Nightmares Pile Up in Roache’s 1st Year : Sheriff: After reform campaign, he endures deputy misbehavior and loss of jail money. Now he’s accused of some of the purported sins of his predecessor.

Six months after he was elected to an office that he pledged to open to all scrutiny, San Diego County Sheriff Jim Roache was forced to expose one of the seamiest episodes in department history.

In July, one of his deputies shot a colleague, but this was no simple case of friendly fire. One of the deputies, wearing a stocking mask, had been caught in the midst of an apparent armed robbery. Both officers had worked together at the Encinitas sheriff’s station.

“I wrestled with how am I going to handle this situation where I don’t lie to the public and media, but I also don’t trample on the feelings of the (victim’s) loved ones and family,” Roache recalled.

Choosing his words carefully, Roache explained the nature of the tragedy, the staggering sense of disappointment he felt and the sympathy he and the department had for the victim’s family.

As he struggled to put the circumstances into perspective, Roache spoke with eloquence and dignity. Days later, letters poured in to the sheriff’s office congratulating him for his class and grace under pressure. The media praised him for his openness. Even his political enemies were impressed.

It was one brief shining moment in an otherwise dismal year, Roache’s first as San Diego County sheriff after 20 under the charismatic and often bombastic John Duffy.

Within a scant 12 months, deputies were accused of criminal wrongdoing and unprovoked violence. The county’s budget fell so ill that the sheriff could not afford to open a state-of-the-art 1,500-bed jail in East Mesa.

As Roache eagerly awaited his share of $330 million worth of sales-tax proceeds that have accrued since voter approval of Proposition A in 1988, the state Supreme Court struck down the tax as unconstitutional, throwing prospects for the money into disarray.

Department morale hit the skids, based partly on the elimination of vacations the first six months of this year and almost all overtime. Much of the department had supported Jack Drown, Roache’s opponent in last year’s election, and some still feel today that Drown would have made the better sheriff.

In fact, many of his employees say that Roache’s impatience, abrasiveness, stubbornness, refusal to seek a broad spectrum of advice and unusual hypersensitivity to criticism proved that he shared more in common with Duffy than he perhaps wanted to believe.

“It took Duffy 20 years to become an isolationist,” said James Hartshorn, executive lieutenant of the Encinitas station and a 32-year employee. “Roache started out that way. He was a product of that regime. He’s an extension of what Duffy’s last few years were. It has been shoot from the hip from the highest level.”

Cmdr. Robert DeSteunder said Duffy “decided a lot of things unilaterally but nothing to the extent that is happening now.”

A “small clique” of Roache aides, Undersheriff Jay LaSuer and special assistant Dan Greenblat make many of the decisions “that come down as edicts or policy without much input,” DeSteunder said. “I’d like to see a broadening of that.”

Roache is incredulous over charges that he is not visible and makes decisions without seeking advice from those other than Greenblat and LaSuer.

For one, he says, his door is open to anybody who wants to talk, and though he doesn’t make the rounds as much as he would like, he said, “I get out far more than my predecessor.”

Recently, he has taken to adopting an MBWA style: “management by walking around,” says Greenblat, a former campaign consultant hired to improve the department’s beleaguered image.

As for seeking input, Roache said he has invited managers any number of times during staff meetings to try their hand at cutting the budget without hurting services.

Each time, they’ve had no answer, arguing that trimming the budget is impossible.

“I know I’m impatient,” Roache concedes. “I don’t like people unwilling to make a decision or to take the easy way out. I get frustrated with people who say it can’t be done.”

Ultimately, the sheriff makes the tough calls. But even his achievements seem accompanied by drawbacks. Roache’s policy of denying vacations for all employees until July 1 brought a backlash from deputies, as did his idea to trim overtime.

When overtime was slashed, horror stories surfaced about officers not being dispatched to areas where they were needed.

One incident involved a deranged naked man in Encinitas walking in freeway traffic. Because the call came at the end of a shift, dispatchers waited until the next group of officers arrived for work. In the interim, the man was hit by a car and killed, according to Randy Dibb, president of the 1,500-member Deputy Sheriff’s Assn.

“Some of the overtime cuts are not good,” Dibb said. “A lot of us are opposed to them because officer safety and public safety are being jeopardized.”

Roache never intended for officers not to investigate a case of pressing emergency, Greenblat said. The incident in Encinitas was “more than likely the fault of the supervisor who did not interpret the overtime policy correctly,” he said.

In general, Roache is praised for his repair of relations with the County Board of Supervisors. Duffy, in the final years of his administration, spent all the money he saw fit and then forwarded the bills to the board, but Roache has been more fiscally cautious. The sheriff will come closer to making the budget this year than at any time in many years.

“On a scale of 1 to 10, 10 being the highest on the scale, I’d give Jim a 9.5,” said Supervisor John MacDonald, who was chairman during Roache’s first year as sheriff. “Mr. Duffy had been in office a long time . . . and there was considerable friction with the board. Mr. Roache, on the other hand, has been at the center of some very innovative thinking.”

Although Duffy may have battled the board and, in fact, completely ignored it at the end of his administration, many in the department believe he fought hard to keep his deputies equipped with the necessities of the job, even if it generated political heat.

