Underfunded, understaffed parole officers overwhelmed

Sunday, July 9, 2006 | 7:38 a.m.

The building at 610 Belrose St. is nondescript. Only the signs in the lobby give a hint of authority: No sitting in laps. No exposed underwear. No hugging or kissing in the lobby.

Almost everyone in the lobby is a convicted felon, waiting to see an officer at the Southern Nevada Parole and Probation Department. Anyone who's not waiting in the lobby to see one is likely waiting with someone who is.

"We have the murderers, the sex offenders, the robbers, the rapists, the people that will slit your throat. You name it, you'll find it in our office," says John Gonska, chief of the state Parole and Probation Division. "They're coming back out of jail folks, and we're the front line."

And the front line is under heavy fire.

Last year the state Division of Internal Audits determined Parole and Probation officers hadn't adequately supervised potentially dangerous criminals. In a study of 61 cases, auditors found officers didn't perform required duties 70 percent of the time, most often by failing to check on high-risk offenders with enough regularity - if at all.

Less than a year later, Parole and Probation is trying to squeeze a sea change out of the desert. Gonska, who understood the agency needed an overhaul when he was appointed chief in 2004, says resources are stretched thin, officers are flattened with work and the division is rebuilding itself with Band-Aid measures.

"We are trying to be very progressive," Gonska says. "We're basically a work in progress."

In Clark County, just over 100 officers monitor the more than 1,500 people on parole, the 6,700 people on probation, and the more than 160 sex offenders who committed crimes serious enough to warrant "lifetime" supervision.

Without money to hire more officers, the division is changing the way it works. Officers are refocusing their efforts on highest risk offenders, doing so by leaving their desks.

"We want them out in the community with the offenders," Gonska says. "We want officers to work evenings and weekends, we want to push them out of their safety zones so they know the offenders they're working with, their family members, their employers, their addresses."

Outside the front door of a rent-by-week apartment in downtown Las Vegas, Parole and Probation officer Joni Billich puts her hand on a whirring air-conditioning unit - a good sign, she knows, that someone is behind the front door she's knocking on.

Billich, like all Parole and Probation officers, spends at least one night a week driving from address to address across the valley, hoping to surprise parolees or probationers doing what they shouldn't: alcohol, drugs keeping the wrong company or any of a dozen other things.

She quickly turns stern at another weekly rental when she surprises a female offender at home with guzzling guests. Inside, Billich moves from beer can to beer can, emptying each. She demands to see the entire apartment and pauses in the pitch-black bedroom while the probationer crumples to the floor and sobs.

This is progress, she says. Usually, offenders don't open the door.

Like the guy who tied his wife up, shoved her in the bathtub and beat her - twice. He wouldn't answer the door for Billich the handful of times she visited, alone, a gun tucked into a hidden holster. The man since has gone AWOL, and Billich eagerly waits for the warrant that she wrote to catch up with him.

About 10 percent of the offenders Billich supervises are currently back in jail, rearrested for another crime.

Today, each Parole and Probation officer is assigned 75 to 85 cases - an improvement over two or three years ago, when officers handled closer to 120 or 130 felons apiece.

That volume left officers scrambling, burned out and chronically behind, says division spokesman J.R. Haggerty.

"There was just no way to do it. I have had case loads of 130 people, and let me tell you, you can't watch 130 people," he says. "You put out the fires, and stuff got missed."

The state audit stated the obvious: Overburdened officers couldn't attend to every offender fully, or even check up on every offender with any sort of regularity. To lower officers' case loads, the division created "banks" of low risk offenders - five or six groups, each with some 500 felons who theoretically need less supervision and thus can be assigned, in bulk, to one officer.

With a handful of officers monitoring the banks, others can focus on high-risk offenders.

Of course, there's no way of knowing what any offender, at any risk level, will do. One man, who had convinced his officer that he was not a risk, left a meeting with the officer only to return home and kill his wife. Such surprises leave many officers who once had high hopes with low expectations.

"We are dealing with the criminal element. We are not baby-sitting school kids. They have already been convicted, they have already demonstrated an ability to commit a crime," Haggerty says. "A certain part of the population we see are just predators."

The division's annual budget is just under $42 million for the entire state, and still there isn't enough money to get every officer a uniform. Haggerty bought his own. Other officers don't have cars, or the cars that are available don't have police radios. No one can drive the latter if they want to drop in on felons.

Billich was issued a bullet-proof vest, but it's not up to current standards and not really worth wearing. So she doesn't.

Depending on the risk, officers can be required to see offenders several times a month, in the Belrose office or at surprise house visits. Since many felons aren't interested in being baby-sat, that can require numerous visits to make one surprise contact.

Billich is the sort of person you'd like to meet at a party - talkative, friendly, a baseball fan with pictures of cats in her office. She laughs when people express relief that she's not a police officer, out on the street encountering street violence or criminals. Billich laughs because few understand that most everyone she deals with at work is a criminal. Not surprisingly, her phone number is unlisted.

"I have some sleepless nights," she says. "If you can get just one of them to succeed, it's all worth it."

On Tuesday, Parole and Probation will meet with Gov. Kenny Guinn to ask for more funding.

There's growing concern in the division that as Metro Police, Henderson and North Las Vegas put more cops on the street, there will be more arrests and, subsequently, more work for Parole and Probation.

"It costs a lot to lock a person up and a lot less to have a person on the street," division spokesman Haggerty says.