Sheriff 2010: Interview With Anh Deputy Police Chief & Sheriff Candidate Craig Hunter

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Sheriff 2010: Interview With Anaheim Deputy Police Chief and Sheriff Candidate Craig Hunter - Part Two | Red County

Sheriff 2010: Interview With Anaheim Deputy Police Chief and Sheriff Candidate Craig Hunter - Part Two

By Matthew Cunningham | 12/18/09 | 03:34 PM EDT | 6 Comments

Yesterday, I posted Part I of my interview with Anaheim's Deputy Police Chief, Craig Hunter, who is running for Orange County Sheriff next year, challenging appointed incumbent Sandra Hutchens. Also running if former OSCD Lt. Bill Hunt, who won 26.5% against then-Sheriff Mike Carona in 2006.

Following is Part II, in which we discuss the CCW controversy, replacing jail deputies with correctional officers, how the department handles Internal Affairs, and other issues:

Cunningham: Now, one of the controversies that has surrounded the Hutchens’ administration has been the concealed carry weapons permit issue. What’s your position on her policy? What would your policy be as Sheriff?

Hunter: I was very surprised when she took such aggressive action against solid, law-abiding Orange County citizens. Again, it seems that she is taking a lot of her cues from the L.A. County model. And many of us are questioning her rationale. Just anecdotally, if you were to do a per capita comparison of shall issue states – which are the least restrictive – to Orange County we would have somewhere in the neighborhood of 8,000 to 10,000 CCW holders. If you did an average in the state of California, just comparing "may-issue," we’re still below the state average.

We have less than 1,000 CCW holders in the county. So just in response to your question: aren’t there more than 1,000 people in Orange County who are good citizens, who have the legitimate good cause and desire to carry a firearm? I think the answer has to be "yes."

The other question is how many situations is she aware of, or is law enforcement aware of, where these CCW holders have actually engaged in criminal behavior with their gun, or were involved in an incident that created a law enforcement issue or a public safety issue? I’m not aware of any. Now, having spent 30 years in the law enforcement business I’m certainly aware of instances where police officers have been involved in off-duty situations with their firearm that were inappropriate. So the risk, I think, to be less restrictive is very minimal.

Cunningham: On that subject, the Sheriff’s rationale, as she’s explained it, is that she acknowledges that she has wide latitude, while at the same time insisting that the law compels her to take this restrictive attitude. She says that she only has – her contention is she’s only following the law. Do you think that that’s just an incorrect interpretation? The logical contrast of that is if her interpretation is correct, then every other county in the state with a less restrictive policy is violating the law.

Hunter: Right. L.A. County, Santa Cruz County, Orange County, to some extent maybe San Diego County, are much more restrictive than most of the counties in the state. She has just chosen to, number one, rely on a non-binding letter from the Attorney General from several years ago, and really just taking a very restrictive interpretation of what the law really is. I just think she’s wrong.

Cunningham: Well, another issue – jails have been a big issue in the Sheriff’s Department for quite some time, dating back to the Chamberlain beating and death, and the Grand Jury report, and the District Attorney’s investigation. That was supposedly one of the top issues when Sandra Hutchens became Sheriff. In your opinion, your judgment, how much progress has been made on that issue, and what would you do differently than Sheriff Hutchins is doing now?

Hunter: Well, She has moved forward with many of the things that Jack Anderson put in motion while he was Acting Sheriff. I think they have made some progress. I think there are more cameras in the jail, there’s better tracking of the required inmate checks. I think that they have improved on some policies that are helpful. My biggest concern as a taxpayer and as a law enforcement professional is, what about the future? Her first big move was to hire some of her friends from LA county to do a study. The contract was awarded without competition and instead of really digging down into the issues it concluded that the jails were understaffed by 300-400 deputies. Now we have seen her close the womens’s jail and the Musick jail. I think many Orange County residents are concerned with her direction in this area. I believe there’s more steps that can be taken and will be discussing those as the campaign moves along.

Cunningham: What about the internal affairs function?

Hunter: I don’t think, still, that the Internal Affairs investigation process is where it should be.

They do have the Office of Independent Review, which was a great add. I’m very familiar with that. We use the Office of Independent Review in Anaheim. It’s a great resource. But from what I have come to understand from my discussions with staff members within the organization is that the mechanics of it, and the decentralized nature of how they do their investigation, who actually does the investigations is still an issue.–

Cunningham: Maybe you could elaborate on that. What was the setup before she became Sheriff, and how Internal Affairs is handled now, something most readers aren’t familiar with –

Hunter: I think one of the problems in the Chamberlain case was that you had a death in the jail, and in that particular case there was the controversy of who should investigate, the Sheriff or the D.A.’s office? So that was an issue in itself. The death was investigated by the Sheriff’s homicide bureau. Unfortunately, homicide investigators were also used in the IA portion, which is really just, on its face – number one, it’s not objective, but there are actually some fairly significant legal issues involved in that decision or practice. There are very specific laws in terms of what information can be shared between a criminal investigation and an administrative investigation. Naturally, if one unit is doing both investigations, it is going to cause legal issues down the road.

Then there were some other fundamental problems. Some of the investigators assigned to IA had no prior investigative experience. These cases are some of the most complex and sensitive cases there are and they need to be completed quickly and thoroughly. Secondly, using line-level investigators is not a common practice in most jurisdictions. Normally a Sergeant who has been an invetigator and who has some real experience supervising others is in a much better place experientially on how to complete these investigations. The bottom line is the administrative investigations are different than a criminal investigation. So, number one, you shouldn’t be doing both, and number two, the people who go in there and do those jobs really need to have investigative experience before they get there. Historically, that hasn’t been the case.

