Sierra Wave Media

Eastern Sierra News for December 26, 2024

 

 

 

 

Press releases from the Mono County Sheriff’s Office

The Mono County Sheriff’s Office experienced substantial fiscal reductions to its budget due to the economic downturn of recent years. Our budget for this fiscal year (15/16) is two-thirds of what it was just five years ago. Four Deputy Sheriff vacant positions were “frozen” in the last fiscal year (14/15) budget.

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Additionally, in the spirit of shared sacrifice, the Deputy Sheriffs’ Association agreed to
contract concessions, taking furloughs and raising the employee contribution to the California Public Employees Retirement System.

In the current budget, the Sheriff’s Office was allocated funding for the last two fiscal year quarters to fill two of the four vacant Deputy Sheriff positions and all of Public Safety Officer (jailer and dispatcher) positions.

Due to attrition, the Sheriff’s Office has lost additional personnel, bringing ourcurrent vacancies to six (6) Deputy Sheriff and five (5) Public Safety Officer positions.

We anticipate three (3) additional field Deputies leaving the force in the upcoming months. Recent recruiting efforts and application processes have not been successful in filling most of those vacancies.

The Sheriff’s Office has been staffing patrol assignments this past year with a combination of overtime and administrative personnel working the field responding to calls for service. This is a less than ideal situation as the long hours have taken a toll on the entire force.

With our current staffing levels and anticipated departures, this situation mandates that field patrol force hours be reduced from the current seven-day coverage of 6 a.m. to midnight to seven-day coverage from noon to midnight.

We will continue to have a supervisor on-duty from 6 a.m. to midnight every day.
Administrative personnel will supplement the patrol force whenever possible.

Mono County residents and visitors are encouraged to continue to request calls for service as our dispatch is staffed 24 hours a day. Off-hour requests necessitating a response will require the response of field personnel from their residence. The Sheriff’s Office has a responsibility to provide law enforcement service, and we will continue to provide the best service possible, given the resources we have.

We are continuing our recruitment efforts, searching for quality men and women with law enforcement experience who have the desire to live and work in Mono County.

The Mono County Sheriff’s Office welcomes community comments and input as we work for a long term solution.

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In an effort to combat emerging crime trends, the Mono County Sheriff’s Office has initiated a compliance effort directed towards offenders required to register as a sex offender and report their residence.

This includes compliance checks of those offenders who are currently on court ordered probation. This is an effort to utilize evidence-based policing, with a focus on emerging community concerns and crime trends.

Recent legislative changes in criminal offense classifications from felonies to misdemeanors have necessitated greater scrutiny by line-level law enforcement to ensure those convicted offenders are in compliance with their court ordered conditions and registration mandates.

Those offenders that are found to be in violation will be referred to the Mono County District Attorney’s Office for consideration of the filing of charges. So far this effort has yielded the compliance search of eight locations resulting in the issuance of one citation for a violation of the conditions of court ordered probation.

In addition, four compliance checks were conducted for compliance with California Penal Code Section 290, mandating the reporting of the place of residence of convicted sex offenders. Three of the offenders were found in compliance, and the fourth is under investigation. One offender indicated that in the decade or more he has been required to register no one has ever verified his residence.

The Mono County Sheriff’s Office is committed to providing the best service possible to our community with our existing resources.

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The Mono County Sheriff’s Office is pleased to announce the addition of two new members to our administrative team.

Amber Weller is our new Administrative Services Specialist / Public Information Officer. Amber possesses both a Bachelor’s and a Master’s degree in Criminology and comes to us from the Mono Court. Amber will be the new point person for all media-related inquiries and social media applications, as well as responsible for all administrative aspects of our Office.

Arleen Mills started last month as our new Finance Officer. Arleen was selected from within our ranks of Public Safety Officers, so she was already a member of our family. Arleen brings a wealth of experience in finance as the owner and operator of a local business.

We are happy to have these strong, smart women representing us in our front office.

 

 


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