Sheriff fires first volley over funding shortfalls

By Dan MacArthur
Correspondent

Chronic underfunding of the sheriff's office is endangering the public and may force early prisoner releases to relieve pressure on a packed jail, according to Larimer County Sheriff Jim Alderden.

"I cannot continue to provide the level of public safety services we have," Alderden said in an interview with the North Forty News.

The possible cutbacks and potential for prisoner releases, he said, will be discussed in a work session with the county commissioners at 10 a.m. on Feb. 2.

Alderden said the department has received only a fraction of the funds it was promised when voters exempted the county from the constraints of the Taxpayers Bill of Rights. He said voters approved that waiver with the clear understanding that the retained tax revenues would be dedicated to public safety efforts and road projects.

"The impact on public safety has really been negligible," Alderden said. "They (county commissioners) didn't follow through on those promises."

"I think it's a bit more complicated than that," Commissioner Kathay Rennels responded. "I think there's a great deal of money that went into the sheriff's office."

She suggested that the complaints are partly posturing by the sheriff, who already has the ability to direct the department's funds toward its greatest needs.

"At some point you have to take responsibility," she said. "This is elk season. I think you're seeing two bull elk battling it out."

Alderden said he soon plans to start soliciting public input on how the department can best reduce services to remain within its budget. Among the cutbacks under consideration, he said, are reducing or eliminating deputy response to nonemergencies such as minor theft reports, 911 hang-up calls and accidentally activated burglar alarms.

And he said the reductions could go much deeper. "Some of the commissioners have suggested that the patrol division is not a mandated responsibility," said Alderden.

The sheriff's office is, however, required to operate the jail. And without the ability to release prisoners early, hire additional staff or divert more inmates from the jail, Alderden said the county runs the risk of costly lawsuits alleging unconstitutional jail conditions.

"Tension levels now are high," Alderden said. Crowding was evident during an impromptu jail tour with double bunks spilling out into the day room of the prisoner housing units.

In a "perfect world," he said, the jail has capacity for 548 prisoners, although it has housed as many as 561. But because of any day's particular mix of inmates, who require separation from one another, Alderden said the jail's effective capacity is a little less than its current population of 500.

Staffing is the primary problem at this point, according to Alderden. "I don't have enough people to operate the jail," he said. Alderden said he needs at least 105 people to operate the jail but now can afford to hire only 84. The shortage, he said, has caused closure of an eight-bed special housing unit and next could lead to closure of a 32-bed unit.

But the bigger problem is overall funding, which Alderden said has caused sheriff's staffing to fall far behind the levels of other comparable counties while most other departments are well above the standard.

Alderden's analysis of the state's 10 largest-population counties, for example, shows that Larimer County is 18.6 percent below the median in terms of sworn officers per 10,000 population in the unincorporated county. But at the same time, the commissioners and their support staff were 47 percent above the median, he said.

Of what he estimated to be $20 million in excess revenues retained for law enforcement and road and bridge projects in 2001 and 2002, Alderden contended that about 7.5 percent went to the sheriff's office.

"You can look at it a dozen different ways and every way we look at it, we're short," Alderden said. "That puts the deputies in jeopardy. That puts the public in jeopardy."

Often, Alderden noted, there might be only one officer on duty in each of the county's five patrol districts.

Rennels said while she wholeheartedly agrees that more deputies and funds are needed, she said it's also the sheriff's responsibility to allocate resources to deal with the highest priorities. "Part of that's a choice," she said. "You could have fewer investigators and more deputies."