Union says sheriff is pulling deputies off the streets to cover courtroom assignments — staffing called ‘dangerously thin’

BY AMELIA BISCARDI
Daily Post Staff Writer

San Mateo County Sheriff’s deputies are being pulled from patrolling the streets to staff the courts, a union representative said. 

This means cities that use the sheriff’s office as police departments like San Carlos, Half Moon Bay, Millbrae, Woodside and Portola Valley will have one less officer on weekdays usually between 8 a.m. – 5 p.m.

Deputy Sheriff’s Association (DSA) and Organization of Sheriff Sergeants (OSS) representative Terry Downing says the sheriff’s office is, “dangerously thin” and that some feel their concerns have been falling on, “deaf ears.”

This change began on Sept. 30 Downing said.

A Superior Court representative declined to comment on the story. 

The Sheriff’s Office did not respond to the Post.

Downing says this move by the sheriff’s office to pull officers from the street to help the courts is a public safety concern. 

“While Sheriff (Christina) Corpus claims to have hired 130 officers, those officers have been moved around within the department, they are not new hires,” Downing said. 

The unions say they need to retain officers and have more incentives for new hires according to Downing.

Meliora Public Safety Consulting, which was hired to evaluate the sheriff’s office, expressed alarm at the shortage of deputies.

“The office is at a critical juncture due to the number of vacancies, an issue that has been growing steadily over the past several years,” the report said. “The need to fill these positions and retain qualified staff is crucial.”

The sheriff’s department budget includes funding for 383 sworn positions and 440 non-sworn positions. The sworn positions are officers who can make an arrest and typically carry a gun.

As of January, the department only had 287 sworn employees — 25% less than recommended staffing levels — and 381 non-sworn workers.

Sheriff Corpus’ office commissioned the report. Seventy-seven workers left the sheriff’s department last year, including 34 who retired, 38 who quit and two who were fired. Among sheriff’s deputies, nine retired and 11 quit last year. The consultant recommended the department require exit interviews for departing employees to gain more insight into the departures, rather than continuing the interviews as optional.

These insights from the sheriff’s department come after the union has filed a complaint to the Public Employment Relations Board over “unfair labor practices” on Aug. 31. In the complaint they said that Corpus didn’t follow the law regarding how management is supposed to make changes in a unionized workplace. 

8 Comments

  1. Another interesting and needless turn of events. Sheriff Corpus hired Meliora Public Safety Consulting, where former San Mateo Police Chief Susan Manheimer is a Senior Associate, to complete a review of the Sheriff’s Office. Chief Manheimer has long had her sights set on both the county and the sheriff’s office as a landing spot since her retirement from SMPD. Yet if Sheriff Corpus actually had deeper involvement in SMSO before she ran, she may have had better understandings of successful staffing options, labor union and management dynamics, public purchasing requirements, guidelines and practices, or even budgeting.

    Most unfortunately what appears to have surfaced are the absence of institutional knowledge; it either never existed or has been lost with the changing of the guard brought by the election results. Through multiple administrations stability had grown, existed and sometimes faded some through Sheriffs Horsley, Munks and Bolanos. Perhaps somewhere between Judge Cordell’s report, the potential for a Grand Jury Investigation, and the remote, yet distinct, possibility of a future special election to fulfill the remainder of Sheriff Corpus’ lengthy term, much thought should be given to bringing back successful SMSO executives who may be able to steady the ship, regain the bearings of successful strategies, then hold a steady course in the interim before any special election.

    While an organizational assessment may have been valuable to those who know, or knew, the inner workings of SMSO, the Meliora Public Safety Consulting report may have largely been a waste of public funds. San Mateo County law enforcement is uniquely different than all its contiguous counties. A Strategic Plan, accompanied by an Implementation Plan, would have been more valuable to the organization.

    There are ways to fix what is going wrong. It just doesn’t look like the SMSO Executive Team has yet discerned those options. It appears unlikely that they will in their remaining time. They should let history inform their future and stop trying to manage using extinct theories like in-groups and out-groups. It appears to be time for an intervention. The SMSO organization appears to be at a critical crossroads and point; they need to move forward. Good coaches know that, and good coaches know when it’s time to walk away for the sake of all involved.

    • Exit interviews? You must be somebody that was on the last administration executive team. How come you never did exit interviews? Come to think of it you never even shook someone’s hand when they retired. The present executive team is just as rotten as the last one. It s good to be the king, oh piss boy?

  2. Exit interviews would confirm the disgust of rank and file members with the leadership of the Office, and will also confirm that that it’s the reason many veteran members are retiring early, or quitting. So, I doubt that Corpus and her handler Victor will follow up on that recommendation.

  3. With five deaths in the jail in less than two years, and now patrol deputies being pulled from their assignments, lawsuits stacking up, an investigation into her chief of staff, it’s safe to say Corpus doesn’t know how to run the sheriff’s department. The voters really blew it two years ago. If a recall petition starts, I’ll sign it.

  4. Per the Meliora assessment on pg. 154, it shows a 2022/23 overtime budget of $13,538,975, actual overtime expenditure of $26,755,412, a credit of salary savings due to understaffing of $5,734,944, which tally to overtime expenditures exceeding the budget by $7,481,493. Not only is Corpus burning out staff by being substantially understaffed, she’s substantially exceeding the payroll budget by millions. This is in addition to the recent report of the new headquarters burning through the reserves.

    Why hasn’t the County’s Finance Director fulfilled her fiduciary duty to stop the wasteful hemorrhaging of taxpayer dollars?

  5. A question for both Sheriff Corpus and the involved labor unions is whether this staffing deployment decision has been aligned with the parameters of the The Meyers-Milias-Brown Act (MMBA). MMBA is essentially a California law that regulates labor-management relations for local government agencies and their employees. MMBA requires public employers to meet and confer, with employee representatives, in good faith about matters related to employment conditions and employer-employee relations. Generally, most commonly those conditions are wages, hours, and working conditions. Was this memo and action preceded by a meet and confer process?

  6. Yet another series of lies and untruths from sheriff Corpus and her boy toy. What they are not telling you is a good portion of those hired are hired as part-time extra help people. So, two hires equals one full-time position.

    Start the recall already!

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