The stipulated judgment between the state of California and the Kern County Sheriff\u2019s Office was extended for another two years last month, as the department works to finalize terms of the agreement.<\/p>\n
According to Sheriff Donny Youngblood, the judge didn\u2019t cite a specific reason for extending the terms of the judgment, which was originally meant to last five years.<\/p>\n
Youngblood said the department is working on a number of policies, the wording and verbiage of which goes through a lot of back-and-forth with the monitoring team.<\/p>\n
KCSO entered into the stipulated judgment in December 2020 after the state DOJ concluded the agency violated residents\u2019 civil rights. Youngblood has previously denied any of the violations alleged by the DOJ.<\/p>\n
Speaking to The Californian this week, Youngblood said that while the judgment costs the taxpayers more than $1 million a year to facilitate, working with the monitor \u201ccertainly has been a benefit.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWe think that anything that helps us get closer to our community, helps them understand what we do, is a good thing,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
The Kern County Sheriff\u2019s Office monitor did not respond to request for comment, but annual reports indicate the department is complying with the terms of the agreement.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe are pleased to say that KCSO has been extremely responsive to our input, recommendations, and considerations, even on issues that are not (stipulated judgment) mandates,\u201d the monitor\u2019s 2025 annual report said. \u201cAll the policies submitted are now being collaboratively reviewed by the monitors and DOJ.\u201d<\/p>\n
Youngblood said the department will continue working to improve its policies, even after the end of the agreement. \u201cWe\u2019re not changing to get DOJ to leave, we\u2019re changing for the better of the county,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The stipulated judgment between the state of California and the Kern County Sheriff\u2019s Office was extended for another…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":189940,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[35],"tags":[151,153,152,719,721],"class_list":["post-189939","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-bakersfield","tag-bakersfield","tag-bakersfield-headlines","tag-bakersfield-news","tag-justice","tag-law"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/189939","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=189939"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/189939\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/189940"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=189939"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=189939"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=189939"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}