Public Safety Committee Hears From Top Officials
Riverside County Sheriff Stan Sniff, Fire Chief John Hawkins and Code Enforcement Department Director Jay Orr were all in attendance at Fourth District Supervisor Roy Wilson’s Pubic Safety Committee meeting Monday night.
Supervisor Wilson convenes the Committee so that the representatives of Fourth District Community Councils can interface with public safety officials and air their concerns.
New Sheriff-Coroner Stan Sniff gave a brief overview of his large department (4,208 employees and a half-billion-dollar budget) to representatives of 10 of the 12 Community Councils in the Fourth District.
Sniff emphasized his belief in community policing, noting that when officers serve the same communities over a long period of time they get to know the local people and the community’s unique issues. He said that 25 years ago, law enforcement’s policy was to “make lots of arrests,” often encouraging the revolving door of recidivism, whereas today the philosophy it is to get to the root of a problem, and figure out the best way to fix it.
Along the same lines, he talked about the constant need to consider the balance between a large department that was too centralized and one that was too de-centralized. In the former case, he said, there can be a tendency to establish policies in a “one-size fits all” approach; whereas in the latter, the organization can become too loose and spin out of control. The balance is when officers know intimately the communities they serve, and yet respond in an orderly fashion to department policies.
He said that he was in the process of “reshaping” executive staff, and transforming management to be more business-like and scientific. He said the department needs to anticipate problems long in advance of their occurrence, instead of “putting out fires.”
The sheriff also focused on the issue of jail space, noting that 3,600 beds countywide seems like a large number, but that the county is logging 60,000 bookings a year, and releasing 6,000 prisoners a year that they don’t have space for. The plan to add 2,000 beds in the near future will not fully accommodate the need, he said, but he praised the Board of Supervisors for its “great leadership” in dealing with the jail overcrowding issue.
County Fire Chief John Hawkins, who runs another huge department (2,400 personnel in 95 stations), noted that “every rig has paramedics,” meaning the County has completely converted all of its engines to the upgraded medical personnel.
He noted his department’s excellent record in stopping minor fires before they became major ones during the firestorms of last October. In fact, he said, while Riverside County was suppressing more wildfire starts than any of the other Southern California counties, it was the only one with a perfect record. Two Riverside County firefighters are likely to be commended for the governor’s medal of valor, and we’ll have the story here on the Fourth District website.
Code Enforcement Director Jay Orr said his organization—since it achieved “department status”—h as become much more pro-active in its approach. Code Enforcement, he noted, is now divided into three “divisions”: SET, the Special Enforcement Team is a group of 20 code personnel who target a specific problem area, say illegal dumping in the south Valley, and focus on eliminating it; the NET, or Neighborhood Enforcement Team, is the “regular” Code Enforcement group, but its numbers have been greatly enhanced, it is much more focused on “customer service” than in the past—and there is the more proactive stance mentioned by the Director. Marked vehicles and uniforms now establish a more prominent presence for the department.
Finally, there’s the CIP, or Community Improvement Program, is an outreach effort, intended to help residents enhance their neighborhoods and come into code compliance voluntarily.
Ten of the Fourth District’s 12 community councils were represented at the Public Safety Committee meeting, including representatives from the remote communities of Mesa Verde and Ripley. All had questions or expressed specific concerns to the three department heads, and all had praise for the improvements in the departments under their direction.