Career guards benefit jails, O.C. sheriff says

Evidence of lazy and inattentive deputies at Orange County’s Theo Lacy Jail is stoking debate about whether the Sheriff’s Department should staff its jails with career correctional officers instead of sworn deputies.

Acting Sheriff Jack Anderson proposed the switch to lower-paid correctional officers in February as a cost-cutting measure, but he said Wednesday that there could be additional benefits to using correctional officers who want to spend their careers working inside jails.

Grand jury testimony made public this week showed that deputies inside Theo Lacy watched movies, played video games, exchanged text messages and slept while allowing inmate “shot-callers” to enforce jail rules.

Anderson said department supervisors were to blame for the environment at Theo Lacy, and he intends to move forward with a proposal to pull hundreds of deputies off jail duty and replace them with career correctional officers.

He said career correctional officers could develop valuable experience while working at the jails.

“We would have professional correctional officers who look at this as their career and say, ‘This is what I want to do for the rest of my life,’ ” Anderson said.

The union that represents sheriff’s deputies has expressed concerns about the proposal, saying any such change would need to be agreed to in contract negotiations.

Wayne Quint, president of the Assn. of Orange County Deputy Sheriffs, said Wednesday that he was also concerned that “you get what you pay for.”

Quint noted that 800 of the county’s 1,900 sworn deputies work in jails and are available to work the streets in the event of an emergency.

Replacing them with correctional officers, who are not permitted to work the streets, could jeopardize public safety, Quint said.

stuart.pfeifer@latimes.com