Sheriff Stan Sniff Praises Work of Department During Presidential Visit

Riverside County Sheriff Stan Sniff praised this week the recent work of his department with handling a "complex" operation surrounding the visit of President Barack Obama to the Coachella Valley.

The department coordinated security, traffic, and protection detail with federal, state and local allied agencies during Obama's visit with his Chinese counterpart in an historic meeting at Rancho Mirage's Sunnylands. 

"From our perspective, our staff at all levels planned and executed our mutual aid response in an outstanding manner on extremely short notice," Sniff told Palm Desert Patch.  "I couldn't be prouder of how our department responded to this challenge."

The sheriff says the department has received great feedback from the communities-- even from those who were out protesting the Chinese president's visit.

According to Sniff, approximately 150 additional staff "were surged" around the clock for four days, from Thursday and Sunday.   It was one of the "most complex" operations the department has covered, he said.

"We have worked a number of mutual aid incidents over the years, but for a dignitary mission this was one of most complex from the standpoint of two heads of state, four days in length, very short notice, language issues and international protesters," he said, adding that the visit was "far and away" more "complex and intense" than when he personally worked as a deputy for visits of Ronald Reagan to the desert.

"We were noticed on the full requirements involved less than one week out.  In addition, the earlier warning of a day or two morphed to 4 days, after the protests started a day earlier than planned and the president opted to stay a day later," he said.  "The Sheriff's operational planners smoothly accommodated those changes and adjusted our effort."

Now that the dust has settled, the sheriff says the department is going through an "after action process" to learn from the entire experience.  One of the things learned was the importance of having dedicated staff work as liaisons with the protesters. 

Below, you will find a memo that the sheriff sent out on Monday to the entire department thanking them for their efforts: 

I wanted to take a moment to thank everyone in our Department that either directly or indirectly supported the historic Presidential Summit in the Coachella Valley, June 6th through June 9th. Although many of us have worked Presidential visits in years past, our tasking by federal authorities was massive in this instance, and really unprecedented in size, scope, and complexity.

 

In addition, the full tasking came to us with less than a week’s notice, necessitating extraordinarily rapid operational planning and required EOP use to put into place the staffing required and needed by our Department, to insure the safety of our citizens, our visitors, and our own staff. The impact on our entire staff was extensive, including long hours in extreme heat, and challenges with languages, and in dealing with the various international protest groups. Vacations were postponed, family member graduations missed, and other unfortunate family impacts were caused to members of our Department.

The Riverside County Sheriff’s Department professionally met the challenges in dealing with this short-notice mission by pivoting smoothly on the balls of our feet, planned for, and then surged the massive resources needed by our Palm Desert Station to deal appropriately with that Summit. The Riverside County Sheriff’s Department did the primary “heavy lifting” for this historic event, and few agencies in this State could have done what our agency just did these past four days.

Each of our Department members can take pride in what we just accomplished as a law enforcement agency, and you can also each take tremendous personal pride in having participated in a uniquely historic international event that was transmitted in the media worldwide. My thanks to each of you in our Sheriff’s Department for making this possible, and I am proud of every single member of our agency.

--SS