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Over the past year or so, a number of Humboldt County sheriff’s deputies hit a snag in their training: They drove down to the main College of the Redwoods campus to attend one of their regular, mandated instructional courses, only to be turned away and asked to leave campus.

Sheriff Billy Honsal explained the problem at yesterday’s Board of Supervisors meeting. 

“One of the things that we found during the pandemic was that College of the Redwoods was requiring all students to be vaccinated,” he said, “and we have about half of our deputies that, you know, refuse to be vaccinated for various reasons … . We actually had deputies that showed up for training that had to be sent home.”

Humboldt County doesn’t require employees to be vaccinated for COVID-19, though last year the board adopted a policy requiring all unvaccinated workers to submit to weekly testing. [CLARIFICATION: On March 8, the Humboldt County Board of Supervisors officially adopted that policy, but to date it has not been implemented, meaning unvaccinated employees do not have to submit to weekly testing.]

Fifth District Supervisor Steve Madrone had questions for Honsal. He said he’d spoken with trustees at College of the Redwoods who told him that the director of the law enforcement academy would be “more than willing” to give deputies an exemption to the college’s vaccination requirement.

Honsal acknowledged as much, saying he’d spoken with CR President/Superintendent Keith Flamer the previous night, and Flamer made the same offer, saying un-vaccinated deputies could get a waiver to attend the training courses. But Honsal passed.

“That’s not something that I would ever, you know — it’s a rule from CR,” he told the board. “I respect the rule. And we would never ask [for] us to be treated any differently than any other students that go to CR.”

The inconvenience caused by deputies’ refusal to comply with the college’s vaccine mandate was among several reasons why the sheriff’s office has been pursuing a new space to conduct required trainings, Honsal said, and at Tuesday’s meeting the board agreed to sign a five-year lease on a 900-square-foot office space near RMI Outdoors in Eureka. 

The training courses instruct deputies on a variety of “perishable skills” including use of force, arrest and control, domestic violence and sexual assault investigations, driving, firearms and strategic communications. By law, Honsal said, correctional officers must attend 24 hours of such training annually while patrol deputies need to accumulate that much every two years.

Currently, deputies are getting paid overtime to attend these trainings, but Honsal said that a new schedule starting in January will make it so these employees are just making “straight time,” which should save the county about $50,000 per year. 

Honsal also noted that his department’s quarterly trainings on firearms, arresting control techniques and de-escalation had, to this point, never been certified by the California Commission on Peace Officer Standards and Trainings (POST). 

“And so we were training our people once a quarter and then having to send [them] to CR to get this ‘certified training’ so they got their continued professional training points,” Honsal said. He added that the county will save more money in the future because his department’s training program will be certified.

The sheriff’s office also needs a permanent home for its Force Option Simulator (FOS) — a training device that uses video sequences and laser-emitting firearms to simulate high-risk incidents. The new rental space should meet that need, Honsal said.

During the public comment period, the county’s most prolific public commenter, Kent Sawatzky, questioned the terms of the lease, noting that it has a five-year term and an annual inflation clause. According to a staff report, rent would start at $1,700 per month and increase by three percent in each of the next four years for a total cost over the five-year term of $108,306.48. 

This rent bill would be paid out of the sheriff’s office’s State Asset Forfeiture Trust fund. 

Following the public comment period, First District Supervisor Rex Bohn made a motion to approve the lease agreement. Bushnell seconded the motion but questioned Honsal about the lease, asking whether it contained a severability clause in case the county wants out before five years is up.

“Absolutely,” Honsal said, though he quickly added, “I didn’t draw up the lease here, but that’s usually what we have.”

It soon became clear, however, that nobody could say for sure whether the lease had such a clause, so Public Works Director Tom Mattson suggested the board take a break to allow staff to investigate the matter.

When the board resumed its discussion a short while later, Mattson reported that the property owner, DC & RC Properties, LLC, would not agree to early termination of the lease. “So we don’t believe you should support this lease at this time,” Mattson said, adding, “Good catch from our caller-in.”

But the board kept discussing the matter, and Honsal advocated for signing the lease anyway, noting the space’s proximity to Ballistic Precision, a shooting range behind RMI that deputies use regularly. He also noted that the property owners made improvements to the building with the expectation that the county would be renting it.

Madrone wanted the matter to be brought back at a later date with more detail, and he said it was unfortunate that the owner made improvements before knowing whether the board of supervisors would agree to sign the lease. “They did that at their own risk,” he said.

Third District Supervisor Mike Wilson said that the county has been moving many of its services into new facilities pretty regularly lately, often vacating leases on places that are compliant with the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA). 

“If we want to be efficient about using space, we should be looking to [use] a place we already lease or own,” Wilson said, adding that he has concerns about the severability issue.

But Honsal said the rental facility would lower the county’s risk of liability by providing deputies with use-of-force training, including a space for the Force Option Simulator (FOS). He said he’d be happy to have each of the five supervisors come take a tour of the new place and use the simulator.

Wilson asked whether the new facility would be ADA compliant and Mattson assured him it will. Mattson then deferred to Honsal, saying, “Frankly, if Billy is willing to move forward, we support moving forward.”

Wilson said he would support signing the lease. “But I do want that tour,” he said.

Madrone cast the lone dissenting vote, and the motion to sign the five-year lease passed 4-1.