Commentary: Sheriff responds to recent incidents

• Editor’s Note: This commentary is reprinted from www.scsheriff.com, with some minor changes for style.
In recent weeks, our community experienced two high-profile incidents that drew a significant amount of attention and a great deal of scrutiny upon the Santa Cruz County Sheriff’s Office. Fortunately, these incidents — an escaped inmate and a lost hiker — were brought to a positive ending.
As your elected sheriff, it is my responsibility to lead the Santa Cruz County Sheriff’s Office in its mission to make our county a place where all people can live safely. Requests from the media and citizens calling for a review of operations are understandable and warranted. In response to these requests, I want to share some information about improvements we are already making after reviewing these two incidents.
In the case of escaped inmate Maurice Ainsworth, who violently attacked a deputy sheriff and then terrorized the community, we now know that his escape was premeditated. After a thorough review of our existing procedures for transporting inmates and our response to his escape, we have learned there should have been systems in place to prevent or detect Ainsworth’s plan. Our Corrections Bureau has since made changes to our operation, including requiring two deputies on all high-risk transports and the use of plastic restraints at all times during medical procedures. Additionally, we are meeting with the Superior Court, Dominican Hospital, schools, allied law enforcement agencies and the Metro Transit District to make security recommendations for the very near future.
Regarding the missing hiker, I am very pleased and relieved that she was found alive and relatively uninjured. In this incident, our office received the first report about Debra Collins on Nov. 30, a Tuesday. Initial responding deputies were given limited background information about how long she may have been missing and her normal routine. Deputies talked to neighbors, patrolled the neighborhood and created a flier with her photo. She was entered into a missing persons database. Her case was sent to investigators the following day. Detectives searched her home, checked her bank account activity and spoke to numerous friends and family to obtain further background information. Deputies were pointed to Henry Cowell Redwoods State Park as the likely area where Collins would have gone. Our operations team had state parks rangers do a search of Henry Cowell, which met with negative results. At this point, we lacked a reliable search area and elected not to search other areas without further information. The next step taken was to contact the media and ask to have the case featured in an effort to get park visitors and the general public information about Collins. After reviewing our response to her disappearance, our staff will now ensure cases such as this will be sent to search professionals for review, and we will include them sooner in the investigation and decision-making process.
• Phil Wowak has been Santa Cruz County’s sheriff since 2009.