So, the Commissioners and David Smith have a new relief factor to play with and you probably just got done doing your mandatory overtime. They want to staff the jail for approximately 3,800 inmates. Should our population exceed that, we would farm those inmates out to other counties and pay those counties to house them. As you probably know, we ship inmates to Zavala and Frio counties right now. Frio houses approximately 24 inmates at no cost to us in Bexar Co. Zavala County, on the other hand, charges us $45 a day per inmate and has done so since July 29th. Right now, we have 100 96 inmates there. $45 x 96 = $4,320.00 per day. To be fair, David Smith, in his budget proposals, has always said that we can ship inmates out to other counties for 'short periods of time'. Whats a short period of time? Is it the same length of time that its going to take to add officers to be able to properly staff the jail when those 96 inmates come back from Zavala? Honestly though, I don't see them coming back as a real issue at this point because Zavala County is making $1.576,800.00 a year off of the taxpayers of Bexar County. Since July 29th until today, which is August 29th, its been 31 days of a windfall for Zavala County to the tune of $133,920.00 with $4,320.00 to be added every day until the inmates come back.
Lets look at some other issues. Lets say the jail is now staffed "on demand" and everything is rolling along. Officers are working mandatory overtime and seeing less and less of their families. Zavala county is making a fortune off of our taxpayers and the County is saving tons of money that they can spend on other things or giveaway to deserving groups and organizations or pet projects. Now, somewhere on the other side of the world, we get involved in another military adventure similar to Iraq or Afghanistan and all of a sudden, a number of our officers are called up to active duty. I don't know how many officers we have in the military, but I know its considerable. For the sake of our discussion, lets say its 100 officers across the board. So, now we are down 168 officers presuming nobody else has resigned, retired or been fired. Just for fun, lets say across all the shifts, we lost a total of 30 more officers to attrition, so now we are down 200 officers. See where I'm going with this?
I don't think David Smith or the Commissioners are looking at the "buffer" we would need to offset the issues we just looked at. I think TCJS, in determining our relief factor, do take into account these factors and it may be why I found every other county in my research to have their relief factor in place for maximum occupancy of their facility rather than just for the number of inmates they currently have.
We also have to look at our attrition beyond the 64 positions that are going away. We lose approximately 5 officers a month to retirement, resignation, termination etc. So, the 68 positions actually turns into a hell of a lot more. I may be completely wrong here, but I'm predicting that our resignations amongst our younger officers will increase. Even several months ago, I had a new officer asking me if he thought it was wise to stick around or try to find a better job somewhere else due to the uncertainty of jobs with the county. He was right to be concerned. Hell, if I was a new officer or even so much as only 5 years on, I would be looking for a new career.
Then there's the safety issue we have yet to even talk about. Did you hear about the group assault the other day? How about the other one the other day? Or the other one? You know and I know what we deal with but the public (and some public figures...George Block I'm looking at you) don't have any idea how dangerous our facility has become and its getting worse almost every day. Thankfully, so far, no officers have been targeted by our inmates. As you know, our gang problem is out of control and if the Orejon's go much further with the Mexican Mafia, we may have a bloodbath on our hands. Its not a question of if, but when. Isn't it comforting to know that your safety is in no way a factor in the proposal to let those 64 positions go away?
I don't think David Smith or the Commissioners are looking at the "buffer" we would need to offset the issues we just looked at. I think TCJS, in determining our relief factor, do take into account these factors and it may be why I found every other county in my research to have their relief factor in place for maximum occupancy of their facility rather than just for the number of inmates they currently have.
We also have to look at our attrition beyond the 64 positions that are going away. We lose approximately 5 officers a month to retirement, resignation, termination etc. So, the 68 positions actually turns into a hell of a lot more. I may be completely wrong here, but I'm predicting that our resignations amongst our younger officers will increase. Even several months ago, I had a new officer asking me if he thought it was wise to stick around or try to find a better job somewhere else due to the uncertainty of jobs with the county. He was right to be concerned. Hell, if I was a new officer or even so much as only 5 years on, I would be looking for a new career.
Then there's the safety issue we have yet to even talk about. Did you hear about the group assault the other day? How about the other one the other day? Or the other one? You know and I know what we deal with but the public (and some public figures...George Block I'm looking at you) don't have any idea how dangerous our facility has become and its getting worse almost every day. Thankfully, so far, no officers have been targeted by our inmates. As you know, our gang problem is out of control and if the Orejon's go much further with the Mexican Mafia, we may have a bloodbath on our hands. Its not a question of if, but when. Isn't it comforting to know that your safety is in no way a factor in the proposal to let those 64 positions go away?
No comments:
Post a Comment