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Staffing Hurdles Stymie Sheriff

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Times Staff Writers

Los Angeles County Sheriff Lee Baca, who blamed jail unrest over the weekend partly on staffing shortages, has failed to significantly boost his deputy ranks although the Board of Supervisors last year allocated nearly $70 million to hire new officers and ease jail overcrowding.

He faced a third night of racially motivated unrest at the North County Correctional Facility as deputies used tear gas Monday to break up a fight involving 80 inmates that left one man injured.

The continued violence has underscored chronic understaffing: The department has about 8,300 sworn deputies -- far fewer than the 9,400 Baca said Monday he had the money to employ.

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The shortfall has been hard to overcome as veteran deputies continue to leave the department at record rates. Last year the department hired 582 deputies but lost 486 to attrition, according to department records.

“There is no question it’s understaffed,” said county Supervisor Yvonne Brathwaite Burke. “But the thing is, even though we provided the money, he can’t get the people trained and he keeps losing people.”

Baca, who attributes his staffing problems to past budget cuts by the supervisors, insisted Monday that his department was having a strong recruitment year but warned that it would take time.

“You cannot go out and recruit 1,100 people overnight,” Baca said.

The riot Saturday at the North County Correctional Facility in Castaic, which Baca said was race-related, left one inmate dead and nearly 50 injured. County supervisors have demanded that Baca come before the board today to report on the violence as well as on hiring.

Though many Southern California law enforcement agencies have trouble finding qualified recruits, the sales pitch for the Sheriff’s Department is particularly difficult because new deputies must work at least four to five years in the troubled jail system.

In contrast, recruits for the LAPD and other police departments can immediately begin street patrol.

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In advertisements that had run in the Los Angeles County sheriff’s deputies’ union newspaper, competing police agencies urged deputies to “Get Out of Jail Free” by applying for jobs with them.

The Phoenix Police Department even hired a public relations firm to help recruit officers in Southern California.

Union officials estimate that 100 to 120 Los Angeles County deputies left last year for other law enforcement jobs -- many citing better schedules and working conditions.

Part of the problem is that the county is playing catch-up. Four years ago, the department had nearly 9,000 deputies -- 700 more than now.

Baca essentially mothballed his recruiting operation during the 2002-2004 county budget crisis. That forced the department to start from scratch when it began hiring again, officials said.

The personnel shortfalls have rippled through the Sheriff’s Department’s staff deployment. Last year, with homicides and gang violence up in areas patrolled by the department, the gang enforcement unit and the homicide division each operated about 25% below authorized staffing levels, according to the units’ captains.

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At the same time, the department paid a record $160 million in overtime, with managers at times forcing deputies to work additional hours.

About $45 million of that money went for overtime duty in the jails.

Baca has long complained that the supervisors have not given him the money he needs to effectively manage the jails.

Last year, the supervisors allocated $70 million to help ease jail conditions, using an increase in property tax revenues made possible by the region’s hot real estate market.

But Steve Remige, president of the Assn. for Los Angeles Deputy Sheriffs, predicted that years may pass before the department reaches the 9,400-deputy level.

The hiring freeze “put the department in a hole that is very hard to get out of,” Remige said. “It is going to take more than a few decades at this rate to make up the losses.”

It remains unclear whether the Sheriff’s Department would attract more recruits if new deputies weren’t required to work in the jails.

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The San Diego County Sheriff’s Department in the early 1990s created two separate deputy tracks -- patrol and corrections.

“What it has given us is a more stable workforce, dedicated to detention work,” said Capt. Ken Culver of the department’s Detention Bureau.

Los Angeles County has been looking into the idea.

Baca said a better-staffed jail system would reduce violence at the North County jail, which has about one guard for every 50 inmates.

The county’s jail system, the largest in the nation, has been plagued by racial strife and violence as well as overcrowding, which has led the sheriff to release thousands of inmates before their sentences are served.

The inmate killed Saturday was a convicted rapist, Wayne Tiznor, who was in jail on a parole violation. He was the ninth Los Angeles jail inmate to be killed in the last 2 1/2 years.

But Baca also stressed that the racial tensions that caused the riot were rooted in gang wars in South Los Angeles and elsewhere. Though officials are still investigating the melee, they believe that about 170 Latino inmates fought about 35 black inmates.

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Gang leaders “there made phone calls to Hispanic inmates directing them to attack blacks,” Baca said. “It was all directed to go down at a particular time Saturday. All the fighters were ready.”

In the wake of the violence, the Sheriff’s Department has segregated the jail along racial lines for safety. A recent U.S. Supreme Court decision that generally prohibited segregated housing for inmates does not apply in public safety situations, Baca said. But he added that the segregation was only a temporary remedy at the 34-acre facility.

Baca’s decision to divide the jail by race won support from the American Civil Liberties Union.

“You can keep inmates separate while you have a dangerous situation,” said Ramona Ripston, executive director of the ACLU of Southern California.

The violence left county Supervisor Mike Antonovich questioning why the Sheriff’s Department continues to struggle to keep rival gangs separated.

But Supervisor Don Knabe believes that adding 1,000 deputies won’t end the problems.

“There’s very significant racial tension,” he said. “Even if you had all the staff you needed, that wouldn’t alleviate that kind of problem.”

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Times staff writers Megan Garvey, Stuart Pfeifer and Tony Perry contributed to this report.

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