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Del Norte County Sheriff Garrett Scott said his office is surviving.
While others in the state can no longer provide 24-hour coverage, Scott said his deputies are doing an outstanding job with convictions.

But, he said, the number of deputies has dwindled by 10 over the past decade. Only one or two are on duty during a shift, making it difficult to respond to crimes at opposite ends of the county.

The sheriff also mentioned the most recent Grand Jury report, which painted a grim picture of an aging jail that’s understaffed, in disrepair and is largely out of compliance with state regulations.

However, the DNSO is still fielding 15,000 calls for service and booking 2,060 inmates into the jail every year, Scott said. Between 500 and 600 inmates are booked into the jail every three months, and, Scott said, there are only nine correctional officers.

Speaking before the Board of Supervisors on Wednesday, Scott said he needed to be able to recruit and retain more people. He’d also like at least two full-time maintenance employees assigned to the jail as well as a dedicated human resources professional.

“We’ve got to send local people to the academy so we can retain them,” Scott said. “We’ve seen all these recent statistics, you know, $295,000 for a home. It’s going to be a $39-an-hour employee that’s going to be able to afford that home. I think if we stick local, if we continue to hire local people, we’re going to get there, but that’s where we’re at right now — with one deputy on shift, maybe two.”

Scott fielded questions about the transition of Animal Control under his office’s umbrella. According to him, most sheriff’s offices aren’t responsible for animal control anymore.

“What I learned is that about 98 percent of what animal control does has absolutely no law enforcement component to it,” he said. “Realistically, staffing it was difficult in the beginning. We’re doing better in that area. But we have an enormous amount of animals that just keep coming in.”

Staffing:
In 2014, Del Norte County had 24 patrol deputies and 10 correctional officers. It currently has 14 patrol deputies and nine correctional officers.

In response to a question from District 2 Supervisor Valerie Starkey, Scott said he continues to budget for 24 patrol deputies, though that number has steadily decreased over the past decade.

Scott said he’s focusing on sending local recruits to the police academy. He said it takes about four to five months to recruit someone, six months for them to go through the academy and about four months of field training before they’re able to be on their own. One is currently at the academy, he said.

Scott said he’s also waiting on the outcome of a compensation study the county is conducting. While he threw out $39-an-hour as being needed for a potential deputy to afford a home, Scott said the Board might consider having the county pay for a larger share of the employee’s health insurance or retirement contribution.

He said he wasn’t necessarily suggesting that the county offer $39-an-hour wages to deputies, though he mentioned that either Mendocino or Yuba County are offering $42 “walking in the door,” while Lake County offers $38 an hour.

Scott said one solution he heard of came from “one of the northern counties,” which eliminated positions that had been vacant for years in an effort to increase the pay they were able to offer to their deputies.

He said Sutter County did something similar, adding that it’s similar to Del Norte County in that it competes with higher-paying organizations.

“They also had a lot of smaller police departments around them too and they were all in competition,” he said. “They were able to attract [more] whether that was sending more people to the academy or [hiring] a few laterals.”

District 1 Supervisor Darrin Short mentioned a Law Enforcement Administrators of Del Norte meeting where he proposed organizing a drug task force. He said Lt. Cmdr. Pete Roach, of the California Highway Patrol, said they’d be interested but didn’t have the staff.

The Crescent City Police Department was also on board as was State Parks, Short said. But the sheriff’s office is understaffed as well, he said.

“If we were to do something like you’re talking about and reduce staffing and increase pay in that reduced staffing — organizational chart — would we be able to still work to reduce drugs and these other atrocities that are going on in our county?” Short asked, raising concerns about possible human trafficking. “Or would we just be skating by with a kind of skeleton crew?”

Scott said the DNSO’s K9 unit, Zuko and his partner, Dep. Lucas Brittain, has been effective at addressing drug enforcement. There’s funding available for another K9 unit as well, but he has to find a deputy to fill those shoes.

Scott said he’d go before the Board of Supervisors soon to ask for that funding to be released.

“As far as a drug unit, there are some resources to fund those positions and different ways to do that,” he said. “I do have two employees that have worked the narcotics division prior so we do have people with quite a bit of experience.”

Scott said CCPD, Parks and the CHP might be more eager to form a drug task force once he’s able to find more deputies to staff it.

Challenges at the Jail
Scott’s discussion with the Board of Supervisors on Wednesday came little more than a month after the Grand Jury released its 2023-24 report. Following its investigation, the Grand Jury stated the jail is understaffed and is out of compliance with Board of State and Community Corrections regulations.

New hires often stay only one year and then leave, and because of staffing shortages employees sometimes work 12-hour shifts, according to the Grand Jury’s report.

The Grand Jury’s report also stated that the building itself was in disrepair with chipped floor tiles and counters, mold and asbestos contamination, flooded toilets and broken windows.

