Close Crime Lab to Balance Budget?

You have to feel for the Fresno County Sheriff, but there seems to be a lot of “black or white” think­ing here as peo­ple pos­ture for the polit­i­cal bat­tle over the bud­get. Certainly clos­ing two floors of the prison, and releas­ing 500 felons early, dras­ti­cally lay­ing off deputies, or clos­ing the crime lab would help the depart­ment meet their bud­get goals, but all three groups rely on the other in order to do their job.

It doesn’t do any good to have a fully staffed prison and crime lab, if there are no deputies to arrest peo­ple, or sub­mit evi­dence to be processed.

It doesn’t do any good to have a full force of deputies and crime lab, if there is no where to put the peo­ple arrested, and evi­dence asso­ci­ated evi­dence that is foren­si­cally analyzed.

It also doesn’t do any good to have peo­ple being arrested by deputies, and open spaces in prison to put them, if there is a huge back­log in the state crime lab sys­tem because of an increased work­load due to local crime labs clos­ing their doors. Delays in crime lab evi­dence pro­cess­ing result is delays in peo­ple being tried in a courtroom.

The Fresno County’s Sheriff mas­sive bud­get cuts means she needs to resort to dras­tic mea­sures, which includes lay­offs and inmate releases.

Sheriff Margaret Mims faces a $3.9 mil­lion deficit for her depart­ment but other law enforce­ment and com­mu­nity lead­ers, includ­ing Fresno’s Mayor and Police Chief, are crit­i­ciz­ing the proposals.

At Tuesday’s Board of Supervisor’s meet­ing, Fresno County Sheriff Margaret Mims pro­posed lay­ing off 69 cor­rec­tional offi­cers, which means 2 to 3 floors of the jail, will be closed and more than 500 felony inmates will be released from jail early.

Members of SEIU, the union that rep­re­sents local cor­rec­tional offi­cers, say the Sheriff’s plan could have seri­ous consequences.

Correctional Officer Robert Capps said, “We feel that releas­ing these felony inmates puts the community’s safety in jeop­ardy.” This is also a con­cern Fresno Police Chief Jerry Dyer and other city rep­re­sen­ta­tives have expressed. Chief Dyer said, “To release them early sub­jects our cit­i­zenry to increased crime.” Fresno Mayor Ashley Swearengin said, “Obviously we’re very, very con­cerned about the early release of inmates.”

Fresno County Sheriff Margaret Mims says the county is fac­ing a huge bud­get deficit and has to find a solu­tion but some say lay­offs and early releases are not the answer.

Robert Capps said, “We are all sadly reminded that due to the last over­crowd­ing releases, a mur­der was com­mit­ted in the city of Kerman, involv­ing one of those felony inmates released.

The Sheriff’s Department defends the cuts, say­ing they will help avoid hav­ing to lay­off Sheriff Deputies that patrol the streets. Sheriff Mims said, “We only have just a lit­tle over two hun­dred Deputy Sheriffs countywide.”

Correctional Officer Robert Capps ques­tions if this strat­egy makes sense. Capps said, “You can have as many Deputies on the streets as you want but when they arrest some­body where are they going to take them? If they’re just get­ting processed right out the front door…”

SEIU says they will fight these lay­offs and they actu­ally have sug­ges­tions on how the county could save money, includ­ing clos­ing the county’s crime lab. They say the Sheriff’s Department could use the state’s crime lab for free and save an esti­mated one mil­lion dol­lars a year.

Perhaps the bet­ter solu­tion is cuts across all three?

Article orig­i­nally posted on the CBS47 web­site.