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Sonoma County, a dynamic county combining agriculture and industry, City and country, creating unique and varied challenges for its citizens join us as we present some of the information and services provided by the county of Sonoma to help us as we move into the 21st century. Welcome

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to Sonoma County in the 90s with your host Dana do Rico and Gina Lash. Hello, I'm Dana D'Errico and welcome to Sonoma County in the nineties. Today we're going to meet our new sheriff. There's a lot of effort in our county to keep it a safe

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and wonderful environment for us to live in. So let's meet the man behind all the hard work and effort that it takes to keep our county a safe and wonderful Kamu. That's Sheriff Jim Jim, thank you for being here today on the show and we're looking

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forward to finding out about the Sheriff's department and what you propose to do in the future. Great, well thank you for the opportunity. I appreciate it. That's great. So give us some general facts about the Sheriff's department. Well, um general facts about the Sheriff's department first

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of all, as far as the operation, the responsibilities of the sheriff himself since my taking over for now retired sheriff I. D. It's my responsibility for the management of the department to ensure that the resources that have been provided to the department through the board of

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supervisors, the general funding and the proposition 1 72 funds to delivery both law enforcement and the delivery of law enforcement and detention services to the citizens of Sonoma County. So my responsibility is the management of those services and to coordinate and collaborate with the board of

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supervisors, the various Chiefs of Police here in Sonoma County. Fellow department heads in both county and city government and um the day to day operations and policy decisions of supplying law enforcement and detention services to the citizens of Sonoma County. Um the department itself is 626

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employees full time um, altogether with contract employees and volunteers. We have about 850 people. Um it is a lot um, it's broken down into about 226 deputy sheriffs, 214 correctional officers who operate the detention facility. 186 support staff. And that's everything from dispatching, um records keeping,

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um clerical support, a variety of support to keep both law enforcement and detention running smoothly. And then over 200 volunteers and contract employees and a variety of capacities, a lot of employees. Um the budget for the department is about $60.8 million 75% of that budget, or

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$45 million we are basically a people organization, people serving people if you will. Um and in order to pay for those people, that's where most of the budget goes to. So. That's a big job, big responsibility. How long have you been a sheriff and how are

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you handling all of this responsibility? You must be spread really thin. Well, I've actually been a full time sheriff now since October 24. That was the date that I was actually sworn in. And it became effective prior to that. It was the acting sheriff since April

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22. This whole event has occurred due to the retirement of sheriff mark idea, A medical retirement and also a medical leave of absence by one of the other assistant sheriff's John Sully. So while I've been with the department for 22 years, I've only been sheriff since

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full time sheriff since October um it keeps you busy. It's a challenging job. You have to like challenges to like this job and it does spread you a little thin at times. But I have a tremendous support staff. We have some very professional, very dedicated employees

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in our organization that are committed to providing law enforcement and detention services to our citizens. Let's talk about the law enforcement division. How is that handled? And what are they doing? How's that structured? Well, the law enforcement division really is focused on providing law enforcement services

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and a variety of special services to the citizens of Sonoma County and the unincorporated area in particular. I think probably the best way to describe it is that from the very first time that you would get the need for you to call for some emergency service.

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You live in the unincorporated area to dial 911, you talk to one of our dispatchers in the law enforcement division and they would gather the information from you and and determining how if it's an emergency. If it's a routine call what type of service or or

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response to your need that we can provide to you from there, it would go to our law enforcement division or the actual patrol division within the law enforcement division. And our patrol division provides routine patrol to keep the streets uh in a peaceful manner when whenever

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possible to respond to emergencies. Or two locations where problems have arisen where disputes have occurred or violence or crime has occurred. And the patrol division then does an initial investigation um finding out the basic facts um and documenting those facts and the legal police report and

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then supplying that information to our investigations unit which is within the law enforcement division and the investigations unit is charged with the investigation of all types of crimes that have suspect leads or witnesses or and their goal is to try and apprehend those responsible for committing

