CORRECTION: A previous version of this article stated that Lt. Brian Olmstead was the sole challenger to Sheriff Bill Brown. Lt. Eddie Hsueh is also running as of March 8, 2018.
The current favorite to derail Santa Barbara County Sheriff Bill Brown’s continued tenure is Lt. Brian Olmstead, 48, a New Cuyama native with nearly three decades of experience at the Sheriff’s Office under his belt.
He said he decided to run in the June 5 election to help enact change.
“The Sheriff has been here for 12 years,” Olmstead told the Sun. “We just need a change in leadership both to assist internally with issues but also externally with rebuilding and making positive relationships with the Board of Supervisors.”
Olmstead said many in the office did not think the supervisors and Sheriff Brown were currently on the best of terms.
“That’s the perception,” he added, “so when we start looking at funding the department, we think it suffers because of this poor relationship.”
It’s a relationship the lieutenant says he would like to change, a belief that is backed now in the form of a pair of endorsements from two supervisors on opposite sides of the aisle: 4th District Supervisor Peter Adam and 3rd District Supervisor Joan Hartmann.
The week of March 20, the Santa Barbara Deputy Sheriffs Association (SBCDSA) voted at a special meeting to endorse Olmstead with about 70 percent in favor. The association makes up the majority of the lower level staff in the Sheriff’s Office. It represents the collective bargaining interests of more than 400 custody deputies, deputy sheriffs, district attorney investigators, and emergency dispatchers working in the county.
“We need accountability and transparency in our Sheriff’s Department from top to bottom,” SBCDSA President Neil Gowing said in a statement. “Our county leadership has not addressed the long-standing problems of vacant deputy sheriff positions and the chronic understaffing that results from carrying so many vacant positions.”
Santa Barbara deputy sheriffs have been working excessive amounts of overtime shifts to overcome severe staffing shortages for more than two years, Olmstead said. The SBCDSA said in a statement that “they deeply appreciate Lt. Olmstead’s broad experience working in the interests of public safety with all levels of government and virtually every assignment” within the Sheriff’s Office.
“Our ranks are demoralized from years of staffing shortages that have caused excessive overtime,” Gowing added. “Fatigue from too much overtime set in years ago. Our members are very concerned about the quality of public safety services we can provide under these deteriorating conditions.”
According to Olmstead, the office had issues with recently trained deputies leaving laterally to other communities or moving further away seeking higher pay and better hours. He said there were also problems keeping management level positions.
“They’re tired, and they don’t think their opinions or suggestions are going anywhere, which then causes a recruitment problem because we have these vacancies,” he said.
Olmstead noted that the county jail has been on mandatory overtime for over a decade now due to staffing issues. He said Sheriff Brown hasn’t really acknowledge a lot of those departmental issues.
“I think traditionally he’s blamed it all on the recession,” he said, “but it doesn’t appear he’s working on mending these relationships both within the department and outside with the Board of Supervisors.”
And that’s why Olmstead and many of his fellow deputies are calling for a changing of the guard.
“We need a change,” Olmstead said. “We have a retention and recruitment problem; there’s both external and internal issues.”
This article appears in Mar 29 – Apr 5, 2018.