Don’t Separate Jails From Sheriff’s Dept.
We read with surprise and outrage Marc B. Haefele’s misguided conclusions that the responsibility for Los Angeles County jails should somehow be separated from the Sheriff’s Department (“New Jail Options Needed,” Sunday Opinion, June 27). Anyone who is even slightly familiar with local jails knows that this is not a new idea, but it is certainly a bad one.
The column seems to suggest that if someone other than Sheriff Lee Baca could run the county’s enormous custody operations, the switch would ease overcrowding and reduce the dangerous violence in the jail system. Haefele is wrong about the problem and what should be done to improve our jails. That’s why state law requires the sheriff to oversee county jail operations.
On behalf of the more than 8,000 sheriff’s deputies and district attorney investigators working in Los Angeles County, especially those who work short-handed every day in the county’s jail system, we urge a different approach. We strongly encourage the county Board of Supervisors to provide the resources necessary to run our custody facilities safely and efficiently. Our deputies work at far higher prisoner-to-officer ratios, and it is a fact that L.A. County jails house the most violent of California’s offenders.
If Haefele thinks the county’s jail system can be better run by civilian correctional officers, he’s missing a point that could be very expensive and very dangerous.
Roy L. Burns
President
Assn. for Los Angeles Deputy Sheriffs
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