Deputies Picket the Bohnster

The Lost Coast Outpost reports the Humboldt Deputy Sheriff's Organization is going to picket 1st district Supervisor Rex Bohn's campaign kick off event. This, because they see him as not supportive of law enforcement. Their reasoning? Not that he's cutting funds from the Sheriff's Dept. He's just spending them the wrong way:

"As Barney recently explained to the Outpost, the union is frustrated that Measure Z money was devoted to hiring new deputies rather than giving raises to those already on the force. “We’re all for hiring new ones, but we want to keep the veterans we have,” Barney said. “It does no good to lose four or five seasoned deputies only to be replaced by four or five rookies.”

There you have it. It might make sense that you'd want to keep experienced deputies. I'm not sure how big an issue that really is up here. I do get the strong impression that most people wanted Measure Z money spent on more deputies. Not more on the ones we already have. 

And It wasn't just Rex Bohn that decided Measure Z allocations. The other supervisors were involved along with a lot of public input. Seems to me the supes are doing pretty much what the public wanted.

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As far as the suggestion we need to keep paying deputies (and for that matter all local police officers) more to keep them from going elsewhere, oh, well. 

There is some truth to that but, as I pointed out elsewhere, we can play the wage game as long as we want with little to show for it. There will always be some other county- more likely counties- that will be able to pay more than we can. One upmanship over wages with other counties is a game we need not play. We'd likely lose no matter how high wages went.