Redding Police Chief Brian Barner, left, and Shasta County Sheriff Michael Johnson wait to speak at the Board of Supervisors meeting on Monday, March 24, 2025. Law enforcement leaders from various agencies gathered for a special meeting on public safety. Photo by Mike Chapman for A News Cafe.
Shasta County’s criminal justice system is making do while under tremendous strain.
That was the overriding message the Board of Supervisors heard again Monday evening from local crime enforcement leaders during a special meeting that lasted three hours.
It was the second time in two months that agency honchos appeared before the board for a problem-solving public safety summit. They described their day-to-day toil of keeping crime in check, ensuring justice and protecting the community.
“The recurring theme that I heard last time was we’re understaffed, we’re not paid appropriately and we’ve got too much work, and our workload has increased and we’re kind of (in) a bottleneck,” Supervisor Allen Long observed.
The talk from county agency heads was a little more dire this time around – perhaps to get the supervisors’ attention before budget hearings later this year.
If some steps aren’t taken, such as upping staffing levels in the District Attorney’s Office, some crimes could conceivably go unprosecuted, District Attorney Stephanie Bridgett warned.
However, lawbreakers shouldn’t get the idea that right now they’re going to get away scot-free.
Redding Police Department Chief Brian Barner reinforced his officers’ commitment to go after the bad guys while Sheriff Michael Johnson said his goal for deputies is to rack up more arrests than the previous year.
“I can guarantee you that the Shasta County Sheriff’s Office is not going to let off on the gas,” Johnson said.
“We’re going to continue and increase doing our job, being aggressive, being proactive, going after marijuana grows, going after interdiction of drugs, going after the violent felonies that happen in our community. I know that’s not the best-case scenario to hear in a broken system but that’s the reality of what we’re going to do,” Johnson added.
“I just didn’t want to walk away without you guys knowing and the public knowing that just because we’re having problems doesn’t mean that the cops on the street are going to let up,” the sheriff said to loud audience applause.
Short-handed, overloaded, underpaid
Shasta County’s woes partially stem from the low relative pay for prosecutors, public defenders and their support staffs such as secretaries. Low salaries hurt recruitment, letting job vacancies go unfilled.
Aggressive crime-fighting that Johnson described is matched by Redding police whose arrests keep the county jail at capacity. That results in a bottleneck of cases sent to the DA’s office for prosecution and often to the Public Defender’s Office for representation. The volume also puts a strain on the Superior Court system, which is not governed by the county.
“We have a very proactive police department and our officers, they go out and they’re very busy. And so we do have a high arrest rate because they’re out there stopping cars and doing what I think the taxpayers in the city of Redding want their police department doing,” Chief Barner said.
“We do have a high number (of arrests) and we provide a lot of work to Sheriff Johnson and DA Bridgett. But again I think that’s what our community wants their police department doing,” Barner said, also to claps from the audience.
Supervisor Matt Plummer asked why Shasta County has an equal number of crime filings compared to counties that are two-and-a-half the size of Shasta.
According to Barner, part of the explanation is officers who’ve come here from big cities told him they weren’t encouraged to be out as much in public.
“They sit and they wait for the calls. They’re reactive and that is not the police department that we are,” Barner said, noting that Redding certainly has its share of crime.
“It’s a busy little city but we have a great police department and we do take a lot of people to jail,” the chief said.
Barner is facing staffing shortages as well. His department was down 12 officers, from a historically fully-staffed level of 122 officers, to 110, although a combination of grants and alternative funding has currently left the department at 114 police officer positions.
DA’s staffing challenges
Shasta County District Attorney Stephanie Bridgett speaks during a special session of the Board of Supervisors on Monday, March 24, 2025, where law enforcement leaders gathered for a public safety discussion. Photo by Mike Chapman for A News Cafe.
District Attorney Bridgett says that her attorneys already work nights and weekends. Some of her attorneys who spoke during public comment sessions said they sacrifice time with their families just to get their work done and be ready for court.
Adding to their workload is California legislation that allows prisoners to seek resentencing for potential early releases.
One issue is that the state didn’t give counties more money for relitigating whole cases. Adding to the workload, for example, is the time needed for prosecutors to deal with bodycam footage from Redding police and soon, from the sheriff’s department once its video program gets underway.
