Around 50 people showed up at the Sheriff's Meeting last Wednesday night at the community room at Country Club Lanes - along with 10 cops, 2 code enforcement officers, 2 CHP officers, Supervisor Desmond and some support staff from the County. In a nutshell:

• North Division showed some informative slides about how they do their job, going into some detail about how work assignments are made and how 911, 311 Connect and non-emergency number phone calls are related to the various assignments and times of day. Overall, they don't really have enough people. Arden Arcade is their busiest sector, in fact it generates a bigger workload for the Sheriff than the unincorporated South Sac "finger". {more crime here than in South Sac...hmmm}
• The CHP does all the traffic enforcement {except we all know there there are lots of unenforced traffic violations around here}
• The County has Code Enforcement people and a residential rental inspections team. {but, via side conversations with the DA's Office, the County is reluctant to engage. Perhaps that explains why our community has so many boarded up residences and vacant/struggling commercial centers.}
• There was some mention of the no camping ordinance that was passed by the Board of Supervisors last month - it has not gone into effect yet. Discussion centered around legislative intent and how the Sheriff's Deputies will be using the new ordinance. The Sheriff's management people were graceful when explaining things, which is probably a good sign, an indication of humane enforcement.
• The story about cops being laid off isn't true at the moment, but might happen if the Sheriff doesn't get his way in next fiscal year's budget. Potentially, that means the short-staffing problem will get even worse, something that's concerning to both Supervisor Desmond and the Sheriff. Supervisor Desmond recommends people should show up at Board of Supervisor meetings and ask the Board to hold the line on the spending level and to ensure funding for our patrols, homeless outreach and problem-oriented policing will not be cut.

We were also made aware of isssues raised by a mobility-impaired resident who had alerted the Sheriff's people by email about the late night sideshow/doughnuts problem in the Fulton & Marconi vicinity. Beyond the obvious traffic violations (see 2nd bullet, above), the noise from the vehicles is excessive and disturbing. The Sheriff's people said they "have noted the problem". {which is not the same as "will get the problem corrected}  We shall see whether things improve or not, won't we?

All in all, the meeting was an improvement over past meetings. The slide show was informative and it was helpful to have our Supervisor in the room. Still, it was made plain that our community is left behind when it come to law enforcement. Though we have excellent people trying to make our community safe, the resources provided are not enough to handle the workload.