As an employee of the Sacramento County Probation Department, I am extremely frustrated with the illegal, unjust practices of those in high power positions such as the Chiefs and Assistant Chiefs, particularly Suzanne Collins. Nearly everyone in the lower level of the department feels this same way, yet, we feel as if we have no one to turn to and that our job will be in jeopardy for speaking up. Our union attempts to help us out but seems as if they don't hold enough power to do anything about it. No matter what complaints they make to the department or fighting they do for us, the higher ups do whatever they feel like doing anyway, no matter how illegal and unjust of a practice it is. It seems as if there is no one to regulate these illegal practices of this department and I don't know who else to turn to make a complaint. Hundreds of us are assigned to institutions where we work with violent juvenile offenders, including murderers, rapists, carjackers, drug dealers, and those with extreme mental and assaultive behavior. Whenever any type of physical incident occurs with these inmates, we are subject to an investigation where majority of the time, we unjustly receive some type of discipline no matter how closely we followed our policy and procedure in dealing with the situation. We have a chance to appeal this discipline, however, it is a completely biased and tainted appeal process where Assistant Deputy Chief Suzanne Collins hears our appeal prepared by a Union Representative. Suzanne Collins is not only the wife of Chief Tim Collins who implements many of these disciplines, but she also works closely with those in the Internal Investigations Unit and always backs their decision without even giving our appeal a thought. This forces us to retain an attorney and take our appeal to arbitration where our discipline usually gets overturned due to the ridiculousness of the charges in the first place. As if this was not unfair enough, this week Suzanne Collins called a meeting within the department to inform all employees that absolutely no one is allowed to restrain or use force against an inmate under any circumstances, even if they are assaulting you or each other. She said that anyone who is involved in any type of force against an inmate, she will walk their file down to I.A. Personally and have them terminated immediately, specifically quoting that, “heads are about to start rolling.” She is attempting to enforce this with absolutely no new policy and procedure guide in place stating this. Our current policy and procedure guide in place very much so allows us to use force in numerous situations such as to prevent the assault of yourself, the assault of others, to gain control of dangerous situations, etc. This illegal plan she is attempting to implement is a direct violation of our current policy and puts us as well as the other inmates in great danger and I no longer feel safe working there being that I am threatened with losing my job if I defend myself in any manner. As I stated earlier, I don’t know who to turn to in this situation to report these illegal activities of the department and need this information to get out there somehow so something can be done about it because as it currently stands, the department does whatever they want with absolutely no one to regulate their actions. Please help with either informing the public of this or telling me who I can turn to in order to get their practices investigated. As I said, I am truly in fear of my safety in returning to work under these new rules. Thank you. Anonymous Sacramento County Probation Employee
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