Roache, however, “kisses up to the Board of Supervisors rather than saying, ‘We’ve got to have this,’ ” said one deputy who asked not be named for fear of retaliation by Roache. “The big joke around here is that we’re ‘discount law enforcement’ or ‘law enforcement on a budget.’ ”

Although the department is facing only a $2.5-million shortfall, its list of needs is endless. The communications center constantly needs fixing. Patrol cars are shoddy. Most equipment is antiquated.

More to the point of public safety, the department has only 0.5 patrol officers per 1,000 population in the unincorporated areas. The San Diego Police Department says it is stretched too thin at 0.8 officers per thousand on patrol.

Sheriff’s homicide detectives number only nine for a population of 700,000 people in their jurisdiction. San Diego police have 10 working on one murder alone, that of a 9-year-old girl found dead in a North Park canyon.

The lack of homicide detectives, in particular, rankles the district attorney’s office.

“Nine homicide detectives is ludicrous,” Dist. Atty. Edwin Miller said. “Not only are we seeing the inadequacy of investigations because they’re chasing their tails over there, but a lot of homicides are not being solved because they don’t have the personnel to do it.”

A county budget crisis would have hurt any sheriff trying to make ends meet, said Miller, who endorsed Drown, Roache’s opponent in 1990. Still, Roache has had a particularly tough time that may get even worse, Miller said.

“My only words of advice are that he’s in there for the long pull and he shouldn’t let the day-to-day stuff to get to you,” he said.

The words of consolation are not lost on Roache, who tries to approach each day with some degree of optimism, even though the department’s prognosis for improvement during his four-year term is not good.

“It has been a rough year, a very rough year,” he said. “You have no idea--I don’t even have an idea of some of the problems in this organization, and I’m the sheriff. Every day, every week, I talk to someone, I go somewhere, I ask about something or read about something, and I find there’s a problem I didn’t know existed the day before.”

Roache’s greatest disappointment so far is the jail situation. Although he and his assistants had developed an intelligent plan to lease local jail space to federal inmates, thereby collecting enough money to at least partly open the East Mesa jail, the state Supreme Court’s decision on Proposition A has set the project back to ground zero.

“This year, I wanted to make some meaningful changes that would be beneficial and positive in our jail crisis,” Roache said. “It’s not like you can look at the alternatives and pick out the best one. Around here, you pick out the least objectionable.”

Although Roache is reluctant to point out his accomplishments, leaving that assessment to the public and the media, Greenblat has compiled a list. Those inside the department say few of those ideas have been put in place, and that some of those that have are hardly new.

For example, although the sheriff has proposed to strip detectives of take-home cars, established a jail consolidation plan, came up with the idea for a gang suppression unit and a “boot camp” for first-time drug offenders, none of those plans have become reality.

Other “initiatives,” such as firing a reserve deputy involved in a controversial shooting and removing prisoners from the El Cajon jail because it was built so flimsily, can hardly be termed achievements, say Hartshorn, DeSteunder and others.

“Those are things you’re supposed to do,” Hartshorn said. “That’s like saying it’s an achievement because I changed a flat tire on my car.”

On the other hand, tightening the standards for deputies, changing the color of patrol cars from green to black and white and putting more correctional deputies in the jails are all welcome moves, officers say.

One of Roache’s biggest supporters said “the jury is still out” on the new sheriff.

Jim Butler, a former Navy chaplain who won a $1.1-million judgment after being assaulted by a sheriff’s deputy, fought for establishment of a citizens review panel that would investigate complaints about official misconduct.

At the time San Diego County citizens overwhelmingly supported Roache in the November, 1990, election, they also voted on the review panel.

Although Roache supported the panel while running for office, he now says it has a number of problems, including the possibility that it might interfere with his department’s own investigations. He wants the department to examine any complaints and asked the panel to wait three months before it begins its own probe.

“I don’t want to jeopardize criminal investigations and internal affairs investigations,” he said. “There may well be created a situation where the district attorney’s office may not be able to prosecute a crime because of contaminated investigations.”

That kind of talk amounts to backtracking by Roache, Butler says.

“His approach is uncalled-for,” Butler said. “What he is doing is opposing what the people wanted. They wanted a review board apart from the Sheriff’s Department. I just hope he will honor his commitment that he campaigned on.”

Roache’s department was under fire again on Christmas Day when two deputies shot a 60-year-old gardener from Tecate, who was wielding a homemade, 5-foot-long shovel. Ezequiel Tinajero Vazquez weighed 133 pounds and stood 5-foot-3. Deputies said he was swinging the shovel at cars.

Butler was infuriated by Roache on television asking viewers, “what would you do?” in the same situation, and stating that, if his department had enough money to buy nets, they might have subdued Tinajero without killing him.

“Officers should be trained to take care of those situations,” Butler said. “When a police officer has to use a gun as his courage, he shouldn’t be a police officer.”

Told of Butler’s feelings, Roache turned tense.

It was “implausible” for deputies to use their hands or batons to defend themselves, he said. With more money, he said, maybe he could have bought his deputies stun guns, nets or canines.

In the past year, Roache said, he has become accustomed to being second-guessed for every action he has taken, even in his personal life. He smokes cigarettes, even though he has a blocked artery in his heart and was forced to dramatically alter his diet. Administrators pester him to quit.

“It has become abundantly clear to me that, no matter what I do, how I do it or when I do it,” Roache said, “someone is not going to be happy.”