By Marlon A. Walker
Detroit Free Press
DETROIT, Mich. — Wayne County Sheriff’s Office officials hope a cooperative effort with Wayne County Executive Robert Ficano’s office and the sheriff’s deputies’ union will pay dividends as they seek to fill the department’s 60 jail staff vacancies swiftly.
Speeding up the hiring is beneficial to all sides. Officials from the jail have said the hiring process is antiquated and takes a long time for applicants to get through. All agree that the sheriff’s office’s overtime — the majority of which goes toward staffing the jail — is out of hand.
“I think what’s happening is there’s a recognition that the current process just isn’t able to keep up,” Undersheriff Daniel Pfannes said recently. “The magnitude of the overtime is something we all agree on. It just makes financial sense to bring in people in that new-hire position as opposed to continuing to fill positions with overtime.”
Officials from the sheriff’s office and the Wayne County Deputy Sheriff’s Association will spend more time going to police academies and advertising open positions. County administration will work on improving accessibility and usability of the website. Officials say they hope to be able to accept applications electronically soon.
Currently, a prospective employee would print the application off the county’s website. Then, that person would have to bring the application down to the Guardian Building to turn it in to the department of human resources. From there, verification of prerequisites and a background check must be completed before a person is offered a job. The process can take months sometimes, sheriff’s office officials have said.
Applicants must be qualified already to obtain a concealed pistol license and they need to have passed Michigan Commission on Law Enforcement Standards police tests for reading/writing and physical agility and the Michigan Sheriffs Coordinating and Training Council’s examination and standards for corrections officers.
Since the beginning of the fiscal year, on Oct. 1, Sheriff Benny Napoleon has been on a crusade to get the county to see the need for additional staff. He went so far as to say that once he’d used up his annual overtime allotment, he’d no longer staff the county’s three jails at court-mandated levels. A judge ordered him to keep doing so. Then, Napoleon said that the hiring of 150 additional officers would save the county about $8 million on overtime.
The sheriff’s office filed a lawsuit against the county that is ongoing. A judge will determine whether the sheriff’s office should reallocate its spending to help offset shortfalls based on the number of prisoners in the jail or whether the county is shortchanging the sheriff’s office.
“The issues are multiple,” he said. “We have a problem with overtime, caused by a severe shortage of personnel in the agency. We’re not in a position where if someone doesn’t show up for work, we can figure out how to do it. If someone’s not there, we have to order someone to come to work to fill that spot — to the point where we have people who are refusing overtime.”
It’s a scenario that’s played out year after year. In 2011-12, the sheriff’s office was allotted $2.6 million for overtime, but ended up spending about $11.5 million. For the 2012-13 fiscal year, the sheriff’s office was allotted $3.3 million but spent $17 million on overtime. Wayne County Sheriff’s Office officials said the number is trending closer to $20 million for the current fiscal year. The office was allotted $3.6 million for overtime this fiscal year.
The number of personnel working in the county’s three jail divisions has hovered around 600 officers or corporals for most of the last five years, the exception being in 2011-12, when jail staffing reached 549 full-time staffers. There are currently about 613 jail personnel among the sheriff’s office’s staff. Jeriel Heard, the chief of jails, is asking for about 750 jail personnel for the 2014-2015 fiscal year.
A clear picture of the county jail’s staffing situation could not be drawn, because officials did not release numbers for jail hires and losses through attrition. A sheriff’s office spokesman said the department loses an average of 50 personnel each year, through terminations, retirements and other reasons, and that about 50 people have been hired since 2010.
Napoleon and others at the jail say the overtime is predicated on the number of inmates in the jail. The jail budget is set for staffing to oversee 1,776 detainees, but the jail has consistently held 2,000 or more. Friday, there were 2,023 inmates in the jail, and another 523 on tethers, according to figures the sheriff’s office released.
“Every budgeted person is assigned to a post and the vast majority have to be filled all the time,” Pfannes said. “If there’s a vacancy, we’re short a person who would give us eight hours of work that day. We’ll replace that vacancy with an officer that’s on (overtime).”
June Lee, Ficano’s chief of staff, said recently that the administration would offer help from the human resources perspective.
“We’re ramping up our side of the testing and certification portions to move people through faster,” Lee said. “We’re ready and willing and able to assist wherever we can.”
Lee said the agreementrepresents progress on an issue that has been ongoing for years.
“This represents the parties coming together to find common ground to make immediate impact while we work on the bigger issue,” he said. “There’s tremendous value in terms of goodwill.”
Sheriff’s office employees have detailed issues brought on by the jail population, including housing inmates in supposedly closed areas of the system’s three jail buildings, forcing jailers to work more than 56 hours a week, the maximum under the collective-bargaining agreement and locking down inmates for longer-than-normal periods.
The sheriff’s office tried to get a memorandum of agreement with the unions to allow deputies who are not normally assigned to jail duty to work jail overtime. That request was declined.
Jail overtime is nothing new. Ten years ago, under then-Sheriff Robert Ficano, the county commission allotted $2 million for jail overtime. That year, the actual amount billed was $10 million.
Brian Earle, president of the Wayne County Deputy Sheriff’s Association, said he’s relieved that the county decided to help with expediting the hiring process, but said much works needs to be done to improve the situation for deputies. The department lost dozens of veteran workers this year because of low pay and conditions with the jail staffing. Some deputies worked more than twice the normal 40-hour workweek.
One deputy left to work at Home Depot, saying the salary was better. Sheriff’s deputies start at $28,242 annually.
“It’s at least some relief for our guys,” Earle said.
Wayne County Sheriff’s Office leaders gathered at Wayne County Community College’s Downriver campus recently to celebrate the latest graduates of the New Officer Correctional Training program, which certifies jail employees.
The ceremony didn’t take long: just three crossed the stage. Any additional staffing helps, said Jeremy Cady, first vice president for the Wayne County Deputy Sheriff’s Association.
“Some of our deputies are working 16-hour days sometimes three, four days a week,” Cady said. “A lot of people are missing appointments, stuff to do with their kids, family outings.
“These three hires mean it’s going to allow three other guys to go home.”