What was intended to be a report on the Santa Barbara County Sheriff’s Department inmate population management plan turned into a heated budgetary debate among multiple county supervisors and the sheriff at last week’s special board meeting.
As a result of the county budget hearings held in April, the Board of Supervisors directed the Sheriff’s Department to return with a further analysis of jail facilities, capacity and options based on inmate populations and projections.
The department presented a rolling housing reduction plan that involves strategically shutting down and opening housing areas in the Santa Barbara County Main Jail in order to maximize on-duty staff and reduce overtime hours, according to Chief Deputy Vincent Wasilewski.
The plan includes specific target and trigger average daily population (ADP) numbers that will move the jail through the closings and openings.
There are 10 phases in the plan, and if the jail population dips below the trigger ADP for the phase the jail is in and remains there for 21 days, then it would move down for the next phase, Wasilewski said. The jail would move up to the next phase if the population goes higher than the trigger ADP and remains there for 21 days, he added.
“As we close housing areas and redistribute our jail population, we will be able to redeploy staff to address the drivers of overtime, scheduling for special details and back-filling our numerous vacancies with on-duty staff rather than hiring overtime,” he said.
The plan was intended to increase savings in the jail’s custody operations branch as the office prepares to open the Northern Branch Jail, for which the Sheriff’s Department requested an additional $2.2 million to its budget to help operate.
The inmate population at the main jail is at a historic low, but Sheriff Bill Brown said that the ADP the jail is seeing is “artificial” and expects it to go up once more cases are moved through the court system and COVID-19 capacity restrictions are lifted.
However, after complaints about the report’s lack of transparency and context by Second District Supervisor Gregg Hart and multiple public speakers, the conversation flipped to the Sheriff’s Department’s constantly increasing budget and request for an additional $2.2 million.
“The sheriff’s request of $2.2 million for the north branch needs to be addressed,” Hart said. “There have to be some cost savings. We’re at an inflection point here. We need to get on the same page and make some changes that the community has been asking for.
“This is the moment we have to decide that operating the county jail with 37% fewer prisoners for a year, and not realizing any cost savings from that, and having no prospect going forward of realizing any cost savings for that, something is seriously broken in the system.”
Brown, backed by four police chiefs from across the county, said that crime rates are on the rise, and the main jail is critical to keep these offenders off the streets.
Michael Cash, Guadalupe police chief, said it takes three to four hours to put someone in the main jail, and at night that means fewer officers on the streets.
Hart said there is a problem with using the Northern Branch Jail as a convenient way to put low-level offenders back in the system.
There have been 15 homicides so far this year in Santa Barbara County, which already tops the 12 killings that occurred during the entire year in 2020, he said.
The jail’s population on Tuesday was 614, and of those inmates, 68 face charges of murder or attempted murder, according to Brown.
Brown advocated for the budget increase, saying the Northern Branch Jail will help better serve the community.
However, First District Supervisor Das Williams said that this logic “has reached its end when the (cost) stays the same even though the population plummets.”
“I think that both the resources to redeem the redeemable and to protect people on the streets are both locked up in this never-ending cycle of putting increasing resources into incarceration,” he said.
Hart asked about the state lifting COVID-19 protocols, and said that for the foreseeable future, until the northern branch opens, there will be less need for as many deputies to operate the main jail. Wasilewski said that “post-COVID-19” is not something that can be quantified at this point.
“Nothing has changed about that virus; we are still in the pandemic here,” he said. “Whether or not it’s OK to walk outside without a mask, that doesn’t mean you can live in a housing area with 15 other inmates and stay safe.”
Williams said the rolling closure should be systemized, and proposed setting aside $1.95 million from Brown’s proposed budget for diversion programs.
“The jail has been for many, many years the black hole sucking up all the money that not only could be used for diversion and mental health and all this liberal do-good stuff,” he said. “I think that we have to budget some of these savings in order to make sure that some of this stuff happens. … Otherwise, it’s going to keep on preventing law enforcement solutions and diversion solutions, and just put all these numbers in the jail.”
Williams said he “wholeheartedly” supported the rolling housing plan, but needed to see some of the savings set aside.
“If we keep on budgeting as if there’s no savings, there won’t be any savings,” he said. “In the savings lies the potential for better public safety and for redeeming the redeemable.”
Board chairman Bob Nelson and Fifth District Supervisor Steve Lavagnino saw Williams’ proposal as overstepping, saying that Sheriff Brown is an elected official, and it’s not the board’s job to hold him accountable.
“I’m responsible for the budget. We give him the money. If you don’t like the way he spends it, you need to go out and campaign against him,” Lavagnino said to Williams.
Lavagnino said that creating “fake savings” is not a way to go about the situation, and that Williams’ proposal sounded “an awful lot” like defunding the police.
Brown also was angered by Williams’ comments, and the two were often talking in fiery tones, interrupting each other and trying to hold the floor.
“I’m frankly very disappointed in the direction that this hearing has gone in,” Brown said. “We were asked to put together a plan, which we did, which I believe will result in significant cost avoidance. But there’s a difference between cost avoidance and cost savings.
“It seems like this has been falling on deaf ears. Our crime rates are going up. The reality is, this conversation has really gone way beyond its stated purposes. I believe that you are embracing the defunding of the police whether you mean to or not by this action.”
A 2020 crime statistics report from the Sheriff’s Department showed a 7% increase in violent offenses and a 20% increase in property-related offenses such as theft compared with the previous year. The number of Part 1 violent criminal offenses in 2020 was 9% below the average for the previous decade.
Brown advised the board members to choose their actions and words very wisely moving forward, “because this has the potential to cause an incredible number of consequences.”
He said it was not appropriate for the board to be talking about the budget when the intention of the meeting was to present a housing plan, and that Williams’ proposal was a “reckless action” that was “thrown in in the last 20 minutes of the hearing.”
Hart said Brown’s words were “clearly and intentionally provocative,” but he did not want to “go there” because the board was not talking about defunding anything.
“We’re talking about slowing the rate of increasing expenditures, like we would be talking to any department in any place in the county,” he said.
Williams pointed out that the proposed budget for the Sheriff’s Department this year is $177.1 million, $11 million more than the adjusted budget for last year. Taking $2 million out of that is not a cut, he said.
“It’s just the typical thing that the sheriff does every year. He comes in here and says it’s a budget cut when the budget is going up every year,” he said.
Williams’ proposal came to a vote, with the two South County supervisors in support and the two North County supervisors in opposition, leaving Third District Supervisor Joan Hartmann as the deciding vote.
It was ultimately shot down by a 3-2 vote, with Nelson, Hartmann, and Lavagnino in opposition.
— Noozhawk staff writer Jade Martinez-Pogue can be reached at jmartinez-pogue@noozhawk.com. Follow Noozhawk on Twitter: @noozhawk, @NoozhawkNews and @NoozhawkBiz. Connect with Noozhawk on Facebook.
