Staffing-A Meeting With The Sheriff

We've all been hearing the talk of trimming back staff due to the huge amount of overtime. Over the last week I've had a couple of talks with the Captain, asked them to raise the 16 hour overtime cap to 20 (Inspector Cooper just approved this) and Teamsters 320 has mailed the Administration and the County a letter stating that cut backs in staff would be an officer safety issue.

Today I sat down with Sheriff Stanek and Senior Policy Advisor John Cooney. The talk was productive. I stressed officer safety and I came armed with our schedules which showed exactly why and where the overtime is being used. We have several employees on active military duty and these spots must be covered, this is out of our control. We have a couple of employees temporarily assigned to water patrol, the Sheriff says they're coming back, but one of the biggest chunks of our overtime seems to be "unfunded beds." That's because when the County Board decided to operate two facilities rather then one they never provided the Sheriff's Office with the funds to operate quads two and three. The reality is our counts are above 800 and frequently above the 841 beds we have, including using quads two and three. The solution is not to run thin, but to increase the number of detention deputies to reflect the reality of the count.

I used this example, when you cut the number of cops on the street, crime and incidents go up, and the majority of citizens are not criminals. All of the jail's inmates are criminals, if you cut staff, assaults will increase between inmates, assaults will increase on staff, and liability will increase for the county.

The Sheriff asked me what I would do. I said I'd tell tell the County Board to give us the staff to run quads two and three without overtime. If they didn't, I'd close them down and return to the policy of releasing all non-violent misdemeanors no bail required. Then when the downtown business owner complained that the aggressive panhandler arrested five hours earlier was back in front of his shop I'd direct him to the County Board to provide the funding so we can keep them off of the streets.

The Sheriff is not quite as aggressive as I am on this approach, he's not ready to close down quads two and three, but said he is going to the Board requesting 30 more staff.

All in all I think he and Mr. Cooney were receptive to our concerns. Let's hope the County Board is.