One of the key themes of the Riverside Sheriff’s Race is the decimated morale of the department. 3 More Correctional Deputies are “Lateraling” out of the Indio Jail in August. (meaning they are leaving for another department) 250 Deputies left the Riverside Sheriff’s Office (RSO) last year.
Every station is on forced, mandatory overtime as they lack the manpower to fulfill the obligations of their contracts with Cities that have hired the Sheriff’s Office as their police force.
Every time Stan Sniff complains about his budget, you should cringe as Contract Cities are getting hammered with over time. (Think of a Deputy that gets 30ish an hour getting paid at 150% of their hourly rate) Even with the imposed contract not starting overtime until 84 hours in a pay period, when you are running double shifts, it does not take long to explode that barrier. at $50-60 a hour, overtime adds up quickly.
Do not forget the stories of mismanagement such is the Captain Tripod adventure, when she botched some 700 hours on a contract she was supposed to manage. Other less severe examples are commonplace.
I don’t know of many folks over Age 35 that can handle working 12-16 hour days without serious degradation of their performance. Given that County Admin has a habit of abusive worker’s comp practices, when those fatigued employees get in accidents, they get hammered on the back end by bureaucrats looking to save money at their expense.
Then add in people like Christian Dekker and Aaron Kent who have abused the overtime system for thousands in pay (they can’t do it anymore now that they are Lt’s) willfully, the overtime problem is an epidemic.
This is why things like jacking up the booking fee 10% is outrageous. Any level of fiscal prudence by Stan Sniff and some of these problems get less severe. Add to this that allied agencies are letting scum go free to avoid paying the booking fees. (Largely because they know most of those arrested will get “Fed-Kicked” within hours of being booked in to the jail.)
It is 100% clear to this blogger why Sniff fought the KPMG Audit tooth and nail, he and his crew knew they were using the force to manage the department and cooperation with the Audit would have exposed the cover ups, double-dipping, ghost deputies, and the like..
Contract cities get to pay overtime (or the overtime eats the Sheriff’s Budget alive, take your pick), and get to pay more in booking fees to have criminals “Fed-Kicked” sometimes within hours! (Fed-Kick = Early Release of Criminals)
Stan Sniff said in a public forum that he is going to leave the new jail almost completely empty. Then, once he got hammered at the ballot box, he is now “Happy as a Clam” with the same budget. (Note – the new inadequate jail will still be empty)
This brings me to the embedded text message. 7/18/2018 – Supervisor Marion Ashley sounded the alarm over another massive blunder by Stan Sniff (whom Ashley is going to endorse). Sniff was not billing contract cities for Air Support. This amounts to millions of dollars.
Remember, the contract cities have been getting hit with rate increases every year despite inconsistent revenue and the insanity of Sacramento squeezing them. According to your intrepid blogger’s research, the cost per hour of a deputy has gone from around $131 to $168 an hour. This seems to be a gigantic money maker for the Sheriff so he can shoot James bond videos and buy toys for the department.
Chad Bianco is inheriting a mess at every level of the department.
I received a couple of screenshots and a note from a deputy about the mandatory overtime and a Sgt. bascially begging people to step up for it…
This just happened. The attached MDC mail was sent by a graveyard sergeant to the on-duty swing shift deputies at (XXX) station looking for two deputies to hold over until 5am. Apparently no one replied. A few minutes later, the dispatcher is asking for two deputies to hold over. Again, no reply. Then a second plea via MDC mail was sent by the sergeant asking again for 2 deputies to stay over to cover graves. You would think the lack of responses would be a hint we don’t want to hold over. We’re tired. We get this request almost every night. This is another example of the current atmosphere at (XXX). Burnt out deputies being overworked every day of the week. I guarantee the sergeant will volunteer some tired, exhausted Deputy to hold over. Hope it’s not me.
Supervisors Kevin Jeffries and Marion Ashley are supposed to have some oversight of this. Do they know what is going on? Did they do due diligence? Are they Okay with this? Where are the other local leaders that are sitting on the sidelines?
If you are reading this and you live in a contract city, get a baseball bat, pepper spray, a house alarm and a gun if you can deal with the BS of California’s gun laws. It takes 18-24 months to train a deputy at a cost of $150,000 – $175,000 dollars. It is going to be a long slog to fix this problem.
See below – two different Sergeants sent these messages within something like 15-30 minutes of each other.
That was another problem with the KPMG report, in addition to proposing a fee between $10-$50 to park on county property (they want the Second Floor to charge deputies for coming to work and parking in the station parking lot), they also said we could use more Community Service Officers (instead of deputies) on each shift to respond to calls. That all well and good for past calls with no suspect information, but we need more sword deputies on patrol and not CSO’s because when “it” hits the fan, we need trained backup that can respond with the tools of the trade. I have nothing against CSO’s, and appreciate the work they do, but this is a major problem right now in that we don’t have enough deputies on the street, which is not only a public safety issue, but an officer safety issue as well. The second floor allowed for this to occur, but they don’t care because they don’t visit any patrol stations. When was the last time Vest, Horton or Kubel went to a station, when was the last time J.J. or Pecker Wood went to a briefing, they don’t because they are scared of the questions they will be asked, except for Kevin Smith, when he comes to briefing all he does is yell at the deputies and call them glorified secretaries (and then goes into his office to play quick draw in the mirror). Although when Owens does visit a station and she is asked questions her response is,” I don’t know” which does not inspire the troops in the least, And these people are on the cutting edge of law enforcement that deserve a command of their own.
It’s all about money, for decades the use of helicopters, swat, bomb unit were afforded to contract cities and not an itemized cost. To now bill cities for a helicopter to observe and protect our deputies from ambush is just greedy.
Deputies request these county resources for their safety and the safety of the public. There are contract proposal reports for each contract city. Maybe a retired admin guy might have one. If so, I encourage you to post it.
How is there a cost increase to begin with? Deps got rat fucked with the contract, saving millions. Equipment is old and breaking down, no cost to replace them…..something doesn’t add up and I hope the citites take their heads out of the sand and start asking some questions and demanding answers.