(Excerpted from Mendocino County Undersheriff Randy Johnson's report to the Board of Supervisors, September 8, 2015)
“It's difficult to get qualified candidates. Of the qualified candidates you do get there are still a percentage that don't make training, are not ready, for various reasons. And we have some who do fine and then decide after they've been on board for a relatively short period of time that it is not really what they had in mind, it's not what they like, they aren't really interested. We try to talk people into another position, if they say they want to leave. We've already done the background. We want them to remain a county employee and part of our family. But it just doesn't work out for various reasons.
We had one gentleman who looked really good, he finished training, was working well, then after a couple of months he decided it wasn't working out, it was too remote for his wife so he quit and went to Santa Barbara. So people will say yes, and give a commitment, and say they want to be there, but…
We also understand they are trying to get a job situation. If it doesn't work out for the family— we don't want to separate families, we don't want family issues because they are staying here and the family wants to move somewhere else or for various reasons they need to go somewhere different.
We have a person who is from out of state who is interested in the resident post in Covelo that we are excited about. He is going through the process of being certified in California. There may need to be some schooling and classes necessary. Until he has the certificate he is not eligible to apply for the job. Things like that can make the process longer.
We have the new deputy-in-training program which allows us to pay people while they are in the academy. If they pass, they come to work for us in some part of the county. That's been helpful but it has the same issues because they may not make training or they get training and then something else comes up.
Some of them are military personnel who are on reserve duty. We have not had anyone activated yet, but they are available for duty. It's problematic when reservists are in training because it can make it difficult for them to learn the new job. If they go away for reserve training it can expand their law enforcement training time.
The North Coast Sector is just about full now and we're about to fill a resident post on the South Coast.
Some recent retirements have cleared the way and improved the budget picture. We're working hard to fill vacant positions before the end of the fiscal year in June.
Since we have people back from injury and back on the street recently and we've made a few personnel changes, Deputy Walker has not had to cover Ukiah as much lately and spends more time in Anderson Valley.
A few years ago we hired somebody from the big city who had retired and was looking for something where he could slow down a little bit and stay in the community. It started out well but it didn't last very long. Everything was fine here, but he had started a security company after retirement and he left his son to run it and his son was having difficulty with it and there were family issues and he had to leave. He has not been back.
The biggest challenge is, it's certainly very isolated and there's not much there [in Covelo]. For instance if they bring a spouse and family it is difficult for them to be long term. It never seems to work out. We might get a recent retiree from another department who wants to slow down and be part of the community. Then they get here and there are all the callouts and they were looking to slow down a little, not be called out on their days off or while they're trying to sleep. Obviously none of us can control that. And there's a lack of activity for them to be involved in generally, so unless they are just going to be totally involved in the community and the job, that makes it very difficult when there's so little to offer.
Recent Academy grads are all willing to work wherever because they want a job. Generally it's not a wise business decision for us to put someone fresh out of the academy into a resident post though because they are still learning and they are far from done with training. It's difficult when the supervisors and supportive peers are not around, other than by phone. Then even if that happens they come here — and remember they have passed probation and they get that certificate — it's Have Gun Will Travel because most departments will offer more money than we do and more benefits and they move on somewhere for better benefits and more money.
It's well-known in law enforcement that the people we are hiring now are a totally different generation. They look at things totally differently. People ask why we don't do more recruiting and we answer that we get laughed out of the academy because other departments come and recruit and they're offering way more money. They also offer different job conditions and totally different things. When you're a new guy and you are going to the Academy you are looking at one thing: the bottom dollar, how much money you make. They don't look at how they have to commute for an hour or two. They don't look at how much they're going to be on call. Most of our staff has more experience in a year than they could get in most big departments in several years because they handle more kinds of things themselves. They don't call specialists to do work as much.
We could offer more money but we will never be able to offer the money to keep people from going to the big dollar departments. We try to make more of a family atmosphere. We take care of their training, their equipment, and we try to include the family in the schedules and be more flexible to try to keep them from going somewhere else. It works sometimes. But you can't change those people who are just looking for the dollars because Mendocino County will never have the kind of dollars to keep people from going to the big cities. When they are just looking at that, it's difficult to compete no matter what you offer. I'd like to see the staff get more bucks to recover from the 10% cut from before. But when you're out fighting against the big agencies with a lot of money— we can offer a beautiful location, we can offer a family atmosphere, we can offer training, equipment, but generally when they're coming out of the academy there looking at one thing, not retirement, but the bottom dollar. How much am I going to get paid? What is my take home?
Chasing bad guys is a young man's game. Right now it would be simple to fix the money issues such as reduced pension benefits. But in the long run it will hurt the [law enforcement] industry because people won't want to face bad guys and get attacked and potentially killed for less and less money. As you know one of our officers was killed recently and as we get further away from that it makes it a little easier. But when you see things in the news regularly, there are a lot of wives and mothers who will say they don't want their kids and their husbands going into law enforcement. They will find something else and for the most part they can find other things that pay pretty well and they don't take quite the risk that they take here. They don't get beat up, they don't get shot at, they don't get exposed to all kinds of different things. It's not easy. But we are not in this alone. Even departments with more money to offer experience shortages. They have retirements to fill. But it's harder for the small departments if you can't pay competitive rates. Maybe we can't pay what Sonoma County pays but we can make it enough to where you don't have to drive an hour to Sonoma County. But some will still go there.”
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