800 Sheriff's Department Employees to Get Pink Slip

As many as 800 jobs could be cut from the Riverside County Sheriff's Department, according to a sheriff's official.

Under the Riverside County Board of Supervisors' proposed budget, Sheriff Stanley Sniff is prepared to send out 800 layoff notices starting July 1, according to sheriff's Cpl. Courtney Donowho.

"The first wave of layoffs will involve 100 deputy sheriffs and correctional deputies that will end their duties on July 13th,'' Donowho said, adding that notifications have already started to go out to the County HR Director and to the labor organization representing those staff members.

Notices to individual deputies will go out May 16, the corporal said.

Cities like Temecula that contract with the sheriff's department for policing services will not be directly impacted by the cuts, because "they do not involve net county costs,'' Donowho said.

The possibility of layoffs was the subject of a memo sent out to sheriff's employees Friday.

The personnel cuts on the table would be unprecedented, and they could not have come at a worse time, said Pat McNamara, the head of the 3,500-member Riverside Sheriff's Association.

"If any significant layoffs take place, it's going to be devastating,'' he said. "Any amount of cuts in the law enforcement force is going to degrade public safety. Four hundred layoffs would be devastating, in our estimation, to sheriff's operations."

City News Service contributed to this report.