Cunningham: In the Sheriff’s Department?

Hunter: Right. They’re not always Sergeants. They should all have supervisor experience before they go in there.

Cunningham: So how is it handled now then? It’s been changed, right? Correct?

Hunter: Well, now they have the Office of Independent Review, which based on my experience in Anaheim should help them. But a lot of their cases are still decentralized. They’re going back to divisions to be worked.

Cunningham: Now when you say decentralized – instead of – before there was an Internal Affairs department –

Hunter: Right, so what happens when you do that, again, you might be sending critical cases, like a use of force, out to someone who’s not used to doing an administrative investigation. Then just your run-of-the-mill cases, you don’t know if you’re having consistent, fair, impartial discipline throughout the organization. What can happen in a decentralized model is that the investigation may only look at the face of the complaint and not an underlying issue that may have contributed to the complaint in the first place. That may happen because it would show a supervisor problem or some other issue that the division does not want to address. That would be an unethical example, but there are other reasons to be more centralized. One of the benefits of a good Internal Affairs investigation is to uncover gaps in policy, training, equipment, tactics, etc. All of that needs to be assessed at a higher level and then an accountability system put in place to make sure corrective actions are being taken in a timely manner.

Cunningham: Is it because it’s different depending on –

Hunter: On who did the investigation, who they work for. When you get into big organizations you can’t do everything in Internal Affairs. A courtesy violation or something like that doesn’t really need to be there unless perhaps there is a history of similar conduct with the employee, but all of your use-of-force, all of your more significant cases really need to be handled by someone who is trained in doing administrative investigations.

We have learned through the most recent OIR report that there are cases that went beyond the one year requirement for completion. Legally, investigations must be completed within one year from the time the misconduct becomes known or a complaint is made. You have to finish those cases within a year.

Cunningham: They took more than a year to finish?

Hunter: Correct, and that is an indication that there is a problem with the current system. It is also a problem in terms of customer service and employee accountability.

Cunningham: Was that something that was going on under both Carona and now under –

Hunter: As far as I know, that was just under Sheriff Hutchins. That came out in the last OIR report. I think part of it is that they are not utilizing their staff appropriately. At least what I’m being told is that the Sheriff, John Scott, and Mike Hillman meet independent of the other senior staff and then come out with their directives and have failed to utilize the institutional experience of the command staff. This has caused a lot of morale issues and some serious missteps.

Cunningham: So on to the issue of Correctional Officers, or whatever the term of preference is –

Hunter: Well, I think just to use a generic term they’re going to be non-sworn Correctional Officers.

Cunningham: Do you think Sheriff Hutchens is going too slow on that? Or about right? Or would you try to accelerate that process?

Hunter: Well, I think she’s moving in the right direction. As far as whether she is she going too slow or is she going about right, I think it is going to have to be an attrition issue, as positions become vacant due to retirement. But she’s really done some other funny things in there.

One of the issues at the Sheriff’s Department is the Deputy II or Senior Deputy position. Under the previous administration, and with the concurrence of the union, there was a policy that you can’t become a Deputy II unless you leave the jail and go to patrol. The whole idea behind that was to create an incentive for Deputies to move around. One of the built-in problems with the Sheriff’s Department is that the Deputies end up spending seven or eight years in the jail. So by the time their date comes up to go to patrol, now they’re 28, 29, they have kids, families, they have seniority, they’re working mid-weeks, and they’re really are not crazy about going out to patrol and working weekends.

Cunningham: They have regular hours –

Hunter: Right.

Cunningham: - in the jail.

Hunter: And going to the low end of seniority again after having seven or eight years on. So there are some Deputies who don’t want to leave the jail. Consequently, they implemented a policy to say that, “Okay, that’s fine. You can stay in the jail, but you cannot promote to a Deputy II. If you want to be a Deputy II, you have to go to patrol”. Then in a move to appease someone, she made several promotions to Deputy II in the jail, somewhere around 15 or 20. All this at a time when she had been instructed by the Board of Supervisors to begin cost saving measures.

Cunningham: Of people who hadn’t gone on – without –

Hunter: And they’re still in the jail.

Cunningham: That was something that happened under Jack Anderson, right? They made that rule about Deputy II?

Hunter: Right.

Cunningham: Some of the associates kind of waived it for these guys?

Hunter: Right, so already we’re saying, “Well look, you’re spending a lot of money on these fully trained Deputies, who are really trained to work in the street, and provide a full spectrum of police services. We understand they have to work in a jail for a period of time, but now you’re rewarding them with a promotion, you’re paying them even more to do what is really only a partial job of what they’ve been fully trained to do”. So it’s hard to say on the one hand that you’re fiscally conservative when you’re making those types of decisions.

She closed down Musick Jail as a cost savings, but then she had six extra Sergeants that she didn’t know what to do with, so now they’re sort of just floating. They’re being paid and they really have no assignment.

Cunningham: Really? Where do they go during the day?

Hunter: I’m not sure. I should say these are things that are being told to me by senior staff members. It really loops back to why am I interested in becoming Sheriff. These budget times are very frustrating for all of us. But as a person rasing my family in Orange County, I am concerned with how the Sheriff’s budget is being spent. The Sheriff’s Department plays a big role in the county. They patrol about one third of the land mass and service twelve contract cities. To the extent that they appropriately manage their budget, they will have an impact on not only their contract cities, but also every other city and every Orange County resident and visitor. Poor budget management could result in early prisoner releases, lower deployments in the field, less support services. Criminals don’t pay attention to city boundaries and we all expect each agency do do their part. A poorly managed budget will have a direct negative impact on the safety and security of every person in this county.