“There have been, frankly, a lot of challenges along the way. It’s not been easy,” said Threet, a former deputy city attorney in San Francisco.
“This is, I’d say, the hardest work I’ve ever done, and I’ve had some hard assignments in my career.”
Supervisors took no action Tuesday on the oversight office, which has an annual budget of about $600,000 and just one staff member aside from Threet.
The board was scheduled only to hear and receive the agency’s annual report, along with related presentations from Sheriff Rob Giordano and the department’s community engagement liaison, Misti Harris.
Still, Zane, the longest-serving current board member, used Tuesday’s lengthy public hearing to air two additional critiques of the Sheriff’s Office and its relationship with the watchdog.
First, she took aim at the amount of access law enforcement has afforded Threet, who has typically worked with the head of the sheriff’s professional standards unit. Zane said it was a “huge mistake” to funnel Threet through a single “point person” and stressed that proper collaboration between the agencies could only occur if Threet was granted total access to rank-and-file deputies.
Giordano was receptive to the suggestion.
“Access is an easy problem,” Giordano said. “You can have access. The more Jerry sees what we do, the more he understands what we’re doing, the better off we’re all going to be.”
Zane’s second critique concerned what she characterized as an unacceptable lack of diversity among the Sheriff’s Office workforce, referring to a section of the report from Threet’s agency showing that more than 94 percent of deputies in the sheriff’s law enforcement division are male and nearly 87 percent are white.
“The thing that I took home from this more than anything was how our recruitment efforts, if there have been any — and I question if there have been real recruitment efforts — to recruit nonwhite, female peace officers have failed miserably,” Zane said. “And that has got to change.”
Supervisors Susan Gorin and Lynda Hopkins — who, together with Zane, form the board’s first-ever female majority — also said they wanted to see the Sheriff’s Office move in a more diverse direction with its workforce.
Giordano said he shared the same goal but he described it as a complex challenge that would be difficult to achieve quickly, with “ground up” communication efforts like outreach to local schoolchildren playing critical yet time-intensive roles in encouraging more women and people from minority backgrounds to join the force.
Giordano, who was appointed earlier this year to serve out the remainder of former Sheriff Steve Freitas’ term, took pains to stress the trusting relationship he has with Threet.
“I think his heart’s in the right place. He’s trying to do an excellent job for this community,” he said. “I value the relationship and I have no problem moving forward and working with him.”
Many of those who spoke in the hearing’s public comment period were supportive of Threet’s office, including community activist Francisco Saiz, who had praise for Giordano, too.
“I’ve had past exposure to both of these individuals and I like what I see,” Saiz said.