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crime. And also within the law enforcement divisions, a variety of specialty units that provide special law enforcement functions. Historically. Sonoma County Sheriff's Department has had a very good reputation as far as following through and carrying out their duties. And I think that that is really admirable

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for our community. What changes do you foresee that possibly you'll be making in the law enforcement and, and, and how the coverage is made to keep it a safe community or do you plan to do any make any changes or just to enforce what is currently

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being done? Well, the one thing I think that we've all learned in our society today is that change is something that is constant. That's one thing is constant is I'm thinking of the gangs, the crime in schools. We are now a very diverse community with ethnic,

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different ethnic backgrounds and there's different issues coming up. So I was kind of curious about that. Our challenge is to identify what those changes are and to change internally to meet the needs and demands of those changes as an example. Um, one of our biggest difficulties

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as this county continues to grow. We continue to get more bilingual or, or hispanic families and we have the need for more bilingual officers and that's a big difficulty. Um, all law enforcement agencies throughout the state are all in competition for a very small resource of

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bilingual officers. But as those kinds of challenges that we have to continue to any changes that we have to continue to strive to meet. Um, my, I perceive my job is one of, and you were, you were right, I believe our department enjoys a great deal

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of support from the citizens of this county, but our challenge is to continue to provide those services in the manner that best meet the needs of the citizens of this county so that they can continue to support us. Well said, I think it's a great institution.

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Um, what is swat, we hear acronyms in the Sheriff's department. Swat E. O. D. Magnet, what you know, it's like all these little name. Well Swat stands for special weapons and tactics team. And Swat is a 16 member group of deputy sheriffs that we have that

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we have in the sheriff's department. It's actually a collateral assignment. These people are normally deputy sheriffs on patrol and whenever we have a significant major event such as a barricaded subject hostage situation. Um, something with the potential of, of deadly force or suspect may be known

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or suspected to have the potential of um, killing someone or or dramatically injuring somebody. We respond with the swat team. It's a team that has specialized training, specialized equipment. Um, their specialized training is in the area of repelling down buildings, um, camouflage techniques, um, utilization of

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special devices such as um, uh, flash, sound diversionary devices, special weapons. Unfortunately, it's a part of the job where occasionally weapon deadly firearms have to be used and they're trained in those techniques. Um, how much training do they get? Well they train every month um, to

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uh, eight hours every month. And, and they also go through specialized schools in order to learn how to use those equipment and of course they're also relying upon years of experience of police officers in the street and how to deal with some of the day to

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day firearms and the uses that they put. What kind of qualifications do those special sheriffs have to have in order to our deputy sheriffs have to have to qualify for the swat team. They have to have been with the department for a certain length of time

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and they take an oral board. They're selected based on um their past performance and their oral response to questions as to how they would react under certain conditions and certain events that would be presented to them. They're selected for their professionalism, their calm demeanor, their firearms

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efficiency and proficiency, their ability to take orders and to work as a team unit And to be available on short notice and their stamina. Their also required to be in physically excellent shape um to travel long distances on foot to be able to stay out and

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inclement weather um up to 24 hours at a time and to be able to stand at a post. So all of those things are taken into consideration is to um and selecting the right person to perform those functions. You're talking about the demeanor of calm demeanor.

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I keep thinking about this is one sheriff that I'm always running into and he's one of your sergeants and he's just the loveliest man. I admire him to death. But I don't know his name. Yeah the image of him. That's so funny. what C. O. D.

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E. O. D. Stands for explosive ordinance detail. And we have something that I think serves the citizens of Sonoma County extremely well. It's a combined unit. The Sonoma County Sheriff's office has an explosive ordinance detail. So does the city of santa rosa explosive ordinance detail it

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lays out exactly explain it. It's interesting. The purpose of an explosive ordinance detail is a trained group of people to dismantle or destroy. Has these devices or explosive devices commonly referred to as pipe bombs. However sometimes we find them to be much more sophisticated has to

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be um bombs with special sensory devices and ignition devices. And unfortunately in our society today the rate of finding those types of devices is on the increase. And it used to be years ago that we relied upon the military to um come from the different nearby

