LOS ANGELES – The Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department is struggling to hire all the deputies it needs and isn’t prepared to further increase patrols in unincorporated areas, officials said Tuesday.
Last year, the Board of Supervisors approved a plan to hire an additional 67 deputies to beef up patrols, at a cost of $11.6 million. Funding for another 56 deputies was mentioned as a possible second phase of the plan.
“It is not prudent for the department to move forward with the Phase II implementation due to the extraordinarily high sworn staffing vacancies,” Sheriff Jim McDonnell wrote in a report to the board.
The department’s goals for response times are 10 minutes for emergency calls, 20 minutes for priority calls and 60 minutes for routine calls, according to spokeswoman Nicole Nishida.
Routine call times to residents living in unincorporated areas of Lancaster and Palmdale average 70 and 80 minutes, respectively.
McDonnell acknowledged that more could be done to improve service, but not until the department fills more of its 584 deputy vacancies.
That total represents about 5 percent of the department’s total sworn personnel, Assistant Sheriff Todd Rogers told the board.
Recruiters are also working to diversify the force by hiring more women and minorities, using social media and other new tactics to try and reach applicants.
It takes roughly eight months to bring a new deputy on board, from the time of application through background checks, testing and medical and psychological evaluations.
In the meantime, the department manages the workload through overtime and a pilot program utilizing part-time deputies in county courtrooms.
Supervisors Don Knabe and Hilda Solis called for the department to set a target date for full staffing and report back on possible solutions to the hiring problem, including potential “structural changes.”
The board unanimously approved that motion.
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Equal808 says
My experience…… the Psych evaluation is a JOKE and has been for many years. They need to re-evaluate the hiring process altogether. LASD has and have been missing out on many good applicants and its not a lack of women or “minorities”. Unfortunate, I tell ya.
tommy says
That is because they overlook great applicants because they are not women and minorities, no such thing as being the best person for the job in this hand holding society.
Tim Scott says
Just a guess, but if you let that “poor picked on underprivileged white male” song play in your head very much you probably will show up as disconnected from reality on the psych eval. Any white male who can’t see the advantages we have in America is either blind or mad as a hatter.
Appreciative says
I just want to say that I’ve never been a big fan of lasd, but recently when I needed them in a serious emergency, they showed up less than 6 minutes after I began talking to the 911 operator. So idk how efficient they are with others but in my personal experience, I was impressed and must give credit where credit is due… Palmdale station actually has at least a handful of really awesome human beings on their team at least, who I feel like I can really trust.
him says
Maybe the LASD should have given their deputies more than a 10% raise of 3 years…then maybe they could compete for qualified applicants with departments like LAPD and Pasadena or Glendale or Burbank.
Lowering standards will only put the community at risk.
Al says
11.6 million dollars for 67 guys is $173,000 ea.
what a joke. 60 minute service times? I have never seen better than 3 hours.
Me says
$11.6 million for 67 deputy trainees includes not only salary for those deputy trainees, but benefits, training and administrative costs (which includes paying for the entire process from the point tens of applications are submitted, through screening, testing, training… etc).
As for response time, and without knowing the nature of your call, it would be impossible to try and justify a 3 hour wait (or any wait time for that matter). However, some calls may only require that an explorer or a retiree deputy assistant to take down a (fill-in-the-spaces) incident report which later gets reviewed by a desk-duty deputy or detective. If the nature of your call required a deputy’s presence, and it took hours for him/her to arrive, it wasn’t because they were on a break or kicking back… It was because the nature of your call was getting passed up by other more serious calls that required they be attended to first.
Rankin says
“Structural changes”? Like lowering requirements?
Tim Scott says
Qualifications aren’t the problem. No one wants to work for one of the most notorious bands of badged thugs in the nation is the problem. They have brought so many federal investigations down on themselves and been on the wrong side of public perception for so long that they may never recover.
Equal808 says
Trust me when I say, that there has been many struggling applicants since before L.Baca. And many have now have succeeded in LE in other departments or moved on to other fields of work. LASD messed themselves up.
KnowItAll says
This is for Tim Scott…
How would you know what the “problem” is?
I mean seriously, you always speak so negatively of the LASD, one could presume that you would run and hide under your bed if they were around, and to claim knowledge of what reason(s) are resulting in the number of new deputies?
With the amount of hatred that you constantly show towards them, one can’t help it but wonder why? You aren’t likely to be just hating so much, not for the sake of being hateful. Because that would imply that you are mentally disturbed. Alternatively, it is possible that they somehow wronged you in the past, but considering that you often mention them being investigated by the FBI, one could assume that you would have brought your concerns or complaints to a higher authority. Then again, assuming you did, and it was determined that your claims are unfounded, in which case, we are back to you continuing to spew hatred because you are mentally disturbed.
It comes to a point in time when this is all I can tell you: unless you have any valid and viable alternatives (and you should realize that the alternative are nonexistent), the LASD is here to stay… So to continue to be hateful is only going to compromise your quality of life, without impacting the way the LASD operates!
Get over yourself….
CAP'N LANCASTER says
Tim Scott is just opinionated. The real KNOW IT ALL in this here Vally is Ole Rex. That SOB thinks he knows everything about everything. He tells the peoples who works with the homeless how to do their jobs. He tells the moskito control peoples all about West Nile Virus like they ain’t heard about it. He thinks he is some kinda climate scientist when he’s a high school dropout. He thinks bird chirps lower crime. He thinks some stupid plane with a camera stops crime. He thinks Bangladesh is going to be wiped out by a cyclone. Now there’s a real KNOW IT ALL who don’t know nothing.
Tim Scott says
Well, in recent conversations with people in city government I have come to accept that we are indeed stuck with contracting with the Sheriff’s department. The alternative, having our own city PD, would cost way too much. You get what you pay for, and unfortunately the sheriff’s department is all that we can afford.
So, that leaves reform. While the recent lawsuits have lead to big changes at the top there is no guarantee that reforms will carry through, particularly if the citizens stick their heads in the sand and allow the pretense that “there was no problem, the feds targeted our boys unfairly” is allowed to stand unchallenged. I am committed, and it won’t.
I’m also doing everything I can to prevent business as usual; which is that bad cops forced out by reforms in one department immediately get jobs in other departments. Fixing the LAPD is, in large part, what produced the degradation in the sheriff’s department, along with every other PD in southern California. Fixing the sheriff’s department needs to be accomplished without further ruining other departments.
As to your wild speculations about my motivations…I have listed elsewhere my encounters with law enforcement. I told someone who I consider to be a pretty conservative, pro law and order individual about my ‘willing to commit perjury to make a traffic ticket stick’ story this morning, and she said “Of course. That happens all the time. Everyone knows that.” I told that same story to a deputy over coffee recently, and while he regretted that such things happen he expressed no doubt whatsoever that it did.
People like you, who either want to pretend such claims are “unfounded,” or for some reason aren’t appalled by the questions they raise about how far a guy who would commit perjury over a traffic ticket would go to cover for their “brothers in blue,” ARE the problem…perhaps even more than the cops themselves.
AV Observer says
Mentally disturbed? Try watching Channel 28 on the second and fourth Tuesday of each month from 5 pm to about 8 or so.