Chad Bianco, a man of faith with his wife having a moment of prayer while being sworn in. On the right is Chad Bianco embracing former Sheriff Robert Doyle who endured a decade of being smeared by Stan Sniff. Doyle has been peacefully retired in Texas, no longer being used as a straw man by the corrupt former Sheriff Stan Sniff
Recently, your intrepid blogger talked to someone that recently retired after having a dust up with the Sheriff. This spurred me to start doing some follow up work to see what has changed in the Riverside Sheriff’s Office post Stan Sniff.
If you have not liked Chad Bianco’s Facebook page – for those of you still on Facebook post purge, here it is. You can also see an assortment of You Tube stuff here as well. Bianco has gained some national attention for standing up to Governor Newsolini’s edicts. He has told the governor he will not be throwing people in jail for not wearing a mask or doing other normal daily activites.
When I annhiliated Stan Sniff over the course of 18 months there were several themes we wrote about.
One theme was promotions and retaliation. Sniff was notorious for promoting his buddies and for giving people “Freeway Therapy”. Freeway therapy is when someone that lived in the western half of Riverside County was transferred to a station 2+ hours away out in the desert portion. (Or vise versa) I’ve been told by several that this practice has ended and transfers are voluntary or when needed due to issues are typically 1-2 stations away.
Some people have bristled about the promotion of Chad’s brother Mike Bianco. Mike was a Sergeant for over a decade. Obviously, because Chad had been openly opposed to Stan Sniff, his brother was collateral damage and was never given serious consideration. The overwhelming majority of people agreed that promoting Sgt. Bianco to Lieutennant was the right move and that Mike Bianco deserved it.
Chad Bianco’s daughter is now a deputy. She was all the way through training and was doing her background check / process before Chad even knew she had applied. Accounts I have been given is that Chad’s daughter was actually given a harder time than most in the academy.
In addition, several known Stan Sniff supporters have been promoted by Sheriff Bianco in the time since Bianco won election. This is a stark contrast to Sniff who had a large enemies list.
A big deal is that Chad Bianco turned over the leadership of the PSB department. As you recall, I wrote about several cover-ups under the Sniff admin. The PSB (aka internal affairs department) was the lynchpin of these. The standard is now find the truth, versus working towards a pre-determined conclusion. On that subject, the Kevin Duffy case is being litigated and Bianco was not able to give many details – but he made it clear he hopes the lawsuits compel the release of the information to give the victims closure. (I am reading in between the lines of what he told me)
Sheriff Bianco raved about how County Staff and the Board of Supervisors have been helpful and partners in dealing with his budget. The biggest issues have been with the inertia of Government and the hopelessly broken system. County Staff have been partners in navigating the deliberately set roadblocks by Sacramento. Bianco indicated that pre-Covid they were hiring at a very high rate and had solved several staffing problems in areas in the county. This also included fully staffing the new jail (that sat partially empty for several years) – that Sniff used to use as leverage to try and get more money out of the county.
Two major things that the Bianco administation has accomplished have freed up a lot of money and solved a lot of nagging problems:
- The building maintenance has been taken over from the county. The photos I used to post of broken doors, gates and the like will be much harder to come by now. The costs are a fraction of what they were using the county and the lag times have almost been eliminated
- The rusted out cars and age-old cars are being dealt with. This year, the Riverside Sheriff’s Department is going in to contract with Ford and Chevy directly for cars and their maintenance. This has been done by departments around the country – but many common sense decisions were never allowed under Sniff. I guess all those neat photos of broken and rusted out cars that I posted under the Sniff Administration are a thing of the past.
A couple of side notes – the department had dozens of cars sitting idle due to bureaucratic bungling and still others that were unused due to mainenance issues. Many such cars were cleaned up, fixed, painted and otherwise. The administrative staff was given some of these newly rehabbed cars causing some to think all of the admin staff got new vehicles. After July, there will be even more new vehicles courtesy of the new fleet contracts with Ford and Chevy.
Lastly, one of the long-standing issues with Stan Sniff were CCW Permits. These were handed out only to friends and donors mostly. The waiting period was a ghastly 18 months on average and had hit 2 years at some point. There were also very few authorized vendors for the prerequesite training as well.
As such, Bianco outsourced the paperwork and vetting of applicants. the wait time had been slashed to 3 weeks pre covid and is still a respectible 2 months now.
There were 3 vendors under Sniff, there are now 17 under Bianco.
As such, there were just short of 10,000 CCW Permit Holders in Riverside County at the end of 2020. At no point in Sniff’s tenure did the number exceed 3500.
Your intrepid blogger will be continuing to track the progress of Sheriff Bianco. If you have any tips or information, please email me at aaron@rightondaily.com, you can remain anonymous if needed.
