6d) Discussion and Possible Action Including Acceptance of Presentation by South Coast Organizing for Radical Equity Encouraging Independent Performance and Fiscal Audit of the Mendocino County Sheriff's Office, Including Jail
(Sponsor: Supervisor Williams)
An indepedent audit is just good and sound business and government practice. It's not a witch hunt! And it's great that everyone thinks that everyone else is doing a great job, but it's not an independent evaluation.
How can you advocate hiring consultants to help with a strategic plan and how to set up a county government, when you don't have an independent starting point in terms of budget, spending, policies and practice evaluations? I'm surprised at the defensiveness I'm seeing in this room and questioning why this is such a challenge? It is frankly disturbing.
I think this proposal is ridiculous, although I have often been a "coastal liberal"! There are other departments screaming for an audit in my opinion and this is not one of them. I spend much of my day tracking news reports and this looks like a politically correct projection of law enforcement issues on our community!
This independent performance and fiscal audit will help the BOS, and, in fact, the sheriff's office and jail, make decisions about what funding is being used most efficiently and what processes can be refined to be more efficient in meeting goals of the BOS and county residents. An audit is necessary at this point as the sheriff's office has been requesting various increases in funds, changing the amount needed, without substantive evidence and therefore begs the question as to what the money is being spent on. However, this audit is not just about the current people in the sheriff's office but in fact information should be sought in this audit to go back into the past as well, so that trends over time can be analyzed, it is not about individuals but about getting an accurate view of the situation. I encourage the BOS to pursue this audit despite the recent statement from the sheriff's office to the contrary, as you know, this audit is a 3rd party independent audit and should be more in-depth than the yearly audit done by our own county auditors. Matt Kendall's statement that if the South Coast wants accurate information about his budget and processes then he will remove his deputies from the area is the most classic example of defensiveness possible. Of course I can't imagine he would really do that, but it sounds like he is willing to sacrifice public safety in a whole region of the county because residents there want to ask questions. His statement makes it sound like people must unilaterally support his department and not ask any questions or they will not receive help from his office if it is needed. This is a very political move on his part, to scare people by calling them witch-hunters, and utterly illegal. As a new sheriff, he could easily embrace the audit as a way to learn more about how the department has functioned over time, and I encourage you to pursue this audit and provide him with the long-view information that could be used for accurate planning for the future.
Thank you, Andy Wellspring 4th District.
As a resident and business owner in Mendocino County, I would like to voice my support for an audit of the Sheriff's Office and other related Public Protection budget areas. I think it would be helpful to the BOS to make more informed budgeting and spending decisions, as well as good information for the citizens of Mendocino Co. to better understand the budget/spending of our district. I believe that it is important to have enough funding for mental health services, education, and other areas that serve our community and this is the first step in assuring that is the case. I would like to make clear this is a request for a third party audit and not an "unguided examination" .
This independent audit would give us a basis for looking at Public Protection in a bigger sense. The role of policing has overwhelmed police departments. Too many situations involve matters that are not within their training - Mental Health, Spousal Abuse, homelessness. We need to know what the Sheriff's Department is currently doing so that we can build better community alliances and more effective services.
So glad that SCORE has started the ball rolling so we will have some transparency from MSCO and the jail. My hope is that the audit will show ways we can better serve our community. It should be good for community, for the BoS, and for the Sheriff as well. Policing is changing all over the country, for the better and I'm excited that Mendocino County will be part of that positive change.
I support a thorough audit of the Sheriff’s Office and the entire "Public Protection" budget category, to understand how our tens of millions of tax dollars are being spent on policing and Jail in our County. The lack of transparency of the Sheriff's Office and Jail operations is a major problem. The public does not even know how many people are being held in Jail, for what alleged crimes, or can't afford bail. Meanwhile, the Sheriff's Office budget is over $26 million and the Jail operations budget an additional $10 million, every year for the last three years — and there is a $27 million jail expansion plan in the works. The budget includes items like 10 brand new vehicles in last year's budget — yet Sheriff Matt Kendall keeps asking for more from the Board of Supervisors (he recently made a $4 million request to stop "cannabis crime" without any evidence of it), and he refers to the Dept. as "currently historically underfunded" in a recent Mendo Voice news article, which doesn't make sense. We need an audit before we can discuss how our tax dollars might be better spent on education, healthcare, social services, transportation, environmental protection, and many other important services.
Furthermore, as the COVID-19 pandemic continues (with this morning's sober warning from our Public Health Officer Dr. Coren that Mendocino County is experiencing a surge and may soon reenter the orange tier) I am concerned about the people in County Jail — mostly people of color — who are vulnerable. The Sheriff completely ignored our community’s calls to prevent an outbreak in the Jail (a letter sent in September 2020) until it was too late! There was a major outbreak of COVID in the jail in December/January 2021 and one incarcerated person died.