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military bases to dispose or destroy those those hazardous devices or those bombs. Um as a military bases were cut back. Law enforcement found itself in a position of having to deal with these issues ourselves. And so we developed a team of experts. We sent them to

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an FBI military school a month long where they learned all the techniques they have to have regular updated training and they now respond to various parts of the, of the county to dispose of those of those weapons. And this county is fortunate in that because of

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the increase in these devices being found in the county rather than each city within the county and the county itself having to go out and build or put together an explosive ordinance detail. We've combined our team with santa rosa Police Department's team and have set up

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contractual obligations to respond anywhere in Sonoma County to defuse or destroy found bombs. How many people are on that team? We have three people on our team. I believe the city of santa rosa has three so it's a six man unit. So do they then do

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normal sheriff procedures the rest of the time on duty and then they're called in when they're required on a swat team or an E. O. D. Exactly. The people who serve on the E. O. D. Team or the explosive ordinance detail team are all deputy share

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us with other day to day job function responsibilities. And what about magnet, magnet stands for the multi agency gang network enforcement team. I think that we're gonna have to stop here and take a brief break. But um hold that thought we'll come right back to it

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because I'm gonna hear about this because that is a big issue. Stay tuned. We'll be right back kids. They have to overcome an awful lot to find out what the value. Some people say artists just for the elite but these kids aren't listening. What speaks to

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them is art and art trains the mind for higher forms of thinking public support for the arts small price to pay for beauty. Welcome back to Sonoma County in the nineties. I'm here with Sheriff Jim Piccinini and we're going to be discussing some more magnet teams.

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Okay, magnet team, you were just saying could you repeat that? Magnet stands for multi agency gang network enforcement team And it's another one of those acronyms and basically what it is is a combination of personnel and resources from various departments in Sonoma County, including the sheriff's

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office and its function or role is to um track and follow and investigate and arrest gang members who have committed crimes and it's a response to the gang crime problem in order to um, hopefully put some sort of a dent in it and slow down some

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of the occurrences of crime. Do we really have that large of a gang problem in this county? Unfortunately we do 1200 known gang members in Sonoma County representing about 20 to 22 gangs. Sonoma County is, is typical of every other county in the state right now.

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Are they in our school system? They're everywhere. They're everywhere. They're everywhere in the malls. Yes, unfortunately that's that's really too bad. Okay, what about the helicopter program? Henry one? You had that down as a topic of discussion and I've had Henry one on the tv show

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before and I think they're fascinating. But tell us again about Henry won the function of our helicopter unit referred to as Henry one is multi folded. Its first and primary function or purpose is that of life saving search and rescue. Um they performed 40-50 rescues per

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year throughout this county. Most of those are focused on our, our rugged coast and we have a lot of visitors to our coast who don't always pay attention to signs and they crawl rocks that they shouldn't be crawling. We have to pluck them off in order

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to save their lives. So, But that's the primary function of Henry one and its secondary function is that of a medical transport unit for people who need emergency care, flown to a hospital in the absence of other available medical aircraft. And then the third function is

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that of a law enforcement um, observatory platform if you will to be our eyes and in the sky to provide support for ground units when they're chasing suspects who have fled or at large or purely from an officer safety standpoint to have a presence above and

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be able to observe what's going on. Yeah, when I hear that helicopter going over, I'm in the east hills and I'm thinking, oh God, lock the doors. I suppose it's not always criminals on the run that maybe just training maneuvers do they go out? They do

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training maneuvers, but believe it or not, the most fundamental use the most used is for search and rescue. And as I said, they provide 40-50 rescues per year. And of course a lot of training and practice has to go into that to do it efficiently without

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hurting themselves or other people. They actually pull people off of rocks and cliffs and dangerous situations at the end of a long line hanging from the bottom of the helicopter. So it takes a lot of practice. That's a talent. It is a talent I would think.

