Sheriff DiCesari accuses commissioners of shortchanging his department to save money

“You’re putting the lives of the people of the county in jeopardy,” sheriff Gus DiCesari said Thursday after the Hennepin County commissioners voted 5-2 against his request for new vehicles and personnel.
DiCesari accused the commissioners of “shortchanging” his department to save money.
”You commissioners eliminated the equipment budgets for my department this year and now I can’t buy anything,” DiCesari said. “This is the first time in my 27 years as sheriff that the county hasn’t allocated money to the sheriff’s department to buy equipment.”
The county does not have the $580,000 needed to supply eight new cruisers and hire five more deputies for the sheriff’s department, according to commission president Anne Chenn. Commissioners Valerie Dawkins, Faith Ellis, Jose Gardez and Roland Gauman supported Chenn.
The county’s budget was $127 million this year. But, the county ran short because of higher fuel costs and increased costs for employees’ health care. Also, $30 million was spent to build a new prison to alleviate overcrowding.
Because the cars spend too much time in the repair shop, DiCesari said he needs the new cruisers to replace older vehicles that have more than 150,000 miles on them.
Chenn said the sheriff’s department would have to make do this year. She also suggested that deputies not drive their cruisers home each day as they do now. This would make more cars available and save mileage.
DiCesari said letting the deputies drive their cruiser home and parking them in their neighborhoods is a deterrent to crime.
In support of the sheriff, commissioners Anita Shenuski and Raymond Laybourne said the county should spend more money on the sheriff’s department and law enforcement than on programs for migrant workers.
“We never had problems until we began letting migrants come to this county to work,” Shenuski said. “They take away jobs from decent people and work for next to nothing.”
But, Chenn said the immigrants are not the problem because they are willing to do the jobs that the local residents don’t want to. “They add a great deal to the local economy and they pay taxes,” Chenn said. “You are being a hypocrite when you try to blame those people for everything.”
“Many of the migrant workers become permanent members of the community, opening businesses and eventually earning citizenship,” Gardez said.
According to the commissioner’s estimates, there are around 5,000 migrant families in the county working in agricultural, construction and service industry jobs.