Get Deputies into Communities
by Bo Klein

Sheriff Jack Anderson is on the job following the indictment of former Sheriff Mike Carona. One of Sheriff Anderson’s first acts was to propose a reorganization of staffing of the jails, which would potentially save the taxpayer millions of dollars. Under his plan, instead of using highly trained and highly paid deputies to act as jail keepers for up to four years, Sheriff Anderson proposes getting those deputies out into the communities on patrol where the high pay and training are most desired and effective. He intends to staff the jails with traditional penal-system trained employees who are much more focused for the long term on the activities of jail management. This plan would free up police officers to do what they became officers to do: protect the innocent, not the incarcerated.

I see no problem with this conservative approach. The current Carona policy appears to be nothing more than institutionalizing personnel, hardening their viewpoints of the general population they deal with on the streets to a suspicious and possibly adversarial nature. I further doubt any police officer actually desires to work within prison walls, and I would hate think that these officers had to maneuver themselves politically to work within Carona’s policies in order to be promoted out of the prison system.

When Sheriff Anderson and I were both serving on the City of Mission Viejo Planning Commission, I witnessed his hard work to encourage a better judicial system serving his residents. On more than one occasion, Anderson challenged and promoted development projects to include provisions and funding for a South County judicial complex, which would replace the failing Courthouse and inefficient leased police headquarters in Aliso Viejo. He proposed a central location for a police headquarters that would have a quicker response capability, as opposed to the downtime for travel to service Mission Viejo and surrounding contract communities. Overhauling today’s jail system, which was incorporated under the Carona plan, would install a new Anderson plan with cost-savings possibly reverted to the much needed South County Judicial Center of courthouse and police headquarters.

Despite the scrutiny and suspicion of the Sheriff’s office brought on by his predecessor, I think Jack Anderson has always demonstrated his goals are in the best interests of the entire community and not self-serving policies as some say we had under Carona’s reign.