Stanislaus County Sheriff Jeff Dirkse is locked in a standoff with the Board of Supervisors over 911 emergency call-center operations, and the first salvo in what could become a courtroom battle was fired at the Tuesday, Dec. 10 board meeting.
Dirkse desires to break away from Stanislaus Regional 911 — a joint dispatch hub that provides 24-hour service for numerous public safety departments throughout the county. He favors a partnership with software giant Oracle to develop a new public safety suite, including a computer-aided dispatch (CAD) system, a records management system (RMS), and a jail management system (JMS). Meanwhile, SR911 favors CentralSquare, a program that Dirkse says is inadequate because it would require the purchase of separate RMS and JMS products.
In a Nov. 8 letter to the board, Dirkse not only asked for his own attorney, believing County Counsel Thomas Boze cannot effectively represent both sides in the dispute, but also questioned the board’s authority to “interfere with the independent and constitutionally and statutorily designated investigative functions” of his office.
“Suffice it to say, I think the selection of a CAD program is clearly part of the investigative function of the Sheriff’s office,” Dirkse told supervisors. “There’s roughly 50 Sheriff’s deputies and sergeants and lieutenants sitting right here, and while I’m not going to belabor the point and ask them to come up here. I’m pretty confident that all of them could come up here and say that CAD is the entry point for our investigations and the effectiveness of that program is critical to our investigations.”
Two items were addressed during the meeting: the first centered on whether Dirkse should be granted his own counsel. That request was denied by a 4-1 vote (District 5 Supervisor Channce Condit was the outlier). The second item was the county’s unanimous approval to extend terms of agreement with the Joint Powers Authority through Dec. 31, 2025, while work continues to hash out the squabble.
While Dirkse was supported by a large contingent from his department on one side of the supervisors’ chambers, the other side was occupied by SR911 dispatchers, three of whom rose to speak in favor of CentralSquare.
“Our current CAD is antiquated and needs replacement as soon as possible,” said SR911 executive director Kasey Young following the meeting. “We went through a series of demonstrations with six products over the course of 18 months and our members collectively decided, aside from the Sheriff’s Department, that they wanted to go with CentralSquare because it could support law, fire and EMS operations. It’s one-stop shopping. There’s no transfer of calls. You call one place and get all the services you need.”
Young said the Oracle system was used by just one county — Archuleta County in Colorado — while CentralSquare has 8,000 deployments nationwide.
“It just wasn’t where it needed to be to replace our current CAD system,” said Young. “It doesn’t currently support a large, multi-discipline, multi-agency dispatch center.”
Dirkse, along with a handful of members of his department, traveled to Archuleta County to see the Oracle system in action and came away impressed. Oracle was also tested last week during a 12-hour shift through the city of Ceres’ dispatch. Dirkse also pointed out that Oracle would not bill the county for developing the system, a service valued at about $7.5 million.
Dirkse’s next move may be to request a Stanislaus County Superior Court judge to order the board to provide him with counsel. He’d have to pay his own legal fees in that endeavor, but if a judge were to rule in his favor, the county would then have to foot the bill for an independent counsel.
“This is very disturbing,” said District 3 Supervisor Terry Withrow. “I’ve been on the board 14 years and I don’t think we’ve ever been in a spot where we’re going at it with our own sheriff. To even think at this point we’re talking about bringing in the attorney’s … it’s very disappointing.”
The Stanislaus County Sheriff’s Office responds to calls in the county’s unincorporated areas and is contracted with the cities of Hughson, Patterson, Riverbank and Waterford to serve, essentially, as those cities’ police force.