Bridgett said Chief Barner described the situation “really well” in that she agrees with the community wanting stepped-up law enforcement.
“I want that as a community member and I want that as a prosecuting agency,” Bridgett said.
She said, however, the number of cases coming into her office is very high and she needs the staffing to manage that volume of criminal activity.
“If nothing changes, what can we do?” Bridgett asked.
“Unfortunately if nothing changes, something is going to have to change in my office. We might have to not prosecute certain crimes, just to get it to a manageable level where we don’t have prosecutors who are leaving to go work in civil firms or other DA offices that are fully staffed for the amount of caseload they have. We don’t want that,” Bridgett said.
“I’m going to, over the next six months, continue to fight for the additional resources that I believe we need to have to prevent the inevitable of not being able to sustain the amount of workload that is produced in this community,” the DA added.
It would help if Shasta County’s salaries were competitive, she said. A Google search shows the entry-level salary for a prosecutor in Shasta County starts at about $87,000 a year while Sacramento County begins at about $131,000 a year or more.
“We used to get hundreds of applications but now we get one about every 30 days and we’re lucky if that person calls us back when we try to set up an interview for them. So it’s been difficult,” the DA said.
Bridgett said her office is authorized to have 28 attorneys including herself, but they’re currently down five prosecutors. One new attorney has started since her presentation last month.
Out of 10 secretaries, she’s down three, Bridgett said, and that four or five investigator posts are unfilled.
Adding to the problem is a widespread shortage of prosecutors.
“You could give us 10 attorney (positions) but if we can’t staff them, it’s not going to help,” she said.
“I’m not saying (staffing) is the only piece, but it has to be a piece of it for us to get to a manageable level,” she said.
Bridgett also noted that society has changed over the years regarding attitudes toward law enforcement. She said oftentimes social media casts police and prosecutors in a bad light.
Bridgett said social media has dramatized the more unfavorable aspects of law enforcement, owing to a handful of nationwide cases that reflect “not a good arrest or a bad prosecution.”
“It has had a negative impact not only on prosecutors’ offices but our police agencies, our sheriff’s offices with just the draw into that profession, knowing that you’re going to have a microscope over you and every small thing is going to make you look corrupt, make you look like this horrible person,” Bridgett said.
In addition, she’s heard from colleagues that law schools and universities aren’t pushing careers as prosecutors.
“There’s a lot of negative talk about being a prosecutor or entering into law enforcement,” she said.
She pointed to what Public Defender Ashley Jones previously said about a drop in the number of law school graduates and that those passing the Bar has fallen.
“We have a smaller pool of attorneys that are available to enter into the workforce,” the DA said.
Sheriff’s office a bright spot
Not all agencies are having severe staffing issues.
Board Chair Kevin Crye, who spearheaded the public safety talks, asked Sheriff Johnson how he’s attracting officers from surrounding counties, sometimes even taking pay cuts to work here.
While Johnson said he didn’t want to reveal his “secret sauce” strategy with everybody, he said a changed culture helps.
“People have to like where they’re coming to work and who they’re working with,” Johnson said.
Help-wanted ads and hiring bonuses help, as does “making every person in the agency a recruiter,” he said, adding that word of mouth goes a long way.
In a lighthearted moment during Monday night’s special board meeting, Shasta County Sheriff Michael Johnson smiles after Supervisor Chris Kelstrom asked CEO David Rickert to put notepads in next year’s budget for the sheriff so he won’t have to write notes on the palm of his hand. Photo by Mike Chapman for A News Cafe.
Future crime-solving solutions could rely on a proposed expansion of alternative custody programs at a rehabilitation campus that Johnson is working on.
Also, Barner and Chief Probation Officer Tracie Neal are working on resuscitating a “frequent flyer” program that targets chronic offenders.
Long, whose prior law enforcement spanned 20 years at the Redding Police Department, said back in the day the repeat offender program dealt with some 300 people who committed 80 percent of the crimes.
Court efficiency the key
Also contributing to Monday’s discussion was Court Executive Officer Melissa Fowler-Bradley, who stressed the need for efficiency so that the district attorney, public defender and probation teams make the most of their time before a judge.
The only way to process an overwhelming number of court cases is to make every court appearance count, she said.
