By Teri Figueroa
The San Diego Union-Tribune
SAN DIEGO — After more than two years of requiring deputies to work overtime in the face of staffing shortages, the San Diego County Sheriff’s Office is no longer mandating its sworn staff work extra shifts.
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The change drew a thumbs-up from the deputies’ union, but it’s a plan that relies on volunteers to cover shifts. It also follows a combination of condensing operations and moving people around “to maximize our efficiency and safety despite our limited resources,” Undersheriff Rich Williams said.
There are still plenty of shifts to be covered, and lack of staffing remains a concern for the Sheriff’s Office, as it does for many law enforcement agencies. On the upside, last year brought a promising reversal: a net gain in deputies.
As of now, the staffing gaps are primarily filled by voluntary overtime workers and by newly hired deputies working straight time instead of overtime. Plus, workers have also been moved to different facilities or areas to plug holes.
Staffers stepping up to take extra hours on their own accord matters quite a bit.
“That allows us now to take away the mandated portion of it,” Williams said. “And as long as people keep working voluntarily to cover the vacancies we have, we’ll be OK.”
In a video last month announcing the end of mandatory overtime, Sheriff Kelly Martinez said she is “very confident” staffers will continue to work necessary shifts voluntarily.
Last fiscal year, the Sheriff’s Office spent $94 million on overtime costs, and nearly $50 million of that was spent paying overtime in the jails. Overtime on patrol accounts for the second biggest chunk, at nearly $36 million.
Williams noted that while the overtime costs are unsustainable, “the cost of not providing essential services in patrol, courts and detentions is much higher.”
“We will not compromise in providing the highest quality public safety services to everyone in San Diego County,” he said.
The office has also shuffled around staffers to cover key positions, although that might create headaches for law enforcement agencies in North County until early 2025: The Vista jail is no longer allowing law enforcement officers to take female arrestees in for booking. Law enforcement officers must drive the women they arrest directly to Las Colinas in Santee — a roughly hour-long haul from Oceanside in normal traffic. The reason? Las Colinas had a large number of staffing holes to fill, and the law requires certain positions at the women’s jail be covered by female deputies.
The larger problem lies in too few qualified people applying for law enforcement jobs, not just locally but across the country. The U.S. Department of Justice has said recruiting and retention of qualified candidates was in “a historic crisis.”
Williams said the office had a better year than last in terms of recruiting and retaining staffers, gaining 53 more deputies this last fiscal year than it lost. Two years ago, they came up short, losing 11 more deputies than they gained.
“We’re seeing a positive trend in hiring, and that does help us, but we are not out from under the vacancies we have to fill,” Williams said.
The Sheriff’s Office said earlier this year that it needed more than 300 new deputies, although that’s not for patrol jobs, but for deputies to work in courtrooms and detention facilities.
The Sheriff’s Office has more than 4,100 staffers and an annual budget of $1.2 billion. It handles law enforcement in nine cities, from Imperial Beach to Vista , as well as the county’s unincorporated areas. In addition to running the county’s seven jails, which house about 4,000 people a day, it provides security in the state courts.
The president of the Sheriff’s Deputies Association , the deputies’ union, emailed the Union-Tribune a statement in favor of the change.
“We support the sheriff eliminating mandatory overtime as it will allow deputies to manage their overtime on a voluntary basis and help deputies that struggle working the mandatory hours, and for those having difficulty finding childcare while working mandatory overtime,” President Michael O’Deane said.
He said the union will continue to work with the Sheriff’s Office to “incentivize voluntary overtime when shifts fall to critical staffing levels,” to ensure that neither the public nor the deputies are put in danger by “unsafe staffing levels.”
Last year, the union issued a lengthy press release highlighting concerns about the overtime requirements and saying mandating overtime “on already tired and overworked deputies has taken a severe toll.” It also said: “In a career that already takes an emotional toll on its workforce, simply forcing employees to work more is unacceptable.”
The mandatory overtime requirement first started in 2018 but was only for deputies who worked in certain jails where staffing was short and the shifts had to be covered. Overtime requirements were specific to each facility, and only when needed.
At one point, some deputies were required to pick up an extra 12½-hour shift every two weeks. But administrators found ways to slash that number, and in November, dropped the overtime requirement to just one shift a month.
Sworn staff may be free from the mandatory overtime, but others, including 911 call takers and dispatchers, are still working under required overtime.
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