Portsmouth sheriff's plan for fed funding puzzles some

PORTSMOUTH

Central to the flap over the demise of Sheriff Bill Watson's special neighborhood patrol squad was his assertion that the city was fumbling its chance at a lucrative federal contract.

The offer, he said, was so sweet it would fund his Community Enforcement Unit and bring a windfall of extra revenue for the city. In a long and heated public campaign, Watson urged the City Council and city management to hurry and commit to a new revenue-sharing agreement so he could land the deal. It was an agreement he thought could benefit him even if the new contract fell through.

Talk of the federal deal ended abruptly this week when council members said they learned the city jail was never qualified for the contract. Other sheriffs and an official with the U.S. Marshals Service have since said they were unaware of such a deal ever being discussed.

Watson said Norfolk and Newport News also were picked for the contract. Like Portsmouth, those city jails already hold federal inmates on a per diem basis, but the sheriffs there said they hadn't heard anything about the new opportunity.

"It's all news to me," Norfolk Sheriff Bob McCabe said. Newport News Sheriff Gabe Morgan said, "He may be onto something else that I don't know about."

The deal, as Watson described it, was supposed to save his cash-strapped neighborhood crime-fighting team. In little more than two years of existence, the Community Enforcement Unit had won fans among neighborhoods where residents saw it respond quickly to complaints over vagrants, drug trafficking and other problems.

A crowd turned out at last week's council meeting, upset that city officials would allow it to die. Council members said they liked the unit, too, but its funding source was no longer large enough to support it. Eager to keep it alive, some of them had sought details about the federal contract Watson said he could land.

The deal had a catch. Watson wanted an agreement from city officials to change how federal inmate revenue is disbursed. He wanted an assurance that the money would fund his unit first, with the rest split between his office and city coffers. Without that, he wouldn't ink the deal with the feds.

"There's a couple million dollars we can bring in for the city, but until you sign it or agree to it or whatever, I can't get any federal inmates," Watson told the council on Jan. 12.

On Feb. 18, he told the Finance Committee: "We've been handpicked by the federal marshals to hold federal inmates. I can sign a contract to hold 100 federal inmates."

Col. John Gomoke, one of Watson's top deputies, told the same committee that dallying could cost the city even more than the proposed contract. The federal government was consolidating in Hampton Roads, he said, and the jails that didn't get in on this new arrangement, including Virginia Beach and Chesapeake, would be out in the cold.

"We will lose the federal inmates we have now. There'll be zero dollars," Gomoke said, referring to the city's current arrangement with the U.S. Marshals Service. "All of this is occurring the first and/or second week of March."

Added Watson: "If you turn the feds down, they'll never ask you again."

Chesapeake jail officials had heard nothing about being cut out of housing federal prisoners, said Sgt. David Rosado, a Sheriff's Office spokesman.

The assertions nonetheless alarmed Portsmouth officials. "Quick action is required, because if we don't do so, they'll get those assets from another city," noted Jim Ellis, referring to the federal government. Ellis is a member of the Finance Committee and chairman of the Planning Commission.

The flow of revenue from federal inmates follows the same path in Portsmouth as it does in other localities: The city receives the money, and the council allocates what it wants to the sheriff's office.

In this year's budget, the first $470,500 from that source is directed to the city's general fund. According to the city's original written agreement for the Community Enforcement Unit, the squad's survival depended on housing 30 additional inmates. As of Friday, the combined shortfall from federal inmates for the general fund and Community Enforcement Unit was $371,427, City Manager Kenneth Chandler said.

For weeks, Watson sought to get his unit-first funding approach written into a new memo with the city. The arrangement would have applied to whatever federal prisoners he housed, he said later, after the new federal deal was deemed no longer viable.

Watson said Friday that he learned within the past two weeks that Portsmouth wouldn't qualify for the 10-year agreement to house federal prisoners that he had been advertising. That was only for jails that were being built or expanded, he said.

Watson said his negotiations with federal officials were discussions only, with nothing put in writing. He and Gomoke, his undersheriff, declined to say which officials or specific office they had been speaking with.

Gomoke said the federal officials asked them not to discuss it with the news media. Watson said the officials are busy and he didn't want "their phones blowing off the wall" with reporters' questions.

Brian Thomas, assistant chief deputy for the U.S. Marshals Service in the Eastern District of Virginia, said he was not aware of discussions for a contract to guarantee inmates in Portsmouth. He said the U.S. marshals use a number of jails to house inmates here, as they do nationally, and he did not know of discussions to change that practice in Hampton Roads.

The Community Enforcement Unit is now shuttered, and the chances of its re-emergence look bleak without new funding. Council members said they do not want to raise taxes or cut other services to fund it. To compensate, the Police Department recently announced that it would add members to its neighborhood police officer program.

If Watson wanted, he could try to fund his defunct unit with some of the $6.6 million the city contributes to his $12.8 million budget, Councilman Steve Heretick said.

Watson said the unit is a priority but that he has nothing else to cut to save it. In addition to his mandated duties - running the jail, serving legal papers and providing courthouse security - he operates several outreach programs. Those include checking daily on older residents, serving Meals On Wheels and conducting home and business security surveys.

Watson's office owns 10 motorcycles, paid for with confiscated drug money, he said. Four were taken off the street when he disbanded his traffic-enforcement unit for budget reasons; the others are ridden by him and other higher-ranking deputies in ceremonial activities and funerals.

The Community Enforcement Unit comprises seven law enforcement personnel - its leader, Lt. Lee Cherry; five other deputies; plus the Sheriff's Office K9 deputy. But the K9 deputy is paid as part of the Sheriff's Office and is not affected by the unit layoff, Watson said. The other six are now serving as unpaid auxiliary deputies, Watson said.

This leaves him with about 190 paid deputies and other staff.

Dave Forster, (757) 446-2627, dave.forster@pilotonline.com

Matthew Bowers, (757) 222-3893,

matthew.bowers@pilotonline.com