t crack the “rob Peter to pay Paul” methods Snuff uses to hide the money.
Corrupt on so many levels. Someone needs to look into the Sheriff’s Revolving Fund, a stockpile of cash used for frivolous spending (I’m sure that’s how admin is paying those community memberships they have been ordered to join). What type of “training” or meetings are attended by the 2nd Floor staff? Trips to exotic destinations I’m sure.
Where do the Revolving Funds come from? And is it even on the auditor’s radar or has Snuff given it to Ali to bury in the sand somewhere?
The mismanagement of the new jail and filling empty jail beds is not Snuff’s problem alone. Jerry Gutierrez needs to step down and allow another correctional deputy take over. He has his head so far up Snuff’s ass they are practically one person.
CLEAN THE 2ND FLOOR!!
VOTE FOR BIANCO!!
I hope Smoak wins too. Dennington won his suit. There will be more to come I am sure. There is a dirty detective on my case he knows exactly who I am. None of them scare me I saw him a few weeks ago. The look on his face when he saw me was priceless!!! He has already faced some Karma. Pitchess Motion coming up I am sure he doesn’t want my legal team to get his personnel file.
If you get his personnel file, you can send me a copy when allowed to. We are going to set fire to every last piece of scum in that department until it is cleaned out.
Will do
Extortion: the practice of obtaining something, especially money, through force or threats.
Sniff has committed extortion against the Board of Supervisors and the taxpayers of this county time and time again. He did it back in 2011 when he issued all those pink slips and threatened to layoff hundreds of employees and blamed everything on the Board of Supervisors back then. He has made numerous threats over the years in order to force the hand of the BOS into giving him more money.
Most recently, right before KPMG started, he raped all of the county stations of deputies and moved them into the jails and the contract cities. There was a time not long ago when some of the contract cities had more deputies at those stations than there were positions (pcn’s) available due to Sniff’s political posturing. Then he had his brass start putting the word out to anyone who may be interested in transferring from field positions, into the jails, so he could hide deputies there. One of the reasons for the raping of the county areas was so he could lower the deputy to citizen ratio and then make threats that it would continue to get worse if the BOS didn’t give him more money. He enjoys instilling fear into the general public with the intentions of having the public put pressure on the BOS. Ironically, all the depleting of the county areas was done right before KPMG started at Hemet Station, which of course is a county station.
Then there are the contract cities who have to pay exorbitant amounts of money for their contract police services, but Sniff also knows those cities don’t have the start up capital it would cost them to start their own police departments, so he continues to gouge them with unsustainable higher costs. The rumor is that the cost for contract city police services is about to jump to $180 per hour (a top step deputy gets paid $49.80 per hour). Of course, their is some voodoo involved with the explanation of all the fees and they somehow filter in the ridiculous costs of the radio system and the outrageous cost of vehicles managed by fleet services, and voila! He magically shoves all of this down the city managers’ throats.
There are far too many dirty dealings that occur and Sniff is the one responsible for all of the extortion his administration commits. Whenever anyone in Sniff’s administration uses the word “transparency” you can bet they are hiding something and more dirty dealings are underway. The time has come to finally vote Sniff out of office and put an end to this madness. We recommend voting for a Sheriff who cares more about the people he serves than he does himself, that’s why we recommend Chad BIANCO for Sheriff.