Chair Lee asks about plan B for staffing and leveraging other agencies
Lee asks about a plan B if positions aren't restored. Shahada describes presenting cases to prosecutors early to maximize shared resources, working with state and federal law enforcement partners, and utilizing on-loan staff governed by MOUs, but warns difficult operational decisions will be required if cuts proceed.
And I guess to that point, I mean, obviously we would want to see a restoration in a lot of the positions in the budget, but
Let's just say that doesn't end up happening, unfortunately.
What is the plan B that you have?
Are you leveraging staff from other agencies to assist with the investigations?
And have those conversations started?
Yeah, so we always, as a general practice,
In our investigations, one of the things we do is present cases to prosecutors'offices for our criminal cases early so that we are maximizing the resources we have available.
Generally, those prosecutors'offices also have investigators, and we're working with law enforcement partners at the state and federal level.
And so that is something we...
Are doing now and will continue to do.
We have on-loan staff from other agencies.
The number of those is generally governed by a memorandum of understanding with those agencies.
And so we have those in place and those are certainly very helpful.
But if we are required to make these cuts, then we are going to be required to make some very difficult decisions that I am concerned will affect core operations.
Yeah.
And obviously, on the council side, when we've been talking...
about savings, we want to make very clear that this is not something that we want to see as a negative when it comes to actually doing the work and providing services.
And so this is helpful to know.