Sheriff Shifts Deputies to Fill Moreno Valley Patrols

A shortage of deputies available to patrol the City of Moreno Valley is forcing the Riverside County Sheriff’s Department to temporarily suspend or curtail non-essential functions in its Riverside station, Capt. John Jones said Tuesday.

All deputies working on special crime-prevention teams and some in public- and press-relations positions will return to patrol Thursday, and remain on the streets until the department can hire and train new officers, Jones said.

Contracted Time

The 10-month-old City of Moreno Valley has contracted with Riverside County to provide between 120 and 130 police man-hours daily. By January, deputies’ time in Moreno Valley will increase to between 154 and 164 hours per day, Jones said.

“We have to . . . recruit the personnel to fill those hours,” Jones explained. Depending on “whether they are ‘lateral entries’ from another department or new recruits,” he said, it can take anywhere from 12 to 32 weeks to put the new deputies on the street.

“Because of that time span, before they can work independently, we have to suspend some of the things we are doing, and reduce some other things,” Jones said.

The public is most likely to notice the reduction of desk personnel who handle non-emergency telephone calls and walk-in inquiries at the Riverside station. Four deputies will handle the duties now performed by six, Jones said.

Although the reassignments will free only about five deputies for patrol duty, that should be sufficient to cover the increased demand for patrols in Moreno Valley, Jones said, because “we (already) had people working that area before they incorporated.”

Moreno Valley is located about 15 miles east-southeast of Riverside. Deputies from the Riverside station--one of six in the county--also patrol unincorporated areas roughly bounded by the City of Perris, the area east of Moreno Valley, and the Orange and San Bernardino county lines.

They also patrol the City of Norco under a contract similar to that with Moreno Valley.