CALIFORNIA PROBATION WORK NO LONGER FOR SISSY SOCIAL WORKERS

Gov. Brown’s prison realignment program has dumped an ever increasing number of dangerous felons on California’s counties for parole supervision

Due to Gov. Moonbeam’s realignment program, five California probation departments that have not let their probation officers be armed are now preparing to have them carry guns.

From the Silicon Valley Mercury News:

__Since Gov. Jerry Brown began enforcing a U.S. Supreme Court mandate to ease unconstitutional overcrowding at state prisons in October, the [Los Angeles] county Probation Department has found itself watching over more violent criminals than ever before - 499 "very high risk" and 7,197 "high risk" AB 109 offenders as of March 29, according to Supervisor Michael Antonovich.

__In response, Chief Probation Officer Jerry Powers is making the unprecedented move to more than triple the number of his armed probation officers, from 30 to 100. "It is a natural response to an ever increasing number of higher threat individuals and the operations that go along with supervising them," Powers said in an interview.

Hmm, I wonder how the arming of probation officers is going to go over with the sissy social worker types? And how many probation officers, especially women probation officers, are going to make actual house-calls in East LA and South Central LA without a police escort? And those cops are taken away from their regular duties when they have to escort probation officers on routine house-calls.

Greg ‘Gadfly’ Doyle says:

__When I was a detective assigned to assist San Bernardino County probation officers who handled gang suppression caseloads in 1990, all of the probation officers were unarmed. I thought that was insanity then. And after a few close calls, certain probation officers assigned to high-risk caseloads were trained and armed by order of the Probation Chief. Imagine working with various law enforcement agencies on searches of the homes for armed and dangerous probationers (many who were absconders) and being the only one unable to defend yourself against an armed suspect.

__As Bob Dylan once sang, “the times, they are a-changing.” But are they changing for the better under realignment?

If Moonbeam’s realignment remains in effect, I can see a revision of required qualifications to become a probation officer – not only an appropriate college degree, but also several years of experience as a law enforcement officer.