Please authorize an audit of the Sheriff's Office as a first step towards commonsense policymaking on the criminal justice system in our County.
I am in very strong support for an audit of our county's sheriff office and jail, both to obtain more information on how they utilize their funding, as well as their policies and practices. There is very little transparency in the way our sheriff's office runs and uses taxpayer dollars, and we have seen many examples of brutality, neglect, and abuse of power over the years. Why should an entity with the ability to do so much harm in our communities (and a history of doing so) answer only to themselves? The lack of public information surrounding the MCSO and jail should be concerning to all of us. Any department with the purpose of serving the community should be transparent and be held accountable to our community. The financial cost of this audit will easily be made up by a lessening of both unnecessary funding asks, and settlements resulting from misconduct. I know that I, personally would feel much safer knowing that those policing and jailing our community are required to answer to more than just themselves.
-Katie Alibrio, 4th district
I support an independent and transparent audit of the MCSO (including the jail). It is a responsible practice for any public office to have their finances and practices reviewed to ensure fiscal responsibility in the use of taxpayer money and to determine if their current practices are supporting residents, or if updates are needed. I am aware of recent requests my MSCO for increased funding, but to determine if that is needed, we first need to know how the current funds are being used. The cost of an audit would be less than previous settlements due to misconduct and enable us to save money in the long-term. Having baseline data on MSCO operations will enable informed decisions going forward for this county, as has been seen from other such audits in California. Thank you for your consideration.
I support an independent audit of the Mendocino County Sheriff's Office. Recent presentations from the sheriff to the Board suggest that there are significant gaps in the office's understanding of their own financial situation. In addition, the sheriff has shown a lack of understanding of the concerns with implicit bias in policing, and his office has drug their feet on making it clear how the department is operating. The citizens of the county deserve to have a clearer understanding on what are currently mostly opaque operations of the sheriff's office.
I strongly oppose a searching and unguided examination of Mendocino County law enforcement budget. I do however support a factual, objective audit that's done on a comparative basis, by using statistics from other rural counties in California with similar populations on a per-capita basis. This is a reasonable approach that helps prevent any sort of bias from entering the conversation over the results. One easy statistic that quickly comes to mind as a basis of comparison to other rural counties: how many residents per square mile and how many Sheriff Deputy FTEs serve those residents? And then from that comparison there needs to also be an efficiency analysis. For example, how many violent or other serious crimes occur per FTE, and how is that rate affected by a decrease or increase in Sheriff's deputy FTEs? These are factual statistics that should be easy enough to research and compare.
I support an independent and transparent audit of MCSO. Audits are important as checks and balances on executive power and as a way for the public to make data-driven decisions about where to spend taxpayer money. Personally, I think that law enforcement agencies are tasked with too many (and too varied) responsibilities, for instance first response in mental health crisis scenarios. At best, this comes at inefficient expense to the public. At worst, it comes at the expense of human safety. Historically, local governments have attempted to remedy this by investing further in law enforcement so that law enforcement agencies are more competent at these additional responsibilities. Perhaps it's time to consider divesting from law enforcement agencies, streamlining their responsibilities, and allocating funds to other specialist organizations. With a successful audit, we will have at least some data to help us make informed decisions one way or the other.
I support an audit of the Sheriff's office. Our county spends a significant portion of the budget on law enforcement and we should be sure the money is being spent well. Perhaps some funds would be better spend for mental health services.
I strongly support an audit of MCSO, including of the jail. A 3rd party audit that is both financial and demographic in nature, as SCORE is proposing, will be essential in providing the County with the necessary baseline data we will need in order to make informed spending and policy decisions, relating to public protection, as we move forward. Currently, there is a lack of publicly available data on the details of the Sheriff's Office spending and on jail demographics and conditions. There have been concerning instances of misconduct that have arisen over the years, some resulting in settlements that have cost tax payers millions of dollars. The cost of an audit will be significantly less than the cost of those settlements, less than the Sheriff's recent budget increase requests, and will hopefully save our county money in the long run, all the while ensuring residents are being kept safe as efficiently and effectively as possible. Thanks so much to all of you for your time and consideration!
Dear Board of Supervisors, I whole heartedly support the audit of the sheriff's office and jail. I am aware of recent attempts to include more mental health services in the sheriff's department, including in the jail. I completely support these ideas, but I think an audit is important. With an audit everyone; sheriff's department, social services, and the general public, will see where the money has been spent and will better be able to see exactly how we can improve and what resources we have going forward. You can't plan for change if you don't know exactly what mistakes may have been made in the past, and what resources are or could be available now. The information an audit would provide would help everyone avoid past mistakes and plan for a better use of time and money going forward. The public needs to be informed, but I think an audit will give better information to the sherrif's department and to the Board of Supervisors as well. Being better informed makes everyone more accountable. I support the audit. Sincerely, Judy Stavely, resident Mendocino 5th district
An indepedent audit is just good and sound business and government practice. It's not a witch hunt! And it's great that everyone thinks that everyone else is doing a great job, but it's not an independent evaluation.
