Los Angeles County Sheriff Alex Villanueva has been in law enforcement for more than three decades but this is the first he has experienced anything like the coronavirus outbreak. He tells Inside the Issues about the impact the global pandemic is having on the sheriff’s department.
He said they are coalescing around their two core functions: maintaining the security of their jail system and keeping their patrol presence in the field and on patrol. They are able to utilize officers from other divisions to increase their presence.
“We average 250 to 300 radio cars, the black and white cars you see driving around, per shift on a typical day. Two days ago we had 852, so that tells you how much greater a presence we have on patrol.”
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Villanueva said criminal activity is down with everyone being forced to quarantine.
“Violent crime is down 6.24 percent, property crimes are down 6.62 percent, overall serious crime is down 6.5 percent, calls for service are down 13 percent. So when you add an extra 1,300 deputies out there on the streets they are going to be in a position to be very, very visible,” he said. “You have people who are no longer congregating on the streets so that diminishes the opportunities of strong arm robberies [for example].”
He said that they are concerned, however, about a possible increase of domestic violence, though, with more people in the home, it could help reduce incidents.
“It can diffuse conflicts and there are witnesses to potential conflict or violence, so that has a calming effect for now, at least.”
He said jails Los Angeles County jails began releasing inmates around the end of February in an effort to curb the coronavirus outbreak. So far, there has been an 18% reduction of the inmate population.
“People that were close to the end of their sentence, we got rid of those. Misdemeanors: we got rid of almost all of those. People that are now in pretrial detention, which was a big chunk of people, we’re starting to do bail deviation hearings and releasing those,” he said.
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He said they are no at the lowest inmate count that they’ve ever seen.
Watch the clip above for more.
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