Budget forces alternative

Yuba County sheriff says funding forces his hand concerning online reporting by citizens

The Yuba County Sheriff’s Office announced earlier this week it would rely on community members to self-report certain nonviolent crimes – when they aren’t in progress and there is no suspect information. The change is due to a severe personnel shortage. To put it in perspective, said Sheriff Steven Durfor, there are only about 25 men and women available to patrol roughly 664 square

HONOLULU – Hawaii’s famed Kilauea volcano continued to erupt Friday, opening massive fissures in a residential neighborhood for the first time since 1960, demolishing two homes and shooting fountains of red-hot lava up to 100 feet in the air. miles on any given day. “In terms of deputy sheriffs on the street, our situation has not improved,” Durfor said. “Making any service reductions is certainly something we’ve resisted for several years, thinking it would stabilize. But our hand is being forced because our staffing level for patrol has not improved. We are operating with approximately 50 percent less available patrol deputies than we were several years ago.” When Durfor took over as sheriff in January 2007, there were 51 funded deputy sheriff positions. Within his first year, he said all 51 of those positions were filled. Since then, the department has had to cut its funded deputy

sheriff positions to 42. Some of those positions remain vacant today, and the department also has about 7 deputies out on long-term injuries. That shortage has required Durfor and his supervisors to get creative when scheduling patrol duties. They’ve had to pull manpower away from other departments to assist with patrolling duties like investigations, marine enforcement and even operations lieutenants and administrative sergeants, he said. Durfor said his department has been faced with 11 consecutive years of budget cuts, which has led to a number of positions being forced to remain vacant, unfunded, or eliminated altogether. In a December report, Durfor said that the department has had to figure out how to address a $17.6 million deficit over the past nine years.

shortage, the department is asking the community to help by reporting certain crimes online, which will help the department prioritize more efficiently, Durfor said. Those types of crimes include petty theft, felony/ misdemeanor vandalism, identity theft, annoying phone calls and lost property reports. It’s not like the department will turn away callers trying to report those crimes, he said. Rather, when there is no suspect and the crime is not in progress, dispatchers will refer the caller to a website – http://sheriff. co.yuba.ca.us/coplogic/ start-report.aspx – to file a report electronically. “We certainly desire and encourage the public to continue reporting, we will just be directing them to our website for the identified crimes and complaints to have it documented there. We want to know about it and have it properly documented. We are just asking for the public’s assistance during these critical times,” he said. In addition to self-reporting, the department will begin to make changes to its response procedures. Calls for things like barking dogs,

vehicle tampering and landlord-tenant disputes will be referred to other agencies that are better equipped to handle the response. The department will also change how it handles certain alarm calls. If deputies respond to an alarm that is determined to be faulty or a false alarm, the department will not respond to subsequent alarms within 24 hours. The department will not respond to residential alarms when the responsible person refuses to respond to meet with the deputy either, according to a press release.

Durfor said many other local law enforcement agencies have implemented similar self-reporting systems. He said the Yuba County Sheriff’s Department was one of the few that hadn’t, up until recently. “In my interactions with other chiefs and sheriffs, they’ve found it to be an effective approach to maximize their available peace officers’ time in the field,” Durfor said. If, at some point, staffing levels begin to stabilize or improve, Durfor said he would look to change things

back to the older model. But it’s not realistic to continue that way given staffing levels, he said. Durfor, as well as other public safety officials in the county, have been vocal in the recent months about the need for additional funding for public safety services. The idea to implement a public safety sales tax has been thrown around during discussions between public safety officials and county officials, though they continue to say that the decision will come down to whether or not voters want it. Officials have been engaging in some community outreach efforts regarding the state of public safety and have plans to conduct more in the coming weeks, Durfor said. “There is a plan to further engage with the community and to field and answer their questions,” Durfor said. Yuba County is conducting a survey of residents to get their perspective on priorities for maintaining public safety. To participate in the “Yuba County 911” survey, go to http://www.co.yuba. ca.us/news/yubacounty911/feedback.aspx.