Tuolumne County Sheriff Bill Pooley revealed on Tuesday that he’s currently unable to use half of the beds at the county’s new $51 million jail because one-third of the positions in his office are vacant, forcing him to send inmates to Calaveras County at a cost of $28,000 per month.
If the staffing situation in the Sheriff’s Office doesn’t improve by spring, Pooley said he will also have to “seriously look at either closing down or modifying our boat patrol division, so no patrols on our lakes.”
The information was relayed by Pooley during public comment at the end of a roughly 10-hour county Board of Supervisors meeting on Tuesday, just before the board went into closed session to privately discuss labor negotiations with county-employee unions.
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Out of the 59 funded deputy, corporal and sergeant positions in its Sheriff’s Office patrol division, Pooley said eight are vacant, six are out injured and not expected to return, and three more will be leaving soon — for a projected vacancy rate of about 17%.
Pooley said there are 47 deputy, corporal and sergeant positions in the jail, 13 of which are currently vacant, three are out injured and not expected to return, and two are leaving, for a projected vacancy rate of 31.9%.
“If you include those who are in the academy or in training, we can now only deploy 66% of our uniformed personnel,” he said to the board.
The Sheriff’s Office has already disbanded its narcotics team in 2020, taken deputies away from the team that supervises high-risk released offenders who are most likely to commit crimes again, and pulled back its school resources officer, Pooley said.
Pooley said the county has also paid Calaveras County a total of about $80,000 so far this year to house inmates because of only having enough staffing to fill half of the 230 beds at the new jail, known as the Dambacher Detention Center, which opened last year after decades in development.
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