Sheriff Lee Baca not only wants his deputies to arrest and jail suspects, he thinks they should supervise the offenders' parole.
Baca is making an unprecedented bid to expand the powers of the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department, saying it would improve community safety because his force has more resources and law enforcement know-how than probation officers.
But the idea, expected to be heard today by the Board of Supervisors, doesn't sit well with the Los Angeles County Probation Department, whose employees have been monitoring offenders since 1903.
"We're the agency that is doing this now, and have been doing it for (more than) 100 years," said Chief Probation Officer Donald Blevins, who questions the need for creating a new bureaucracy.
"You cannot show me another law enforcement agency in the country that does this, so (Baca's proposal) is an untested model."
Baca's idea was prompted by AB 109, Gov. Jerry Brown's plan to pay local governments to take over the responsibility of supervising low-risk inmates paroled from state prison, if the Legislature agrees to extend taxes that are due to expire June30.
Under that "realignment plan," the county Probation Department would take on about 500 parolees a month who have committed non-serious, non-violent, non-sex offenses.
Baca believes the Sheriff's Department should be the agency to routinely check in on parolees, preventing them from violating the terms of their release and committing new crimes.
Baca was not available to comment. But his aides said his plan calls for creating a Parole Services Bureau and hiring 550 sworn officers over two years.
"Our position in the Sheriff's Department is that we believe we have greater resources, greater accountability, greater credibility and provide a higher level of security for the public," said Chief Cecil Rhambo Jr., who heads the department's field operation for Los Angeles.
Since about half of the parolees are expected to live in Los Angeles, Baca has asked the LAPD to make up half of the new bureau's staff. Rhambo said if Chief Charlie Beck declines, the bureau would be composed entirely of sheriff's deputies.
Deputy Chief David Doan, who oversees the LAPD's Detective Bureau, refused to take sides on the issue.
"Right now, there's a great deal of supposition as to how this whole issue of handling parole people are concerned," he said. "The department is willing to work with the sheriff, willing to work with county probation, anyone to come up with a plan that makes the most sense and has appropriate funding and political support."
Baca wants the bureau to take custody over parolees 60 days before their release date; give them educational courses in county jails; and begin securing services such as mental health care, drug and alcohol rehabilitation, anger management and domestic violence counseling. He also wants to provide them with job training to ease their re-entry to society.
But Blevins said that allowing the Probation Department to retain the duty would be less costly for taxpayers since probation officers earn about 15 percent less in salary and benefits than sheriff's deputies. His plan is to retain 200 officers now slated for layoff and to hire 100 more, plus 200 support staff.
Probation Deputy Director Reaver Bingham said the department has a solid track record in preventing probationers from committing new crimes.
He said the department supervised 53,000 offenders - including 15,000 convicted of violent crimes - in 2010, and about 90 percent of them stayed out of state prison.
That still left 5,800 county probationers who ended up in state prison, but that number is lower than the average of 8,000 probationers from 2006-2008.
Rhambo, however, said "much more robust and aggressive" supervision is needed for parolees.
"The anecdotal belief is that these parolees are really nothing (different from others)," he said. "The fact that they come from state prison (means) some of these folks have done serious things and they just happen to be on parole this time for something that is a (non-serious, non-violent, non-sex offense).
"We just think that our programs and the way we work out in the field, being able to manage these men and women for 24 hours, seven days a week, provides a level of safety and security that the public really demands, particularly in this day and age."
He said the Sheriff's Department has access to a Google Maps-based software that enables it to track parolees' addresses and records, so that if a crime is committed in their neighborhood, deputies will know immediately where to begin asking questions.
Probation Department Chief Deputy Calvin Remington said state officials have estimated about 85 percent of new parolees will likely have only minor drug-related and property theft convictions.
He questioned whether the Sheriff's Department would have the ability to scrutinize the activities of parolees 24/7.
"There are limits to the Fourth Amendment waiver," Remington said. "(Unless you have reasonable cause), you can't harass people. If you're on parole and I start showing up at 1, 2, 3 in the morning, just to check how you're doing, the courts are going to have a problem with that at some point."
Blevins added that both the state and Probation Department would carefully assess the parolees.
"(The Sheriff's Department) wants to make this population out to be monsters and, really, there are monsters in state prison but they're not the population that are going to be coming back to you (the public)," he said.
The reliability of the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation's assessment of prisoners has come under fire, however.
A recent state report said technical problems at the CDCR led to the early release of 2,000 prisoners who did not fall under the low-risk criteria. Even with those mistakes, however, the recidivism rate (which measures how many parolees and other released inmates return to prison) for those prisoners was estimated to be less than 10 percent.
Source: http://www.dailynews.com/news/ci_18266761?source=rss
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