Sheriff’s Department employees appeal to supervisors for funding

Stagnant salaries and long work hours are provoking Merced County Sheriff’s Department employees to seek better jobs elsewhere, according to officials and deputies who say they increasingly are concerned that public safety could be compromised.

Since January, the department has lost at least 10 employees who took better-paying jobs at other agencies, and five more are on their way out, Sheriff Vern Warnke said Monday.

When the department is fully staffed, it employs about 110 people. It currently has 22 vacancies. Those employees who remain have not received a pay raise in about eight years, Warnke said.

During a county Board of Supervisors meeting on Sept. 15, several sheriff’s employees pleaded for funding to increase pay and fill vacant positions. Kevin Blake, a sergeant at the Sheriff’s Department and a Merced City Council member, said deputies on his team work 18-hour shifts and face low wages and problems related to understaffing.

“This is not sustainable, and it poses a serious threat to the public safety and security,” he said during the public comment session of the meeting.

Each employee who left the department cited pay as the main reason, Warnke said.

“My heart breaks, as the sheriff, to be losing deputies,” he said. “But as a husband, a father and grandfather, I also know they have to take care of their families. And they can’t do it with what the county is offering them.”

Earlier this month, the Board of Supervisors approved Merced County’s $537 million budget. The budget marked about $58 million for public safety, more than half of its total net cost. That covers the costs of sheriff’s operations, corrections, the district attorney, public defender, probation, juvenile hall, the grand jury, court operations, state institutions and indigent defense.

Warnke said the department’s low wages and short staff could create costly liabilities for the county. Department morale is low, and fatigue from working long hours could lead to bad decision-making, he said.

The Merced County Deputy Sheriff Association and other unions have been in negotiations with the county for more than a month.

John Pedrozo, the Board of Supervisors chairman, said public safety is a priority for the board. “We take public safety very, very seriously,” he said. “We realize their concerns and some of the issues going on. Those need to be addressed as soon as possible to alleviate some of the problems. ... We want to get this resolved in a timely manner.”

Pedrozo would not say whether the two parties were close to an agreement.

Officials from the Deputy Sheriff Association were not available for comment Monday.

Currently, deputies make between $50,000 and $60,000 a year in salary and about $60,000 in benefits, said Sgt. Delray Shelton, a sheriff’s spokesman.

In an effort to recruit deputies, the Sheriff’s Department is paying a rate of $100,000 to put five people through a six-month academy. That doesn’t include the recruit’s salary, Shelton said. In general, it costs the department about $8,000 to hire a new employee before they put on a uniform.

But the experienced employees the department is losing are invaluable, Warnke said. It takes years to get the hang of the job in law enforcement. The time put in teaches lessons and provides practice the academy can’t, he said.

And Merced’s loss is others’ gain. “We’ve got a couple guys who have two decades of experience they’re taking to other agencies,” Warnke said. “They (other agencies) are doing back-flips on the quality of folks we’re sending to them.”

Deputy Sheriff Mark Taylor referenced many of those when he addressed the supervisors. One of them was Tom McKenzie, who was a weapons trainer and a SWAT operator and trainer. “He was the deputy you want to be,” Taylor said in an interview. “When you lose him, you lose all his great experience.”

During the last two years when Merced County has seen a record-high rate of homicides, detectives in the major crimes division are leaving, Taylor said. “No other (county department) is dealing with this mass exodus.”

Warnke said he understands the pressure the supervisors and county officials are under to treat all employees fairly, but he made the point that not all county employees put their lives on the line for their job.

Taylor agreed: “In no other (department) are they spit on, shot at and asked to accept it as part of their job.”

This story was originally published September 21, 2015 at 6:55 PM with the headline "Sheriff’s Department employees appeal to supervisors for funding."