Probation Dept. Divided Over Rule Prohibiting Guns

Richard Shumsky joined the Los Angeles County Probation Department in 1968, fresh out of San Diego State, enticed by the notion that he could turn troubled lives around.

Janis Jones joined the department in 1990, fed up with escalating gang crime in her neighborhood and determined to keep violent criminals off the street.

Now Shumsky, recently appointed head of the department, and Jones, a tough-talking mother of triplets who cruises the Antelope Valley tracking down gang members, are on opposite sides of an issue dividing the nation’s largest probation department: whether probation officers should carry guns while on duty.

The more than 3,200 probation officers are Los Angeles County’s only sworn peace officers not allowed to carry guns while working. Saying its members’ safety is at risk, the probation officers union is pushing to change that policy, squaring off against its former president, Shumsky, who admits to a “bias against guns.”

But this fight is about more than fire-power. Its outcome could fundamentally transform a department that straddles the line between a police force and a social service agency, responsible for monitoring 90,000 probationers and running the county’s juvenile halls and probation camps for troubled youths.

“The moment you arm them, they basically become an arm of the Sheriff’s Department, and they lose the aspect of them that is social worker or rehabilitator,” said Supervisor Gloria Molina, whose office has coordinated joint efforts by probation officers and sheriff’s deputies to fight gangs in the San Gabriel Valley.

But many of the probation officers working in gang units speak more like cops than social workers. They say their jobs have already been transformed as gangs have become increasingly ruthless and probation officers have joined multi-agency task forces, like the one organized by Molina’s office, to roust probation-violating gang members from crime-infested neighborhoods.

“We’re not in the ‘70s anymore. We’re not dealing with little dope dealers on the corner selling nickel bags of marijuana,” said Jones, whose unit confiscates about a dozen guns a week. “These guys are into hard-core, heavy firepower to protect their interests. You feel totally vulnerable” without a gun.

Probation officers note that the last three Los Angeles police officers killed on duty were all allegedly shot to death by gang members on probation--the very people the probation workers’ new units pursue.

LAPD Officer Filbert H. Cuesta Jr. was assigned to have an unarmed probation officer riding in his car when he was killed in an alleged gang ambush in the Crenshaw area this summer. The probation officer was absent because of a scheduling quirk.

Shumsky says he also is concerned for his officers’ safety but will not agree to arm high-risk units without careful study of the issue.

If the department were to arm selected units, it would also alter how officers are chosen and trained, Shumsky said. For example, additional psychological and physical testing would be required.

“We want to get this right,” Shumsky said. “It would fundamentally change the role” of probation officers, he added, while insisting that his own views will not factor into the study.

Probation officers for years have sought to change department policy to allow selected units to carry guns on duty, and management has consistently opposed their efforts, although 60% of California counties arm at least some of their probation officers.

Dispute Leaps Into Foreground

The gun controversy has leaped to the foreground of county politics recently for several reasons.

Union officials cite this year’s expansion of the department’s anti-gang programs and the recent shootings of LAPD officers as reasons for their sense of urgency. Just as important may be the department’s shifting internal political landscape.

In May, Shumsky was selected as the new chief probation officer by the Board of Supervisors, a choice that raised some eyebrows because, at the time, the well-connected veteran was president of the probation officers union and had not even been listed among the finalists for the job.

Paradoxically, during his years as the union’s president, Shumsky supported arming officers. The union he headed even filed an unsuccessful lawsuit to compel the department to give its officers guns.

Shumsky says he “reluctantly” went along with the arming effort because he knew it was what union members wanted and notes that he had good relations with the previous chief probation officer, who opposed arming.

In November, a joint labor-management committee within the department wrote a draft letter recommending arming some officers. But, union officials complain, the issue went nowhere. Shumsky says a decision is not expected until he finishes a report in March.

The union, meanwhile, has hired Cerrell & Associates, a well-known political consulting firm, to lobby members of the Board of Supervisors for support and to distribute stories about officer safety to the media. Earlier this month, union members picketed a Board of Supervisors meeting, carrying signs emblazoned with their campaign’s motto: “One Life Is Too Many to Lose.”

Shumsky said he is unsure that arming officers would make them safer. “We’ve not been armed and we’ve not been perceived as being armed,” he said. If probation officers carry guns, he said, they may become targets of attacks.

Supervisor Molina agrees, saying probation officers should rely on the sheriff’s deputies or police officers who accompany them to handle dangerous situations.

“None of us is willing to put our probation officers in any danger,” she said.

Arming probation officers, she said, may even take away their edge. “They’re very smart. They look at issues strategically,” Molina said. “They’re not just out there with a gun trying to control [people]. They really are much more effective at crime suppression in a lot of ways than our deputy sheriffs.”

Like social workers, most probation officers work a designated caseload of probationers, monitoring their attempts to stay on the straight and narrow. Probation officers are authorized to visit, and search, the homes of probationers without a warrant to ensure that the probationers are complying with the court’s orders. They also cajole and counsel criminals on probation in an effort to get them to mend their ways.

The greatest triumph, Shumsky said, is turning those criminals’ lives around.

But, he acknowledges, today’s probation officers deal with different issues than he did in 1968.

“We are doing things we would not have envisioned probation officers doing 30 years ago,” he said.

‘We’re Not Being as Effective as We Could’

The change is largely the result of the spread of gang crime and the multi-agency task forces authorities use to fight those gangs. Probation officers have joined many of these task forces.

The new challenges of the job were driven home one night to Eduardo Cordero, an eight-year veteran assigned to a gang task force at the LAPD’s Hollywood Division. He was in a Mid-City neighborhood surrounded by LAPD officers wearing body armor and carrying shotguns, preparing to storm a fortified gang complex. Wearing a bulletproof vest, Cordero hung in the rear, clutching his flashlight, fingering a canister of pepper spray on his belt.

No shots were fired that night, but Cordero says he is frustrated hiding behind parked vans while his police partners enter gang members’ homes. “We’re not being as effective as we could be,” he said.

LAPD Det. Bob Lopez agrees. Lopez, who runs the Northeast Division’s anti-gang squad, says that if probation officers could search homes alone instead of waiting for armed LAPD backup, they could have an even greater impact stopping crime.

“We’re looking at this as too much of a social issue instead of as a practical issue,” Lopez said. “There is no way these guys can do their jobs effectively” without guns.

‘I Can’t Defend Myself at Work’

Janis Jones still believes that the department has a legitimate rehabilitative role but says the “element” she deals with is sometimes beyond hope.

“There are some that are way past rehabilitation,” Jones said, “and at this point the only option is to remove them from the community.”

Jones and eight sheriff’s deputies assigned to the Lancaster station try to do just that, looking for gang members, searching homes and apartments. Jones knows she is slowing the rest of her unit down, because the armed sheriff’s deputies must always cover her as well as themselves. She is always the last one into a gang house, entering only after armed deputies have searched the site.

Even then, Jones is at risk. She recalled standing before a closed door in one house, behind which a gang member was hiding with a sawed-off shotgun within arm’s reach. Luckily, a sheriff’s deputy burst into the room and handcuffed the gang member.

Jones has a gun at home and has been prepared to use it, waving it to chase off gang members who sneaked into her backyard.

“I can’t defend myself at work,” she said, “but I can defend myself at home.”