Court Executive Officer Melissa Fowler-Bradley speaks during a special session of the Board of Supervisors on Monday, March 24, 2025, where law enforcement leaders gathered for public safety talks. Photo by Mike Chapman for A News Cafe.
“All of our justice partners need help because they cannot come to court and be prepared and be ready to resolve cases if they have too many cases and not enough attorneys to do it,” Fowler-Bradley said.
“They should have sufficient staff in order to deal with their workload. I think that is the problem here, and it all takes money to do that,” Fowler-Bradley said.
Going forward
The board and agency chiefs touched on a handful of solutions they might consider further.
Supervisor Long made a pitch Tuesday, during the regular Shasta County Board of Supervisors meeting, to ask the Criminal Corrections Partnership group that focuses on adults and a companion program for youths to help find answers. The 13-year-old CCP is headed by law enforcement leaders who regularly discuss public safety issues.
Shasta County Supervisor Allen Long attends a Board of Supervisors meeting on Monday, March 24, 2025. The board invited law enforcement leaders from various agencies for a special meeting on public safety. Photo by Mike Chapman for A News Cafe.
Leaning on that brain trust could result in what Long called meaningful crime data to use for future strategies. The supervisor conveniently sits on the partnership panel.
“All the players are at these CCP meetings so they would be a natural starting point in my opinion to continue the narrative and continue the discussion about improving public safety especially in light of limited resources and funding issues,” Long said.
The board approved Long’s motion to loop in the CCP.
Meanwhile, even though the DA’s office has a reliable records management system, the one used by other law enforcement agencies was described as atrocious.
RPD’s Barner talked about his department’s hardship with the records system that uses PremierOne Records Management software.
“PremierOne continues to be a struggle for us at the Redding Police Department and all of our agencies to report crimes … it’s just not an easy system to work with and for our staff to work with,” the chief said.
“That system is just horrific,” Sheriff Johnson added.
Anderson Police Chief Oliver Collins, who took over his post in the fall, said getting a new records system would reduce the time that officers need to write reports and make dispatchers’ jobs easier.
Fix it, he told the board.
“When it takes (officers) two or three hours to write a report for an arrest, it’s challenging to keep officers on the street, especially for a smaller department like mine,” Collins said.
Another effective way forward, Public Defender Jones said, is through prevention by looking at the root causes of criminal behavior.
“We’re not going to be able to prosecute our way out of homelessness. We’re not going to be able to prosecute our way out of mental illness and substance abuse or addiction, but if we can start addressing those needs, then we can hopefully reduce crime and make our communities a safer place,” Jones said.
Another possible solution that could lighten the DA’s caseload is to have city of Redding’s attorneys take on more municipal code cases that deal with low-level misdemeanor crimes such as illegal camping and sleeping in the park.
Public speaker’s observations
Jeff Gorder was one of the public speakers before the board on Tuesday, the day after Monday evening’s special meeting.
Gorder, who served nine years as the county’s public defender before retiring in 2018, speculated about an ulterior motive behind the public safety discussions, such as going after DA Bridgett.
“My suspicion was that these criminal justice meetings were conceived of as a plan to attack the DA or try and argue that the DA specifically and maybe some other organizations were acting inefficiently or incompetently,” Gorder said.
“I think what we got to see was quite the contrary. If that was the way these were conceived, it backfired,” Gorder added.
He agreed with Supervisor Corkey Harmon’s remarks about the public safety heads representing an impressive group of leaders.
Gorder said he knows most of the agency chiefs personally and recognizes their commitment to their jobs.
“I know for a fact that they’re working as efficiently and as competently as they can given the resources that they have so I think one thing to take from this meeting is, this is a great group. They’re doing everything they can with the dollars they’ve been given,” he said.
A question he posed to the supervisors was where do they go from here.
“If you’re interested in enhancing public safety, what are you doing to do? Is that going to be a priority or are you just going to try and attack? That doesn’t help. That doesn’t help morale,” Gorder said.
He said the board must find ways to hold onto employees in the county law enforcement agencies, especially in the district attorney and public defender offices, and gave this advice:
“Losing nine public defenders in one year. DA losing people. Losing that kind of institutional knowledge is irreplaceable so I think the key is trying to find how you’re going to be able to retain those people and understand that it’s not going to be easy, you’re not going to be able to solve all these problems at once but piecemeal approach, step by step, is the way to go.”