How can you advocate hiring consultants to help with a strategic plan and how to set up a county government, when you don't have an independent starting point in terms of budget, spending, policies and practice evaluations? I'm surprised at the defensiveness I'm seeing in this room and questioning why this is such a challenge? It is frankly disturbing.
I think this proposal is ridiculous, although I have often been a "coastal liberal"! There are other departments screaming for an audit in my opinion and this is not one of them. I spend much of my day tracking news reports and this looks like a politically correct projection of law enforcement issues on our community!
This independent performance and fiscal audit will help the BOS, and, in fact, the sheriff's office and jail, make decisions about what funding is being used most efficiently and what processes can be refined to be more efficient in meeting goals of the BOS and county residents. An audit is necessary at this point as the sheriff's office has been requesting various increases in funds, changing the amount needed, without substantive evidence and therefore begs the question as to what the money is being spent on. However, this audit is not just about the current people in the sheriff's office but in fact information should be sought in this audit to go back into the past as well, so that trends over time can be analyzed, it is not about individuals but about getting an accurate view of the situation. I encourage the BOS to pursue this audit despite the recent statement from the sheriff's office to the contrary, as you know, this audit is a 3rd party independent audit and should be more in-depth than the yearly audit done by our own county auditors. Matt Kendall's statement that if the South Coast wants accurate information about his budget and processes then he will remove his deputies from the area is the most classic example of defensiveness possible. Of course I can't imagine he would really do that, but it sounds like he is willing to sacrifice public safety in a whole region of the county because residents there want to ask questions. His statement makes it sound like people must unilaterally support his department and not ask any questions or they will not receive help from his office if it is needed. This is a very political move on his part, to scare people by calling them witch-hunters, and utterly illegal. As a new sheriff, he could easily embrace the audit as a way to learn more about how the department has functioned over time, and I encourage you to pursue this audit and provide him with the long-view information that could be used for accurate planning for the future.
Thank you, Andy Wellspring 4th District.
As a resident and business owner in Mendocino County, I would like to voice my support for an audit of the Sheriff's Office and other related Public Protection budget areas. I think it would be helpful to the BOS to make more informed budgeting and spending decisions, as well as good information for the citizens of Mendocino Co. to better understand the budget/spending of our district. I believe that it is important to have enough funding for mental health services, education, and other areas that serve our community and this is the first step in assuring that is the case. I would like to make clear this is a request for a third party audit and not an "unguided examination" .
This independent audit would give us a basis for looking at Public Protection in a bigger sense. The role of policing has overwhelmed police departments. Too many situations involve matters that are not within their training - Mental Health, Spousal Abuse, homelessness. We need to know what the Sheriff's Department is currently doing so that we can build better community alliances and more effective services.
So glad that SCORE has started the ball rolling so we will have some transparency from MSCO and the jail. My hope is that the audit will show ways we can better serve our community. It should be good for community, for the BoS, and for the Sheriff as well. Policing is changing all over the country, for the better and I'm excited that Mendocino County will be part of that positive change.
I support a thorough audit of the Sheriff’s Office and the entire "Public Protection" budget category, to understand how our tens of millions of tax dollars are being spent on policing and Jail in our County. The lack of transparency of the Sheriff's Office and Jail operations is a major problem. The public does not even know how many people are being held in Jail, for what alleged crimes, or can't afford bail. Meanwhile, the Sheriff's Office budget is over $26 million and the Jail operations budget an additional $10 million, every year for the last three years — and there is a $27 million jail expansion plan in the works. The budget includes items like 10 brand new vehicles in last year's budget — yet Sheriff Matt Kendall keeps asking for more from the Board of Supervisors (he recently made a $4 million request to stop "cannabis crime" without any evidence of it), and he refers to the Dept. as "currently historically underfunded" in a recent Mendo Voice news article, which doesn't make sense. We need an audit before we can discuss how our tax dollars might be better spent on education, healthcare, social services, transportation, environmental protection, and many other important services.
Furthermore, as the COVID-19 pandemic continues (with this morning's sober warning from our Public Health Officer Dr. Coren that Mendocino County is experiencing a surge and may soon reenter the orange tier) I am concerned about the people in County Jail — mostly people of color — who are vulnerable. The Sheriff completely ignored our community’s calls to prevent an outbreak in the Jail (a letter sent in September 2020) until it was too late! There was a major outbreak of COVID in the jail in December/January 2021 and one incarcerated person died.
Please authorize an audit of the Sheriff's Office as a first step towards commonsense policymaking on the criminal justice system in our County.
