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‘Open Season On Our Law-Abiding Residents’: California Sheriff’s Dept. Cancels Daytime Patrols Due To Officer Shortage

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Staffing problems are forcing the sheriff’s office for California’s Tehama County to suspend patrols during the day, the office claims.

The sheriff’s office is set to stop daytime patrols beginning Sunday, calling it “necessary to manage a catastrophic staffing shortage throughout the agency,” according to a press release sent to the Daily Caller News Foundation. The press release linked employee recruitment and retention issues to “pay disparities” and described “an inability to present enticing recruitment efforts.”

“Most recently, staffing shortages in the custody division forced the Sheriff’s Office to reassign Deputies to from the operations division to fill vacancies within the courts and jail facility,” the release said. “This is unfortunate, but necessary restructuring has left the operations division with insufficient staff to sustain 24-hour patrol services.”

Centrally located in northern California, Tehama County was home to around 65,000 estimated residents in 2021, according to the Census Bureau. Its seat Red Bluff, with a population 14,308, saw 133 reported violent crimes in 2019, according to data collected by the FBI.

The sheriff’s office said deputies assigned to night shifts would “triage and respond to the open, non-emergency calls” throughout the day.

The Tehama County Deputy Sheriff’s Association pledged in a Nov. 7 Facebook post that they would continue to do everything possible for Tehama County’s citizens, claiming they had long spoken to the Tehama County Board of Supervisors and warned them about low staffing levels. “Rather than take swift and decisive action, they have delayed and allowed too many good employees to leave,” the association argued. “Over many years, the county has seen a lack of day patrol due to court hearings, illnesses, vacations, injuries and various other reasons. A lack of day patrol is not new, especially in today’s environment where it is very tough to be a deputy or correctional officer,” the board said in a statement critical of the sheriff’s office last week, The Los Angeles Times reported. “What is new is a willingness to publicize this structural weakness to criminals right before the holiday season and declare open season on our law-abiding residents and visitors.”