More on Wackenhut
I received an anonymous phone call from a reader who asked why a story that ran in Monday's edition of The Sun headlined "A boon to police" did not mention an earlier problem involving a Wackenhut employee who served time for sexual assualt.
It's a fair question. Florida-based Wackenhut provides custody services for Redlands (and Rialto) Police and Monday's article followed up a previous report that Redlands and Wackenhut each agreed to pay a local woman a $22,500 settlement after she alleged she was sexually assaulted by another inmate when a Wackenhut employee was supposed to be watching her.
The answer to the reader's question is simple. I didn't catch the previous case (the defendent was Darrell Jeffers) when I did an archive search for any local problems involving custody officers. In the article, police offered a case that Wackenhut and other contractors give departments the ability to keep officers on the street while contract emplouees deal with arrestees.
Although I did not ask Redlands Police about the Jeffers case when I wrote my article, police Capt. Tom Fitzmaurice said the downside to contracting for custody officers is that police doesn't have as much control over staffing issues as they would if custody officers were hired directly by the city. San Bernardino Police Lt. Scott Paterson, who also had positive things to say about outsourcing, similarly said last week that if his city hired its own custody officers, San Bernardino officials could conduct their own background checks on jailers.
It would be also fair to mention that Paterson said some contract officers have gone on to become city police officers. It's not this blogger's place to say whether cities should or should not outsource their jail operations. However, the reader who left the phone call was correct that the article could have provided a more complete picture on the history of the issue.
Here's an article from eight years ago on the Jeffers case:
Police say incarcerated jailer
sexually attacked second woman
PALM SPRINGS A former jailer serving a one-year sentence for having sex with a female prisoner at the Redlands jail now faces allegations that he sexually attacked a woman at the Palm Springs jail.
Darrell Jeffers, 41, of Beaumont remained in West Valley Detention Center in Rancho Cucamonga on Wednesday, where he is serving the one-year sentence for sexual battery.
But police recommended this week that the Riverside County district attorney’s office charge Jeffers with 25 counts of oral copulation and one count of rape with a foreign object in connection with the allegations of a 30-year-old female inmate of the Palm Springs jail.
The woman alleges Jeffers sexually abused her multiple times at the Palm Springs jail from January 1998 to April 1999, police said.
Jeffers was transferred to the Redlands jail in November and was arrested April 6 on the sex charges there.
Moreno Valley resident Ranette Sanchez told police that Jeffers groped her, forced her to expose her breasts and subjected her to an unreasonable search while she was in custody at the Redlands jail in October on an outstanding warrant.
She said Jeffers called her at home and sexually harassed her even after she was released.
At the time Jeffers was a contract employee hired as a custody specialist through Wackenhut Corp. He was fired after the allegations were filed.
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