The San Benito County civil grand jury has found the city’s gang
task force is making significant progress in addressing a
burgeoning gang problem.
Hollister – The San Benito County civil grand jury has found the city’s gang task force is making significant progress in addressing a burgeoning gang problem.
In its 2004-2005 annual report issued last week, the grand jury championed the Hollister Police Department and San Benito County Probation Department for their efforts in gang prevention, intervention and suppression.
But it also said that the district attorney’s office needs more money to adequately address the problem. And it faulted the sheriff’s office for not supplying the information it needed while encouraging the department to take gang prevention and intervention more seriously.
Addressing the proliferation of gang activity and violence within the county was one of the grand jury’s top priorities. Members surveyed all law enforcement departments and local schools to quantify what actions are being taken to curb it.
It encouraged the San Benito County Board of Supervisors to support an increase in staffing for the district attorney’s office, calling current staffing levels a “direct threat to public safety.” The biggest obstacle preventing the office from better addressing the gang problem, it said, is money.
District Attorney John Sarsfield said he needs an increase of several hundred thousand dollars to his approximately $900,000 annual budget to add several more prosecutors and additional office staff to combat the gang problem. He currently has three deputy district attorney’s tackling a caseload of about 2,500 cases a year.
“I’m very happy with the report – I’ve been screaming about this for two and a half years. We need cops and we need prosecutors, that’s what we need,” Sarsfield said. “We’re staffed for a county of roughly 30,000 and public safety suffers as a result. The Board of Supervisors has the opportunity to change that if they choose to. They have the audacity to cut our budget and at the same time increase the public defender’s budget. At budget time, they’re going to hear from me.”
Although Sarsfield conceded the county is in the midst of a serious budget crisis, he believes the board needs to make public safety its No. 1 priority by first increasing funding in the sheriff’s department for additional deputies, allocating more money to the district attorney’s office, and boosting the probation department’s budget.
“They criticize me for plea bargaining, but the county’s got to be willing to look at their priorities,” he said. “They need to put their money where their mouth is.”
Supervisor Don Marcus said he has talked with Sarsfield about ways to increase staff in his office.
“This board isn’t looking to try to cut the district attorney’s office when there’s the importance of public safety,” Marcus said. “But we’re in a deficit budget. It’s difficult to add more to the deficit unless it’s truly warranted.”
Supervisor Reb Monaco, who has criticized Sarsfield’s abilities as district attorney in the past, declined to comment because he hadn’t seen the grand jury report.
Sheriff Curtis Hill expressed sympathy for the county’s budget problems, saying it would be nice to add extra deputies to his staff but that he understands the fiscal dilemma the county is facing and is committed to working collaboratively with the board during the budget crunch.
“I’m not going to ask for anything unless there’s a funding stream to carry it,” Hill said.
Hill was less sympathetic with the grand jury’s criticism of his department’s lack of involvement in local gang prevention programs and failure to respond to the jury’s request for information about its strategies to combat the problem.
Hill said he purposely declined to attend the gang task force meetings, which are spearheaded by local government and community leaders, both within the city and county, because he “doesn’t have the patience to sit through one more prevention and intervention meeting.”
“If I’m going to go to a meeting I want to see some action items quickly. I’ve been waiting for three and a half years to really start working on suppression,” Hill said. “I want to be leading the charge to lock ’em up.”
Hill said he sent a deputy to the gang task force meetings and has been briefed on the developments. He said he also volunteers personal time to the local YMCA to help steer kids out of the gang lifestyle. He’s also been working with the Hollister Police Department to conduct more probation and parole sweeps, which often focuses on people with gang ties, he said.
But Hill dismissed the jury’s conclusion that he has yet to “embrace” the gang problem.
“I’ve embraced it,” he said. “I’m just trying to put the rubber to the road. When I read that document and saw how the grand jury viewed the sheriff’s office involvement, in my opinion they were focusing on the prevention and intervention aspect. I’m 90 percent suppression. We’re ready to start locking up the entrenched gang members – the ones who are lost.”
Erin Musgrave covers public safety for the Free Lance. Reach her at 637-5566, ext. 336 or [email protected]