Board Chairman Dean Wilson said the lack of maintenance is an officer safety issue and “should not be allowed to exist period.” Wilson represents District 5 and was Del Norte County Sheriff for about 12 years until he lost to Erik Apperson in 2014.

On Wednesday, Wilson referred to $3 million in congressionally directed spending Del Norte received courtesy of the late U.S. senator, Dianne Feinstein. Wilson said he was frustrated that it’s being used to rehabilitate the old side of the jail, which was constructed in 1964. According to Wilson, this side is exempt from the BSCC.

“We have no bed utilization and now we’re going to spend $3.5 million to renovate that side when those aren’t really key issues that are my concern,” he said. “My concern is officer safety issues, the lack of cameras in some cases, also broken windows and hasps on booking doors … and the fact that we’ve become a de-facto mental health facility and the condition those individuals are maintained [in] and the fact that because of their behavior problems they destroy the facility. You’re also having inmates exposed to their behavior — how would you like to be living next to a psychotic day-in and day-out?”


Wilson also aired his grievances about AB 109 jail realignment, saying that while he had asked for those dollars to remodel the jail, the county was unable to pay its contribution for that project.

“We had designs and everything else ready to go,” he said. “But we could never meet the match.”

Scott said a building and maintenance department head Allen Winogradov keeps one of his staffers at the jail. However a second staff member will probably be needed to address the broken windows, chipped tile and other issues raised in the Grand Jury report

In its report, the Grand Jury stated that maintenance response was slow if it comes at all. It urged the county to investigate the problem with maintenance.

On Wednesday, Scott mentioned his response to the Grand Jury’s report, stating that he doesn’t control the building and maintenance department.

“That would fall on the Board of Supervisors and whether they have correct funding,” he said, adding that while building and maintenance “basically do their own thing,” it takes about three to four days for them to get a job done.

“Some of those things in the jail are complex. Ordering glass is probably not easy. It takes a lot of time; you don’t have a lot of glass shops in town. I do know we’re going to get ourselves into a real problem if we don’t address it and from my standpoint I don’t control it, so all I can do is tell the Board.”

Animal Control
Noting that it’s been a couple of years since the Board of Supervisors “dumped” animal control into the sheriff’s office, Starkey asked Scott how that’s been working.

“Is there anything else you would like the Board to know?” she asked. “Because we did ask you to do a heavy lift on that and I want to make sure we’re knowing what your needs are and make sure we respond to them.”

Scott said he put in a request for Measure R tax funding to install new fencing and nicer equipment at the animal shelter on Washington Boulevard. There’s an old single-wide trailer on the property that may need asbestos remediation and expanding the kennel building is also important.

Last year, Scott said he obtained three quotes to fence the property. He said it would cost about $25,000 to fence the area that fronts Washington Boulevard and install a new gate.

“There’s also a horse trailer. It’s actually a livestock trailer — the lights don’t work, the brakes don’t work, it’s just old,” he said. “They’re driving an F150 pickup truck with no brakes on a horse trailer to pick up livestock. It’s dangerous and it should not be happening, so there’s a truck and a horse trailer in that Measure R request.”

Scott said the building that houses the Animal Services Division’s office also needs repairs. He said he set aside $30,000 to remodel the inside.

That said, the sheriff added, staffing is also a concern.

“If my staffing continues the way it is, I don’t have any way to continue to manage animal control. I don’t have any people to manage it,” he said. “Most of that’s coming through me. You have a supervisor that’s there right now that can be a manager pretty easily and it would not be all that costly. Whether you want to put it under a different department head or make that person a department head, that’s a Board choice. But that could be something to talk about.”

Both Starkey and Wilson said they felt a nonprofit organization should care for the animals at the shelter and handle their adoption. If law enforcement is involved, it should only be in enforcing code and filing animal cruelty cases, Wilson said.

“There should only be a few animals under animal control,” he said.

According to County Administrative Officer Neal Lopez, discussions about human resources specific to the sheriff’s office as well as maintenance at the jail has just begun at the department level.

Lopez said the budget team and the sheriff have also discussed stipends, wages and the conditions at the jail.

“There are a ton of things being discussed,” he said. “And how we afford to do all those things, how we implement all those things, what the priority is — is a risk manager/HR position a priority over stipends for your safety officers or do we eliminate something else in the general fund to do both? — there are conversations ongoing for those positions.”

At the Board’s June 25 meeting, Lopez, Auditor-Controller Clinton Schaad and Assistant CAO Randy Hooper presented supervisors with an overall recommended 2024-25 fiscal year budget of $182,513,391 and a general fund budget of $40,386,950.

The Board of Supervisors must adopt a final budget by Oct. 2.

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