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The Alameda County Sheriff’s Workplace has stripped 47 deputies of their firearms and peace officer duties after an inside audit revealed they have been by no means certified to be employed as a result of they’d failed their psychological evaluations, authorities mentioned.
In a letter despatched to just about 4 dozen deputies obtained by The Instances, the division particulars that it initiated an inside audit of background checks and psychological exams for these employed since January 2016.
“Because of this audit, it was realized that the results of your psychological examination was listed by the psychologist who carried out your analysis as ‘D. Not Suited,’” the letter reads. “An excessive amount of analysis, and present recommendation from each POST [Police Officer Standards and Training] and County Counsel has confirmed that any candidate who’s evaluated as ‘D. Not Suited’ can’t function a peace officer within the state of California.”
The Sheriff’s Workplace mentioned it had been working “beneath info supplied various years in the past” by the California Fee on Police Officer Requirements and Coaching, or POST, that candidates who obtain a “D. Not Suited” analysis might nonetheless be employed, however officers mentioned they since have realized in any other case.
“We acquired defective recommendation,” mentioned Lt. Ray Kelly, a spokesperson for the Sheriff’s Workplace. “We acquired that info from a commissioned POST rep, who advised us that we might rent D scores and that they’d be appropriate, primarily based on the totality of the background [check].”
Kelly mentioned deputies required to re-test would now want a C- grade to go their evaluations and be returned to obligation.
However Megan Polous, a spokesperson for POST, advised the San Francisco Chronicle that the grading tips for POST-certified psychological exams have by no means modified. She mentioned letter grades — similar to C’s or D’s — will not be used to find out outcomes of POST-certified psychological evaluations.
Kelly mentioned a crew of POST officers arrived on the division’s backgrounds unit workplace Tuesday to evaluation information and talk about the outcomes of the audit with Alameda County sheriff’s officers.
The vast majority of deputies notified of the audit have been employed between 2019 and 2022, Kelly mentioned, as departments within the Bay Space struggled to recruit new regulation enforcement officers.
The audit comes lower than a month after the arrest of Alameda County Sheriff’s Deputy Devin Williams Jr., who’s in custody on suspicion of homicide within the “execution-style” slayings of a pair. Kelly mentioned throughout a Sept. 7 information convention that Williams, 24, had handed all of his psychological evaluations and background checks and had an “immaculate” file with the division, in keeping with KTVU.
In a press release, Jose Bernal, a spokesperson for the Ella Baker Heart for Human Rights in Oakland, referred to as the state of affairs on the Alameda County Sheriff’s Workplace “disturbing.”
“This additional highlights the egregious ranges of dysfunction and corruption which have plagued the Sheriff’s Workplace for years. When the Ella Baker Heart, our companions and hundreds throughout Alameda County referred to as for an audit of ACSO again in 2018, we already knew the hurt that had been attributable to Sheriff [Gregory] Ahern and his workplace,” Bernal mentioned.
Ahern advised deputies within the letter that the Sheriff’s Workplace intends to “resolve this situation as rapidly as doable” and have deputies “return to your full obligation standing when you get hold of a ‘appropriate’ discovering.” The deputies are presently nonetheless with the division, receiving pay and advantages, in keeping with the letter.
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