Specialty law enforcement union warns about high job vacancies

While law and order historically has been a political priority in California, a union for special public safety professionals says current vacancies up and down the state show their jobs are undervalued by the Legislature — and its endangering residents.

The California Statewide Law Enforcement Association represents a diverse array of low-profile public safety workers employed by the state, including commercial vehicle inspectors, Alcoholic Beverage Control agents, park rangers, lifeguards, fraud investigators, forensic scientists and police officers tasked with protecting state hospitals.

CSLEA bargaining groups span more than 100 job classifications within state government, many of which are peace officers. CSLEA-covered jobs account for more than 7,700 full-time-equivalent positions.

Only 80% of those positions are currently filled, however. Some classifications with hundreds of slots have vacancy rates as high as 28% or 36%.

State hospitals have more than 100 openings for police officers. They’re budgeted for more than 720. The California Department of Justice has 63 openings for special agents, which are supposed to be nearly 300 strong.

The union, however, is particularly concerned about the vacancies for park rangers; full-time lifeguards, who under state law are peace officers; California Highway Patrol commercial vehicle inspectors, known as motor carrier specialists; and CHP public safety dispatchers.

“They’re always short of money when they budget for all the state employees,” said CSLEA President Alan Barcelona, a long-time special agent for the California Department of Justice. “That’s been our biggest problem with having enough manpower to do the job and enough pay to attract people to apply for those jobs. It’s always been a money issue.”

Barcelona said the pay and vacancies have a downstream impact on public safety. Take the park rangers. He said there’s so few of them they sometimes are responsible for policing two “giant” state parks at the same time.

“They drive back and forth answering calls from one to the other. You’ve probably been to some of these state parks. Some of them are vast. It may take 30 minutes to get to the back where a campsite is where someone is calling for help,” he said.

“So, it’s pretty rough on folks, and the summer’s here now, the parks are full, events are occurring and there’s just not enough of them to really do the job in the safest possible way,” he said.

CalHR declined to comment.

“CalHR respects the confidentiality of the bargaining process and does not speak on matters subject to negotiations,” spokesperson Angela Musallam said in an email.

CSLEA’s current agreement with the state expires July 1, 2027. Its representatives expect to start negotiations in March or April of next year.

Keeping the peace at state parks
More than 68 million people visit California’s 280 state parks annually. Those parks cover more than 340 miles of coastline and 970 miles of lake and river frontage and encompass more than 15,000 campsites.

The state has budgeted for 338 park rangers and 70 full-time lifeguards to police those lands. Eighty-one of those positions are empty — a vacancy rate of 21%.

“We don’t have anyone that’s paying attention or anyone that cares,” said Matt Yarbrough president of the Resource Protection Peace Officers Association, representing state park peace officers, which includes both rangers and full-time lifeguards (the latter not to be confused with temporary lifeguards, who are often teenagers and who wear those ubiquitous red swimsuits).

…the summer’s here now, the parks are full, events are occurring and there’s just not enough of them to really do the job in the safest possible way.

Yarbrough said state parks have trouble filling ranger and lifeguard positions because the pay and working conditions are poor.

State park rangers and full-time lifeguards are peace officers, the same as the police officers patrolling the cities and towns near state parks, he said. Police officers, however, can be certain that if they call for backup, someone will come to help, Yarbrough said.

Park ranger staffing is so thin and the places they patrol can be so remote that if they get into a tight spot there’s a good chance they’ll be on their own, he said.

And police officers in nearby locales can make three or four times as much as park rangers, he said. Park rangers and full-time lifeguards can start out making $66,000 a year. They max out at $105,000 annually.

Yarbrough acknowledged that nearby police departments have concurrent jurisdiction over crimes that occur on state park land. But he said in practice local police are only going to respond to high-visibility areas.

If you get into an ATV accident on a backroad somewhere, only a state park peace officer is going to respond, he said.

But the staffing has become so low after years of cutbacks that Yarbrough said some calls simply don’t get a response and, in the end, the public doesn’t get any idea of the consequences.

After all, he said, there’s no city council or county board of supervisors providing oversight of an incident that went unattended at a state park.

“My whole career,” said Yarbrough, who has worked as a park ranger since 2003, “nobody has cared.”

Inspecting big rigs
Cesar Bustos, president of the Association of Motor Carrier Operation Specialists, tells a similar story about the state’s roadways.

CHP motor carrier specialists provide the only independent check on commercial vehicles driving up and down state, he said. These non-uniformed public employees are authorized to perform warrantless searches on big rigs, tour buses and other commercial carriers operating within the state.

“What we do is pretty important,” said Bustos, a motor carrier specialist operating out of the CHP’s Southern Division, which covers San Diego and Orange County. “We prevent big rigs from crashing into you.”

Their work is prioritized, however. Every year, he said, motor carrier specialists have to inspect school buses. Next on the list are tour bus inspections, Bustos said.

It’s only if they have enough staffing that they can turn their attention to big rigs and other concerns, like hazardous waste transporters and flammable liquid cargo tank carriers.

The state budget calls for 268 motor carrier specialists. One hundred, seventy-one of those jobs are filled, a vacancy rate of 36%.

With 30,000 school buses to inspect annually, Bustos said it’s difficult for those 170-plus motor carrier specialists to move on to big rig inspections.

The problem, he said, is the pay. Motor carrier specialists start at $62,000 a year and top out at $83,000. Bustos said commercial vehicle inspectors can make $120,000 annually elsewhere.

“We are way underpaid,” he said.

Answering the call for help
Tina Brazil, president of the CHP-Public Safety Dispatchers Association, said pay also plays a critical role in dispatcher vacancies —20% statewide — although the issue isn’t as simple as workers could make more elsewhere.

Brazil said dispatcher jobs are difficult. For the CHP, she said, dispatchers don’t even pick up calls by pressing a button or picking up a handset; calls drop automatically into dispatchers’ headsets four or five seconds after they finish their last one.

Park ranger staffing is so thin and the places they patrol can be so remote that if they get into a tight spot there’s a good chance they’ll be on their own.

That pace alone can make CHP dispatcher job trying, she said, with individual highway patrol call centers covering 911 calls and radio dispatches for five or nine counties.

“I’ve a very emotional job,” Brazil said, noting that dispatchers have to field calls about child fatalities or from motorists trapped in upside-down cars. “You have to learn how to get through it,” she said.

But she said the stress is amplified by dispatcher vacancies and problems with the state’s 911 system.

The vacancies mean dispatchers have to work overtime to ensure someone is always manning the lines. Brazil said dispatchers can work 10- or 12-hour shifts and then have to work four hours of overtime. CHP dispatchers can work 16-hour days, she said

Meanwhile, she said failures of the 911 system cause other jurisdictions’ calls to be temporarily rerouted to other call centers, upping the stress for dispatchers there.

The result is a lot of burn out among the dispatcher ranks, Brazil said. That’s where pay comes in.

Brazil said cities and counties offer dispatcher jobs that aren’t as stressful, because they only cover one area. She said those jobs pay around what the CHP offers for its dispatchers, which is $64,000 to $88,000 annually, according to CalHR data.

Brazil said some CHP dispatchers opt to take city or county jobs, even if they pay less, simply because the working conditions aren’t as stressful.

“If the pay is high enough,” Brazil said, “we keep them.”

But what the state offers isn’t always high enough, she said. Heading into May, she said all 24 CHP call centers in the state had vacancy percentages in at least the teens. Ventura’s was 25%, she said. San Luis Obispo, 41%. Chico, 48%.

She said those vacancy rates have just sent overtime skyrocketing, which in turn costs the state.

“It’s a tough job,” she said.