Gibbons, new chief pledge to fix agency

“Public safety will not be put at risk,” Gibbons said in a prepared statement.

He has assigned Jerry Hafen, appointed Feb. 21 as the Department of Public Safety director, to look at a legislative audit that identified 21 problems with the Parole and Probation agency and fix them. Parole and Probation is one of the agencies that Hafen supervises.

A scathing legislative audit found the Parole and Probation agency does not properly monitor released sex offenders and has failed in many cases to secure required DNA samples from parolees.

Auditors found that “public safety is at risk” when parolees are not supervised properly. They also noted an audit performed in 1999 found similar problems with the agency.

After intense questioning by state Sen. Bob Coffin, D-Las Vegas, Parole and Probation Chief John Gonska said the majority of the problems would not exist if he could fill the 50 vacancies in his agency.

Because of the state’s $565 million budget shortfall, Gibbons last fall implemented a hiring freeze blocking Gonska from filling vacancies.

Coffin said the governor should use money in the state’s rainy-day fund to allow Gonska to fill the vacancies. Such a step would require the governor to call the Legislature into a special session.

The Parole and Probation agency now has 198 people overseeing 19,000 parolees and probationers.

Hafen said Monday that it is too early to concede the state should dip into the rainy-day fund to find money to hire officers. “I am not inclined to do that until I have a handle on whether we are doing the best job we can with what we have now,” he said.

For now, Hafen said he will make it the top priority of the agency to make sure high-risk sex offenders are monitored with the highest level of scrutiny allowed by law.

The legislative audit found that in many cases the Parole and Probation Division has not secured DNA samples from parolees, even when requested by judges. In other cases, the DNA has been taken but hasn’t been placed in a system where it can be examined by other law enforcement agencies.

Hafen said he will meet with the command staff of the Parole and Probation agency to discuss the audit and other issues.

In the meantime, he has blocked Parole and Probation staff members from transferring to other Department of Public Safety agencies.

Hafen said there has been a “mass exodus” of employees from Parole and Probation to the Nevada Highway Patrol and other state agencies.

“That needs to stop,” he said, asserting the need for more experienced officers with the Parole and Probation agency. “We need to keep people in one place until we can answer what has been going on.”

The agency also must compile a report for submission to the Legislature in two months that outlines changes it has made in response to the audit.

“Governor Gibbons expects me to engage and fix the problems at P&P and that is precisely what I intend to do,” Hafen said.

Contact Capital Bureau Chief Ed Vogel at evogel@reviewjournal.com or (775) 687-3901.