Staffing shortage in rural California sheriff's department

The Los Angeles Times reported a few days ago from Tehama County, California, under the headline "‘Catastrophic staffing shortage’: Northern California sheriff to suspend daytime patrols."  Here's an excerpt:   

The Tehama County Sheriff’s Office announced the suspension — which will start Sunday — in a news release stating that over the last several years there have been “difficulties with recruitment and retention of employees, which has been directly linked to pay disparities.”

Recent shortages led the Sheriff’s Office to reassign deputies from the operations division to fill vacancies within the courts and jail facility, leaving them “with insufficient staff to sustain 24-hour patrol services.”

Sheriff’s deputies in the county, which sits about 120 miles north of Sacramento, will maintain nighttime patrols. Deputies assigned night shift patrols “will triage and respond to the open, non-emergency calls for service that come in throughout the day,” according to the Sheriff’s Office.

The California Highway Patrol will respond to life-threatening emergencies during the hours that the Sheriff’s Office is unable to provide patrol services, according to last week’s announcement. It is unclear when daytime patrols will return.

Tehama County, by the way, has a population of 65,289, but is about the size of Rhode Island and Delaware combined. Tehama lies just south of Shasta County, which has been much in the news of late because of a local militia that has worked to oust conventional Republicans from office. That militia also has ties to Tehama County, as outlined here and in stories linked therein.  (One of the militia leaders owns a bar in Tehama County).

This story of a cutback on law enforcement is made more jarring because of events a few years ago, specifically a gunman on the loose who killed several of his neighbors and even attacked the nearby elementary school.  Though local law enforcement had been warned of that man's gun ownership and threat, they failed to act on the opportunity under California law to take away his gun.  

It reminds me of this post from a decade ago out of my hometown, where the police patrol only during the day.  At that time, residents were asking for night patrols because of a spike in property crime.  

This news out of Tehama County is also a nice complement to my work on the relative lawlessness of rural people and places, in part because of cultural norms (what I call the socio-spatial characteristics of rural communities) and in part because of the expense of policing sparsely populated places.  Read about that work (academic) here and casual (here).