The Santa Clara County Sheriff's Office is a local law enforcement agency that serves

Santa Clara County, California Santa Clara County, officially the County of Santa Clara, is the sixth-most populous county in the U.S. state of California, with a population of 1,936,259 as of the 2020 United States census, 2020 census. Santa Clara County and neighboring Sa ...

. It provides general-service law enforcement to unincorporated areas of Santa Clara County, as well as incorporated cities within the county that have contracted with the agency for law-enforcement services such as Saratoga, Cupertino, and Los Altos Hills. The

Santa Clara Valley Transportation Authority The Santa Clara Valley Transportation Authority, more commonly known simply as the Valley Transportation Authority (VTA), is a Special district (United States), special district responsible for public transit services, Congestion management agen ...

also contracted with the Sheriff's Office for law enforcement service.

History

On December 15, 1998,

Laurie Smith Laurie Smith (born June 21, 1952) was the first female county sheriff in the history of California. She was the 28th sheriff of Santa Clara County, California, serving from 1998 until her early retirement in 2022, before the end of jury deliber ...

became the 28th person to hold the position of sheriff in

and the first woman law enforcement officer to hold the office of sheriff in the history of California. In early 2022, Smith retired while under grand jury corruption charges and after a unanimous vote of no confidence by the county Board of Supervisors. She was convicted in November. On August 27, 2015, mentally-ill inmate Michael Tyree was beaten to death by three jail guards. The guards were convicted of second-degree murder in 2017. Two inmates escaped from custody in San Jose in November 2016. Two more inmates escaped from custody in Palo Alto in November 2017. In November 2022, Bob Jonsen was elected to succeed Smith. Jonsen served as Chief of Police for the City of

Palo Alto Palo Alto ( ; Spanish language, Spanish for ) is a charter city in northwestern Santa Clara County, California, United States, in the San Francisco Bay Area, named after a Sequoia sempervirens, coastal redwood tree known as El Palo Alto. Th ...

prior to his election.

Organization

The Department is divided into four major bureaus — Field Operations, Support Services, Jail Operations and Administrative Services.

Rank structure

Currently, the Santa Clara County Sheriffs Department currently has the following Titles In addition to the full-time sworn staff, the Sheriff's Office has 65 Reserve Deputy Sheriffs. To support the entire operation, the Department employs 223 non-sworn, civilian staff.

Fallen officers

Since the establishment of the Santa Clara Sheriff's Office, seven officers have died while on duty.The Officer Down Memorial Page
/ref>

References

External links

www.sccgov.org/sites/sheriff/
nbsp;— Santa Clara County Sheriff's Office Sheriffs' departments of California Law enforcement in the San Francisco Bay Area

Sheriff's Office A sheriff is a government official, with varying duties, existing in some countries with historical ties to England where the office originated. There is an analogous, although independently developed, office in Iceland, the , which is commonly ...