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Why is the helicopter called Henry one? Well, it's, it's it's police talk again. Another. That's right. Every everything in law enforcement is as far as the use of the alphabet is phonetic as an example a license plate abc would be adam boy Charles. Well, helicopter starting

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with the letter H. We've just taken the the Henry, which is the The law enforcement phonetic for Henry. And we just because it's one helicopter is Henry one. Okay. And the primary responsibilities then our search and rescue, primary responsibility of search and rescue, secondary responsibilities of

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life support and medical transport, law enforcement. And it has another function that we recently added, which is fire suppression. We now have the ability to have what they call a Bambi bucket underneath the helicopter picking up water. And where do you pick up the water? Lake

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Sonoma everywhere like Sonoma swimming pools, the ocean anywhere that happens to be a good source of water that's capable of filling the bucket. I mean one day I may look out and there goes my water and you have a swimming pool, there's a fire nearby. That

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could happen. Well, I guess I'll be prepared. I hope my horses and myself aren't in the pool. I'm getting all the animals and you know, so we don't burn up. Um how many staff and what kind of training is required on the search and rescue. And

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what I really wanted to ask you is do the Deputy Sheriffs fly it or do you hire professional pilots? That's a good question. Our pilots are professional pilots, they are not Deputy Sheriffs and their main job, their main concentration is to fly that ship and the

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safety of that that aircraft. Um, so the other members of the crew then are Deputy Sheriffs and a paramedic. So the pilots left to focus on flying the aircraft. The Deputy Sheriff, what we call the observer is left to concentrate on where they're at and what

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they're supposed to be watching on the ground. And then we have a paramedic on board to provide emergency medical services to somebody who's injured or in need of assistance. As far as the training, it's immense. The paramedic program, they go through months of training, the deputies

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and the and the pilot must practice many, many hours in order to facilitate a teamwork effort and then in addition to the Henry one, we also have a search and rescue team. That search and rescue team is made up of volunteers in our community people who

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put in many hours of training and their function is to respond when they're called out to help crown search for citizens who are lost. And it literally means walking out into fields and the darkness of night, pouring down rain, wind, storm, snow. And these folks volunteer

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their time to do that and they do a great job of it. And now that's foot and there's also a mounted search and rescue isn't no, we don't do a mounted search and rescue here in this county. Um we do have a mounted unit that performs

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in a variety of parades and special events here in the county. But that's just for demonstration purposes. What is, well, we talked about the primary role of the helicopter. So maybe we should talk about the detention division. I went into that the new sheriff. I was

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finally in the women's distention section. It was really amazing to me in that the new detention facility that the women's was pink and lovely and socialized aspects to a table and the men was really bad. It was very dingy and stark and there was no tables

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were socializing for the inmates. How long ago was that? That was well, at time of final three years ago. I think you'd be surprised at our new detention facilities are new detention facilities are called the new generation jails. It's much different. They're very spacious, very well,

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well maintained, painted, beautifully maintained and and so are the men inside. Now it's a, it's a very nice facility. In fact, our facility is one of five throughout the state of California that is actually accredited by the department of corrections. Um so one of five out

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of all the counties in California, I think we're pretty fortunate to have a fully accredited detention facility. We actually have two facilities. We have the main adult detention facility located at the county administration complex that houses approximately 533 inmates. Okay. Um and it is houses those

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what we call pre sentence inmates, people who are awaiting trial, they haven't been sentenced yet. Um And um again it's it's in a facility that has the availability of mental health resources and fully accredited medical health resources. So um then we have the North county detention

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facility located out on airport boulevard houses about 747 inmates. And um it primarily deals with those inmates who in fact have been sentenced and are serving their time. Is it or is appointed by the courts? Well what do you mean by the new generation jails? Can

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you elaborate on that? It sounds like maybe a different focus on how to handle the inmates. It is. Tell us about that. It's it's a humanistic approach to inmate management, I guess you could best be described that we strive to provide every inmate in custody to

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treat that inmate with respect to facilitate behavior that promotes compliance with rules and regulations. Now, how do we do that by example, exactly when we bring inmates, the old style jails used to be a long roll row of barred cells if you will, the inmates on

