The city of Lancaster has sued Los Angeles County, claiming the sheriff’s department is making an “unlawful profit” of more than $10 million by overcharging dozens of cities for its police services.
Like more than 40 other cities in the county — including Palmdale, Compton, Carson and West Hollywood — Lancaster pays sheriff’s deputies to police its area. But amid a staffing crisis, the Sheriff’s Department is not assigning as many deputies to Lancaster as the city has paid for, the complaint filed in March says.
Instead, incumbent MPs are working more overtime to compensate. But more overtime costs less than more deputies, and the county would not pass on the savings, according to the lawsuit.
City attorneys filed the case as part of a proposed class action on behalf of the county’s 42 contract cities, pending court approval.
Mayor R. Rex Parris said Lancaster’s lawsuit was about holding the county accountable, but stressed that the city still supports the sheriff’s deputies who patrol its streets.
“Let me be clear: Our lawmakers are the guardians of our community,” he wrote in an emailed statement to The Times this week. “It pains us to see them stretched to their limits, short-staffed and forced to work overtime, compromising their ability to protect and serve. »
The Sheriff’s Department said in an emailed statement this week that it had not been formally served with the complaint, but reiterated its commitment to maintaining order in local communities.
“We are committed to maintaining fair and transparent financial practices while providing high-quality public safety services to our communities,” the statement said.
County spokespeople declined to comment.
Since the mid-1950sSome cities in Los Angeles County have avoided the headache and expense of creating their own police departments by contracting with the sheriff’s department for policing services.
For years, no state law regulated how much the county could charge for these services. But in 1973 — after several cities accused the county of charging them too much to fund general operating expenses — the state Legislature created a law prohibiting counties from marking up the price of their police departments.
Under the current five-year contract, Lancaster pays the Sheriff’s Department more than $25 million each year — a figure that includes salaries, benefits and an 11 percent liability surcharge for about 70 deputies. But filling each of those 70 positions has become a challenge.
At the end of last year, according to department records, more than 20 percent of sworn positions were vacant or filled by deputies who were on sick leave, relieved of duty or unavailable for work.
That’s why, according to the lawsuit, in recent years the county has assigned only 51 deputies to the Lancaster station. To bridge the gap, the lawsuit says, these deputies must work more than 32,000 hours of overtime per year, at an estimated cost of $3.2 million. That expense is about $1 million less than it would cost to pay benefits and salaries for 18 additional deputies.
But the city says the county doesn’t pass on the savings.
“The County engages in the same practice with respect to other Contract Cities,” the suit states. “By doing so, the county is making an illegal profit on the contracted cities. »
The lawsuit estimates that “illegal profits” from all contracted cities amount to more than $10 million in deputy pay alone — although the lawsuit says the actual figure could be higher after taking includes sergeants, lieutenants and high-ranking officials.
It’s unclear whether leaders of the other contract cities are aware of the lawsuit, as several mayors did not respond to The Times’ requests for comment. The one who responded went to the California Contract Cities Association, a group that represents 80 contract cities across the state.
Marcel Rodarte, executive director of the association, told the Times he hoped the two sides would “reach an amicable resolution” after reviewing the contract data.
“We are also well aware of the ongoing personnel issues within the department, but we are hopeful that these challenges will abate under the sheriff’s current leadership,” he said. “We are currently working with the department to address many of the most pressing issues facing our cities by ensuring contract compliance and minimizing enforcement liabilities.”
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The cost of police contracts — and the growing cost of legal liability that comes with them — has been a source of repeated controversy in the county’s 42 contracting cities.
At the beginning of the 2000’s, an external audit found the sheriff’s department kept such sloppy records that it may not have been collecting enough money from contract towns.
But costs rose and, by the end of the 2010s, some cities had started to express their concerns on the growing cost of legal settlements resulting from misconduct, abuse and shootings by deputies. Jim Ledford, Palmdale’s mayor at the time, said the liability costs were “out of this world” and wanted the county to cover them.
After Alex Villanueva took over the department in 2018, some cities began to express concerns on the question of whether some of the the sheriff’s controversial decisions — including rehiring some troubled deputies — would result in costly lawsuits that could increase legal awards and insurance costs.
At the time, Lancaster’s mayor said he wasn’t worried about the sheriff’s hiring decisions, but flagged the department’s staffing issues as a cause for concern, saying forcing deputies to work by 16-hour shifts could pose a public safety problem.
“I really don’t care about how the sheriff handles individual personnel decisions,” Parris said in 2019. “I care about whether the people of Lancaster are safer.”
Two years later, those responsible for Compton blamed the sheriff’s department of “widespread” fraud, claiming the understaffed agency routinely billed the city for patrol work that wasn’t actually done.
Lancaster’s new allegations come months after the the city announced it would create its own public safety agency. In September, city officials said at a news conference that the new local police department would respond to minor crimes in an effort to relieve the workload of overworked sheriff’s deputies.
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