6 Probation Officers to Carry Handguns for Pilot Program

Six Los Angeles County probation officers will be allowed to carry handguns on duty under a pilot program approved Tuesday, but their union’s leaders say it is not enough to ensure officers’ safety.

The program represents a dramatic break from tradition in the nation’s largest probation department, which has for years refused to give guns to its officers despite their claims that their safety is increasingly jeopardized as they join interagency task forces cracking down on gang members.

The issue intensified Tuesday as the chief probation officer, a former union leader, told the Board of Supervisors that the department “would err on the side of caution” and arm only six officers working in gang units.

“We take this very seriously,” said Richard Shumsky, who admits to a “bias” against guns but said that did not factor into his decision. “It would be intolerable if we slapped together a program without foresight.”

But Shumsky’s plan drew a chilly reception from probation officers and Supervisor Mike Antonovich, who noted that 64% of California’s probation departments are armed.

“Six is tokenism, which doesn’t do the job,” Antonovich said, adding later to cheers: “We’re not inventing the wheel. In fact, we’re following the wheel.”

While Antonovich’s motion that Shumsky arm the entire department failed, supervisors ultimately made Shumsky move far faster than he proposed toward arming all 78 officers working in gang units. Shumsky had initially suggested a yearlong pilot project, but supervisors asked him to prepare a plan next month to arm all the gang officers.

The county’s 3,200 probation officers run juvenile halls and camps for juvenile criminal offenders; they also monitor convicted criminals who are on probation and, if they violate the terms of that probation, can send the criminals to prison.

About 50 probation officers attended the meeting of the Board of Supervisors, many bedecked in T-shirts emblazoned with a bull’s-eye. Before the meeting, they marched outside the county Hall of Administration, chanting “Shumsky has got to go.”

“If you acknowledge the danger we’re in, how can you not give us the tools to protect ourselves?” asked Deputy Probation Officer Lynne Duke, who works with a gang unit in the Antelope Valley. Of the plan to arm only six, she said: “It basically tells us that the lives of six [other] people are worth more than we are.”

The union last year stepped up its long-running campaign to arm not only the gang officers, but also probation officers assigned to drive convicts from jails and prisons. It hired the political consulting firm Cerrell & Associates to lobby supervisors and promote the issue in the news media.

In December, Antonovich asked Shumsky to deliver a report on arming officers. That report arrived late Friday. In it, the probation chief said that arming a selective group of officers was appropriate given the increased dangers they face.

But, he told supervisors Tuesday, he will move slowly to determine whether guns truly increase safety. “Are guns effective as defensive weapons or do guns provide a false sense of security and embolden probation officers who become less risk-averse?” Shumsky asked.

Shumsky said Los Angeles County Sheriff Lee Baca and Los Angeles Police Chief Bernard C. Parks agreed that arming gang officers was appropriate and that six officers would make a good pilot project.

Supervisor Gloria Molina warned that once probation officers carry firearms they may lose their image and effectiveness as social workers.

“Arming a probation officer changes the entire environment,” Molina said. “It’s a tremendous step, a step in the wrong direction.”

But Dennis Zine, a director of the Los Angeles Police Protective League, said probation officers are in harm’s way like other police officers and deserve the same protection.

“When someone shoots an LAPD officer and a probation officer is next to them, they’re not going to say, ‘Let’s kill the LAPD officer but not kill the county probation officer,’ ” Zine said.

UCLA professor of public policy Mark Kleiman said Shumsky’s plan to test the issue with a unit of six relied on a statistically insignificant number of officers.

“Much as I love experiments,” he said, “I don’t see where this will take us.”