Sheriff Links Board Plan to Criticism of Budget Cuts : Duffy Promises Fight to Retain Control of Jails

Girding for a power struggle with the Board of Supervisors, San Diego County Sheriff John Duffy on Thursday voiced strong opposition to a plan to study removing jails from his control and said that other suggested law enforcement changes reflect the supervisors’ “outright ignorance.”

Reacting to Supervisor George Bailey’s proposal that county officials examine a series of sweeping law enforcement changes, Duffy said he views that plan as proof that Bailey and the other board members are “feeling the heat from the public” over recent budget cuts affecting the Sheriff’s Department.

Calling some of Bailey’s ideas impractical, illegal or based on inaccurate assumptions, Duffy also described the plan to study alternative ways to provide law enforcement throughout the county as part of what he sees as the board’s longstanding effort to exert more control over his department.

Control as Issue

“What this is all about is control,” Duffy said. “The board keeps asking county counsel, ‘How can we get more control over the sheriff?’ . . . And this is part of that effort. Plus, I see this as a politician . . . who’s now feeling the heat from his constituency after voting not to fund law enforcement needs.”

If the supervisors accept Bailey’s proposal to create a board subcommittee to study the potential law enforcement changes, Duffy said, he will wait to see the panel’s recommendations before judging its merits.

However, Duffy left little doubt that he would strongly resist any effort to establish a county Department of Corrections as an alternative to the existing sheriff-operated jail system--a plan similar to one that the board adopted in 1975 but then let die amid intense public opposition mounted by Duffy.

“If you go back in history, you’ll see what I’d probably do on that,” Duffy said.

Concurrence Needed

Duffy also argued that another of Bailey’s suggestions--that the county consider contracting with city police departments to protect unincorporated areas now patrolled by sheriff’s deputies--would, under state law, need his concurrence.

“And this sheriff isn’t concurring,” Duffy snapped.

Bailey, whose proposal is scheduled to be debated by the board next week, was out of town Thursday and could not be reached for comment. However, his chief aide, Dianne Jacob, said that Bailey’s proposal “wasn’t meant to antagonize the sheriff or anyone else.”

“The sheriff has a responsibility to provide law enforcement in the unincorporated area and the board has a responsibility to make sure it’s provided properly and efficiently,” Jacob said. “It’s the same goal, but there are different ways to reach it.”

Increasing Strain

Bailey’s proposal and Duffy’s initial response to it are the latest evidence of the increasingly strained relations between the sheriff and the board--a stormy alliance shaken by the considerable mutual ill will that developed during recent budget deliberations.

Last month, the supervisors rejected Duffy’s request to increase his $90.5-million fiscal 1989 budget by $13 million, prompting the sheriff to threaten cutbacks that include the closure of several substations, reassignment of narcotics, gang and child-abuse personnel and reductions in helicopter patrols and backcountry ambulance service. Those reductions, Duffy said Thursday, could be implemented by November.

Throughout that protracted debate, board members bristled over what some of them saw as Duffy’s grandstanding, while Duffy persistently accused the supervisors of inadequately funding law enforcement in unincorporated regions.

‘Knowledge Gap’

Duffy, who has often questioned the supervisors’ comprehension of police issues, returned to that theme on Thursday in discussing Bailey’s proposal. That plan, combined with the board’s recent budget decisions, Duffy argued, show that the supervisors “really don’t know much” about law enforcement needs.

“What I’m struggling against here is a knowledge gap,” Duffy said.

Under Bailey’s recommendation, a two-member board panel, in conjunction with Chief Administrative Officer Norman Hickey, County Counsel Lloyd Harmon and representatives of the Grand Jury, criminal justice system, state legislators and community groups would study ways to improve law enforcement.

The most controversial change suggested by Bailey would establish a Corrections Department, headed by a board appointee, to operate the county’s six jails, now managed by Duffy.

Could Cut Costs

Supervisorial aides have said that such a shift could cut county costs by giving the board, rather than the sheriff, direct control over detention facilities. Although the board now sets the sheriff’s budget, Duffy decides how to spend the money and how to allocate manpower within his department.

The disputes arising from that split authority are illustrated in Duffy’s approval last year of 77,000 hours of overtime to staff county jails. The extra pay was necessary, Duffy argues, to compensate for the board’s failure to hire sufficient deputies. But some supervisors have used that fact to question the sheriff’s management, and chafe under their inability to exercise a stronger hand over the jails.

However, Duffy warned Thursday, any attempt by the supervisors to remove the jails from his jurisdiction will probably prompt him to try to repeat his 1975 effort in collecting 96,000 signatures on referendum petitions in three weeks to scuttle a similar plan.

“And I’m better organized today,” Duffy boasted.

Legal Barrier

Similarly, Duffy argued that there would be legal and practical barriers to Bailey’s suggestion that the county review the feasibility of contracting with city police departments to patrol areas now served by sheriff’s deputies. The supervisors would need his approval to adopt such a plan, Duffy said--making it clear that he has no intention of doing so.

“That’s not their prerogative,” Duffy said. “You’ve got a problem called the Constitution of California, the County Charter and things like that.”

Questioning another idea proposed for study, Duffy said that Bailey’s insistence that the county be fully reimbursed for expenses connected with the sheriff’s provision of law enforcement services in incorporated cities is “unnecessary because that’s already happening.” Bailey’s intimation that residents in unincorporated areas may, in essence, be subsidizing the sheriff’s service to contract cities is “pure horsehockey,” Duffy said.