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one side and the detention correction guards or or officers on the other side. Everybody, this is completely different. It was different when I was okay. Well, it's it's what we do is we we put correctional officers inside what we call modules with the inmates. They're actually

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in this area, this large area with the inmates, usually 50-60 inmates, one or two correctional officers and the inmates are free as long as they abide by the rules and regulations to travel or to walk around, I should say within those modules, they have freedom of

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movement as given or determined by the correctional officer. And so there's an open air of um respect of authority and respect of everyone knows that they're there because they've committed a crime, but they do have certain freedoms within their particular module. And our goal is to

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treat the inmates with respect and to provide them with um the health services and the close of course, clothing and feeding and special services. And our goal is to return an inmate back to the street in no worse condition than what we received them. And in

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fact, sometimes we like to think that we've actually helped them be a little bit better when they left our facility. Do you feel that historically inmates were living in a worse condition? Well, I don't know if historically, I think historically inmates were brought in to just

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do their time, so to speak. Um They sat there with not a lot of activities, there was no attempt at um helping them be better people so that they don't become repeat offenders. We brought them in, they sat in smaller cubicles, they watched tv all the

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day, they ate and they slept and they read books and that was about it. Exactly. Today's new generation jail. We have a variety of programs that um give inmates the opportunity to learn either self improvement skills, job work skills, mental health skills, anger management. Um to

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try to get their general Education Diploma um to hopefully when they leave our facility, they're able to go back out into society um with more skills or capabilities to perhaps become a contributing member of society rather than somebody who repeatedly comes back to a detention facility.

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The tools to survive exactly in our society. That's great. It sounds like they're doing a great job over there. Um Okay, what about the Citizens Academy? We have just a few minutes left here. So the Citizens Academy Citizens Academy is something that's fairly new to the

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Sheriff's department. It's, we just completed last night was the last class of Citizens Academy number two, we're starting at number three. This january, it's our, it's the opportunity for citizens to participate in a 12 week course to learn what the sheriff's office and law enforcement is

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all about. Its on site tours. It's lectures, it's hands on, we take them through some of our shooting shoot, don't shoot simulating courses. Um, we give them demonstrations from our swat team tactical team. They actually get to go on our firing range, They listen to what

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we do as far as internal affairs investigations, criminal investigations, routine patrol, they go on, ride alongs with Deputy sheriffs on the street. Um it's, it's an opportunity for the citizens to learn who we are, what we are and what we're all about and how we do

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our job and frankly it's our opportunity to learn from citizens as to what they expect from us. So it sounds like that the sheriff's benefit and so do the citizens and it's an under mutual understanding and educational process. Is that the purpose, I have to tell

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you that, as I said last night was the last night of our second academy and both academies, we have learned um that the citizens have come away with a much different idea of what we're all about, a true understanding of what we do and we've learned

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from the citizens of what they think and what they think we should be doing. So it's mutually beneficial very quickly. How would one contact your office to get on this in this Citizens Academy um call any of the numbers listed in the telephone director into the

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Sheriff's department. The business number. The main number for business 5 to 72650 to 607265. Great. Now one last thing we're running out of time. You're up for reelection in May June the primary election for the position sheriff will be June of 98 and so you're prepared

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for that and you're looking forward to it. Can you give us any little brief, whatever? Just a few seconds? Well, you know, I'm excited about the challenge to ca continue to run the Sheriff's department. I do have a variety of ideas that I think will take

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us into the next century. Then I'm going to have you on before then. So thank you for being here today. Thank you. Thank you for joining us and I hope we brought a lot of good information to you as a viewer and I look forward to

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seeing you next time. I'm dana Jericho and this is Sonoma County in the nineties. That's Sonoma County, a dynamic county combining agriculture and industry, City and country creating unique and varied challenges for its citizens join us as we present

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some of the information and services provided by the county of Sonoma to help us as we move into the 21st century. Welcome to Sonoma County in the 90s with your host Dana Jericho and Dina Lash. Hello, I'm dana D'Errico and welcome to Sonoma County in the

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night.