How About Some Grease with that Patrol Car?
A few weeks ago a patrol vehicle arrived at Deschutes County Sheriff’s Office Headquarters located just off of highway 20 in Bend. The vehicle was so thickly covered in grease that it looked like it had been left in a vat of old fryer oil for months.
Sadly, this wasn’t too far from the truth, which makes us wonder “What in the name of all things holy happened to this hapless patrol car?”
Those of you who have been long time readers of DCSO Follies will be familiar with an article we wrote titled “The BBQ Boys.” If you haven’t read it, we strongly encourage you to do so.
As a quick recap, the article was about a commercial kitchen and BBQ grill installed in one of the closed parking bays at the Sheriff’s Office South County substation in La Pine.
We wrote in our article how some south county patrol teams would spend hour upon hour smoking meat and cooking food instead of doing what they were paid to do and actually patrolling the South County.
The commercial kitchen appears to have been the brainchild of none other than Lieutenant Joe DeLuca with the full support of his boss Patrol Division Commander and Sheriff’s candidate Captain Bill Bailey.
As we wrote in the article, the kitchen consists of a fancy Blackstone grill, a commercial beverage storage unit purchased from the “going out of business sale” of “Coach’s” restaurant in La Pine and a commercial food preparation counter… and probably a bunch of other stuff we don’t know about.
All of these purchases were of course bought and paid for with your hard earned tax dollars by Captain William Bailey.
Considering that on an average day there are only four or five employees working at the La Pine substation this commercial grade equipment makes absolutely no sense whatsoever.
This is all well and good, but what does it have to do with the grease covered patrol car? Great question; glad you asked.
You see the greasy patrol car happens to have been parked in the same indoor parking area where the commercial kitchen equipment was installed. In fact, prior to arriving at Sheriff’s Office headquarters covered in the many layers of grease it had been parked at the La Pine substation for only a couple of short months.
We understand it was so thickly covered in cooking oil and grease that a professional detailer had to be hired to clean the vehicle. Goodness knows how much that cost.
But how did the car actually become covered in so much filth?
Apparently there has been so much cooking and grilling inside the closed parking bay that the resulting volume of vaporized grease settled in layer upon layer on the vehicle coating it like a well glazed donut.
Makes us wonder what the rest of the bays and the equipment stored there looks like. We can only imagine grease stuck all the way up to the rafters — Cue Bailey and DeLuca ordering the bays to get scrubbed out pronto.
Seriously folks, just think how much cooking and grilling is going on that in just a couple of short months a patrol vehicle became so thickly covered in grease that a professional detailer was required to get it clean.
What is clear is the South County kitchen is obviously not sufficiently, if at all, ventilated and most likely not permitted or up to code and definitely open for business. But Whatevs!
Do we blame individual deputies for this embarrassment? To some extent they should know better. However, the real culprits are the managers in charge of this whole dismal affair. This of course begs the question: Who exactly is in charge of the La Pine substation?
Shocker of all shockers, that would be Captain Bailey’s pal and direct subordinate Lieutenant Joe DeLuca who, based on the evidence, can do whatever the heck he pleases at the Sheriff’s Office with no consequence or repercussion whatsoever for his repeated poor behavior. No wonder he is known around the office as “Teflon Joe”.
The latest in the long line of debacles featuring Joe DeLuca is his star role in the bullying, intimidation, and retaliation grievance filed against him by Sergeant Jay Minton which you can read about in “The Persecution of Sergeant Jay Minton”. Time will tell if he gets away with this abusive behavior as well.
That said, we are struggling to understand whether DeLuca is running a restaurant, a frat house or a combination of the two. One thing which is clear, to us at least, is that DeLuca is not running anything resembling a professional law enforcement organization.
Not when there are deputies and supervisors literally sitting around whiling away the hours cooking, eating and generally yucking it up on the taxpayer’s dime when in reality they should be out in their patrol cars doing what they are well compensated to do.
So when our critics question how we can refer to the Sheriff’s Office leadership as a clown show, here is a prime example of exactly why.
Unfortunately it appears that we are currently stuck with:
- A Sheriff, Shane Nelson, who has for the most part checked out of his job, appears to be most concerned with targeting perceived “traitors” and is doing his level best to ensure his subordinate, captain William Bailey, becomes elected the next Sheriff;
- A Patrol Division Commander, Captain William Bailey, who is far too engrossed in campaigning for office, is so far out of his depth as to be effectively incompetent, appears incapable of or unwilling to hold his subordinates to account and who is himself in many ways part of the problem; and
- A set of captains and lieutenants who are, as a consequence of the above, simply out of control. This being exemplified by instances of these managers barely showing up for work, running an impromptu food establishment out of an agency substation, campaigning for their pal, Captain Bailey, while on duty and in uniform, and bullying, intimidating, threatening or retaliating against their subordinates — Folks like Sergeant Jay Minton, and others who will remain un-named for the time being.
The lack of accountability and professionalism shown by the Sheriff’s Office leadership is frankly staggering and simply boggles the mind. One thing is for certain, this is no way to run a public law enforcement agency nor any other enterprise for that matter.
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