Los Angeles County Sheriff Alex Villanueva Monday announced plans to close two patrol stations, the parks bureau and reduce homeless outreach services to help shrink his department’s budget deficit.
The Marina del Rey and Altadena stations will be closed and consolidated into the South L.A. and Crescenta Valley stations, respectively. Deputies will be reassigned, but a couple dozen administrative positions, including captain and field training officer positions, will be eliminated and those staff members assigned to fill vacancies elsewhere.
“Of course, the only issue is then from the local communities, if you live in those, is it a reduction in service? Well the deputies in patrol will remain the same, they’ll still be out there. However, it’s the administrative staff that will be encumbered to basically tighten the belts on this,” Villanueva said during a news briefing.
Villanueva told reporters that the station closures, which will take effect July 1, will save more than $12 million annually. Meanwhile, losing the county parks and community partnership bureaus will save more than $62 million a year, he said. County parks will now be patrolled by the nearest sheriff’s station.
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The two unions that represent sworn Sheriff’s Department personnel were not immediately available for comment.
Villanueva has said the Board of Supervisors has long underfunded the Sheriff’s Department. He said the board approved a $3.5-billion budget even though it costs $3.9 billion to operate the department.
“When you underfund the Sheriff’s Department budget, it does a lot of things — none of them good,” he said.
Villanueva said the Sheriff’s Department will reduce the number of academy classes from 12 to eight, which he said would result in a cost savings of nearly $22 million. The board had proposed reducing the number of classes to four, which Villanueva said would have shrunk the number of sworn personnel by 160 a year at a time when the department is trying to fill 712 vacancies.
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“By reducing that even further, all that does is aggravate the overtime, which spirals out of control,” he said.
Villanueva said 10 positions are being cut from the Homeless Outreach Services Team, which helps connect people experiencing homelessness with shelters and other services. The team will be reduced to six people for a cost savings of $1.4 million, he said.
Sachi Hamai, the county’s chief executive officer, said in a statement that every county department is submitting “plans for painful cuts” because of economic challenges triggered by the COVID-19 pandemic.
“I’d like to encourage the sheriff to continue working on his plans in a way that emphasizes public safety for all residents, including those in the unincorporated communities,” she said. “We expect to have a clearer picture of our budget and the steps we will need to balance it by the time we return to the Board of Supervisors at the end of June.”
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