Orange County Sheriff Sandra Hutchens talks to Pacifica Institute

OC Sheriff Sandra Hutchens

After the Luncheon Forum, Orange County Sheriff Sandra Hutchens sat down for a one-on-one interview with Pacifica Institute. During the interview Sheirff Hutchens talked about nonprofits, Homeland Security and how she deals with the streses of her job.

There are numerous nonprofits in Orange County. How can these various organizations come together in order to be more successful at their work?

You know, it’s a challenge because most of the non-profits, they develop because of a specific purpose that they have, but I see a lot of crossover in terms of some of the things they are trying to accomplish. I think it’s important for nonprofits to maintain their identity in terms of their purpose so they can remain focused on what their goals are. I think that if nonprofits regularly meet and discuss their individual objectives, sometimes they can find some purpose where they can meet together. It’s kind of like law enforcement, when I was talking about the relationship of local, state, and federal agencies. We have clear things in common, but we have different priorities in our community, so we will decide to come together on certain common causes, and then when we’re not, and that’s not a priority for us, then we do that individually. I think the same thing is true for nonprofits. For me, most nonprofits that I’m involved in like training, or trying to reach out to people, young adults, who are involved in substance abuse, or to assist the parents, and those kind of things. There are a lot of those, a lot of rehabilitative type programs out there, and they have a lot in common, but sometimes they’re reluctant to join with another nonprofit, because they’re afraid of losing their identity, their focus and their ability to fundraise.

How has the current economic crisis affected you and your department? How do you see in improving in the next five years?

Well, I wish I knew for sure. You know there are so many unknowns right now with the budget. We’ve got some really difficult problems to resolve at the state level, and I think the governor is working hard to try and resolve those issues, but there is grid lock, both in Sacramento and Washington, D.C. Particularly in the larger economy in the United States, I don’t think much is going to happen until the presidential elections are over. A lot of people are waiting to see who will be the next president. From my perspective, there is a lot of discussion about what government should or shouldn’t do, but one of the primary things that government is responsible for is ensuring the public safety. But that doesn’t mean that I get unlimited resources because I pound my fist on the table and say, “Gee, we’re important because we’re keeping people safe.” We have to run like a business too, because it’s taxpayer dollars. And actually although I would not wish for the bad economy, it makes us take a look at how we can do things more creatively, efficiently, and better serve the public and take less of their tax dollars while doing that. It also requires, though, here’s the real difficulty: In law enforcement particularly, the sheriff does not want the public to feel the pain, because if the public feels the pain, the sheriff does not get reelected. So the sheriff will do everything she can to make sure the public doesn’t feel the pain and meet her budget target, but at some point, when there is nothing left to cut, I have to say, ‘We need more money,’ or ‘What do we no longer do?’. Do we no longer keep people in jail, or respond to report calls? [For instance if] you had a burglar at your house, and there is no workable information. People in this country are used to someone showing up at the door. So maybe we can provide, we do in some cases, where you go on the internet and report it online. So you got your report for your insurance purposes. But it comes back to what does the public expect or want, and that’s always hard to change, to impact. You heard out there, there is a lot of concern in various areas: cybercrime, fraud, how come we’re not doing more in this area, or that area, or illegal immigration. I’ve had groups say, ‘How come you’re not arresting these illegal immigrants,’ and I say resources, I have a limited number of resources and I have to prioritize how I use that, but they don’t want to hear that.

How do you personally deal with the stresses of your job?

I do physical exercise. I do get to the gym 2-3 times a week. That really helps me. I don’t think I could have taken this stress, if I was much younger. I think that over the years you develop a certain confidence. Particularly in an elected position, this is my first, and I really have an appreciation for elected officials now, because everything you do is scrutinized and criticized. You have to be confident enough in yourself, that you are doing what you think is right while having taken everyone else’s opinion, you have to feel like what you’re doing is right, and you also have to be willing to say when you have made a mistake and change course. I think that is the hardest for anybody, but I have done that. I told my staff, ‘I want your input’. Just because I’m the sheriff, I’m not going to make all the decisions. And you need to tell me if you disagree with what my course of action is. But it took a while for them to understand that I really meant that. They were still a little concerned, “Do I come and tell her? Is she going to fire me?” That happened a couple of times, when I took one course, and they said, ‘Well, we don’t think maybe we should do that, because this, this and this,’ and I said ‘Okay, fine then we won’t do that anymore and we’ll change it.’ And after I did that people felt more comfortable.

From a law enforcement point of view, what do you think nonprofit organizations like ours can do to make the community and even better and safer place?

I think providing dialogue like this, the meeting that you have here, so the people can have answers to their questions, and they become more informed. The one gentleman was asking the question about older people being victimized and if we called it “elder abuse” we could perhaps get more resources. And I was telling him about one of the scams and he was surprised, he had not heard that before. So it’s just about keeping people more informed and organizations such as this that bring everybody together to talk about issues.

Are there any other main issues brought up to the Sheriff’s office that weren’t covered at today’s luncheon?

Homeland security, people ask what we are doing about homeland security. We do have an Orange County Intelligence Assessment Center and we do work with the FBI on criminal investigations, but it’s not an intelligence function where we follow people around as we think maybe they’re doing something. It has to be something that comes to our attention before we can engage on that, so we’re not keeping intelligence files and those kinds of things. There is balance between the group in the community that wants you to take a very aggressive stance on homeland security versus personal freedoms and intrusion.

Posted in: Interviews, Orange County, Sandra Hutchens