Sheriff's Department Issues 100 Additional Layoff Notices

As part of a massive downsizing, another 100 deputies with the Riverside County Sheriff’s Department got pink slips on Thursday.

The department notified the deputies they will be laid off effective Aug. 10.

This brings the current number of layoff notices to 200 deputies since May 13, with plans continuing for another 300 staff cuts over the next few months, depending upon the outcome of the June 13 budget hearings by the Riverside County Board of Supervisors.

It’s unclear how many of those affected deputies may be out of the

In addition to Thursday’s layoff notices, and the 100 layoff notices handed the week of May 16, on Wednesday the department issued a massive reassignment and transfer list as it makes plans to remove staffing support for multi-agency gang task forces, sexual predator teams (SAFE), and drug task forces.

The transfer list is the first of a series of phased layoff notices to downsize and to reallocate existing staff. The transfer list will be effective June 30, according to a sheriff’s department news release issued today.

“Although the Sheriff's Department will not know what its final approved budget will be, and whether any or all of the layoffs will be necessary, it made the decision to provide as much early warning to the affected employees as early as it could. The cuts are so deep that the department could not wait in its planning without causing a sea of red ink after July 1st,” according to the news release.

As part of today’s announcement, Sheriff Stan Sniff issued this statement:

 “ … To lay off any of our employees is a travesty and an incredible waste of taxpayer dollars in the face of dangerous times in many areas we serve. To give up jail capacity, precipitously drop patrol levels in the unincorporated areas, mothball any of our 10 patrol stations, or to give up critical multi-agency task forces and teams right now is very poor public policy and wasteful of already scarce public safety resources. If the CEO’s budget proposal is approved, it will take us years to dig ourselves out of the mess this creates for our criminal justice system and the allied law enforcement agencies we work with in Riverside County.”

Department officials have repeatedly said that the cities of Lake Elsinore and Wildomar will not be affected by the cuts, but police presence in the surrounding unincorporated areas is expected to be reduced.

A 200-square-mile unincorporated area surrounding Lake Elsinore and Wildomar is patrolled by deputies out of the Lake Elsinore Sheriff's Station.

The Sheriff's Department estimates that proposed county budget cuts will force unincorporated patrol levels down to .75 per 1,000 residents. Currently, for every 1,000 residents there is one patrol.