I am in very strong support for an audit of our county's sheriff office and jail, both to obtain more information on how they utilize their funding, as well as their policies and practices. There is very little transparency in the way our sheriff's office runs and uses taxpayer dollars, and we have seen many examples of brutality, neglect, and abuse of power over the years. Why should an entity with the ability to do so much harm in our communities (and a history of doing so) answer only to themselves? The lack of public information surrounding the MCSO and jail should be concerning to all of us. Any department with the purpose of serving the community should be transparent and be held accountable to our community. The financial cost of this audit will easily be made up by a lessening of both unnecessary funding asks, and settlements resulting from misconduct. I know that I, personally would feel much safer knowing that those policing and jailing our community are required to answer to more than just themselves.
-Katie Alibrio, 4th district
I support an independent and transparent audit of the MCSO (including the jail). It is a responsible practice for any public office to have their finances and practices reviewed to ensure fiscal responsibility in the use of taxpayer money and to determine if their current practices are supporting residents, or if updates are needed. I am aware of recent requests my MSCO for increased funding, but to determine if that is needed, we first need to know how the current funds are being used. The cost of an audit would be less than previous settlements due to misconduct and enable us to save money in the long-term. Having baseline data on MSCO operations will enable informed decisions going forward for this county, as has been seen from other such audits in California. Thank you for your consideration.
I support an independent audit of the Mendocino County Sheriff's Office. Recent presentations from the sheriff to the Board suggest that there are significant gaps in the office's understanding of their own financial situation. In addition, the sheriff has shown a lack of understanding of the concerns with implicit bias in policing, and his office has drug their feet on making it clear how the department is operating. The citizens of the county deserve to have a clearer understanding on what are currently mostly opaque operations of the sheriff's office.
I strongly oppose a searching and unguided examination of Mendocino County law enforcement budget. I do however support a factual, objective audit that's done on a comparative basis, by using statistics from other rural counties in California with similar populations on a per-capita basis. This is a reasonable approach that helps prevent any sort of bias from entering the conversation over the results. One easy statistic that quickly comes to mind as a basis of comparison to other rural counties: how many residents per square mile and how many Sheriff Deputy FTEs serve those residents? And then from that comparison there needs to also be an efficiency analysis. For example, how many violent or other serious crimes occur per FTE, and how is that rate affected by a decrease or increase in Sheriff's deputy FTEs? These are factual statistics that should be easy enough to research and compare.
I support an independent and transparent audit of MCSO. Audits are important as checks and balances on executive power and as a way for the public to make data-driven decisions about where to spend taxpayer money. Personally, I think that law enforcement agencies are tasked with too many (and too varied) responsibilities, for instance first response in mental health crisis scenarios. At best, this comes at inefficient expense to the public. At worst, it comes at the expense of human safety. Historically, local governments have attempted to remedy this by investing further in law enforcement so that law enforcement agencies are more competent at these additional responsibilities. Perhaps it's time to consider divesting from law enforcement agencies, streamlining their responsibilities, and allocating funds to other specialist organizations. With a successful audit, we will have at least some data to help us make informed decisions one way or the other.
I support an audit of the Sheriff's office. Our county spends a significant portion of the budget on law enforcement and we should be sure the money is being spent well. Perhaps some funds would be better spend for mental health services.
I strongly support an audit of MCSO, including of the jail. A 3rd party audit that is both financial and demographic in nature, as SCORE is proposing, will be essential in providing the County with the necessary baseline data we will need in order to make informed spending and policy decisions, relating to public protection, as we move forward. Currently, there is a lack of publicly available data on the details of the Sheriff's Office spending and on jail demographics and conditions. There have been concerning instances of misconduct that have arisen over the years, some resulting in settlements that have cost tax payers millions of dollars. The cost of an audit will be significantly less than the cost of those settlements, less than the Sheriff's recent budget increase requests, and will hopefully save our county money in the long run, all the while ensuring residents are being kept safe as efficiently and effectively as possible. Thanks so much to all of you for your time and consideration!
Dear Board of Supervisors, I whole heartedly support the audit of the sheriff's office and jail. I am aware of recent attempts to include more mental health services in the sheriff's department, including in the jail. I completely support these ideas, but I think an audit is important. With an audit everyone; sheriff's department, social services, and the general public, will see where the money has been spent and will better be able to see exactly how we can improve and what resources we have going forward. You can't plan for change if you don't know exactly what mistakes may have been made in the past, and what resources are or could be available now. The information an audit would provide would help everyone avoid past mistakes and plan for a better use of time and money going forward. The public needs to be informed, but I think an audit will give better information to the sherrif's department and to the Board of Supervisors as well. Being better informed makes everyone more accountable. I support the audit. Sincerely, Judy Stavely, resident Mendocino 5th district