Yesterday Plymouth County Sheriff Joe McDonald announced his plan to layoff 33 employees, including all 27 members of the department’s Bureau of Criminal Investigation.
The layoff notices coincide with the legislature’s crack down on the runaway spending of our sheriffs over the past few years.
In late 2025, sheriffs across the state reported a cumulative budget deficit that exceeded $100 million.
Thankfully law makers had enough backbone to stop much of the overage pay and order an investigation into the sheriffs’ spending practices.
The initial report of the inspector general concluded that the sheriffs’ budget processes are “opaque, chaotic, and deeply flawed.”
The inspector general believes that many of the budgetary issues stem from unclear and outdated laws defining the authority and responsibilities of the counties’ sheriffs.
Consequently, you have, for instance, a Suffolk jail guard working as harbor master in Winthrop or Norfolk civil process deputies buying a RV for no apparent reason.
According to the Boston Globe, “the layoffs appear to be among the first ripple effects of a spending showdown between the state’s 14 sheriff’s offices and the Legislature.”
Let’s hope the Legislature can rein in the out-of-control spending and bring some clarity to the sheriffs’ role in law enforcement.
Att: To the Legislature
The Legislature needs to understand how important the Criminal Investigations Department truly is to this State, as well as other states Criminal Investigations Departments. I am absolutely disgusted to have been told about the ideas of not funding the sheriff’s department where it seems there may be a problem of understanding why disbursement is crucial. Where the comments have been made about unclear reasons for spending and where certain employees are also tending to duties are part of investigative circumstances. If the legislature actually understood what serious research and placement in time throughout communities to uphold the safety of the constituents really is all about, then the legislature wouldn’t be knit picking at the funding. Every line of Defense support is crucial, especially during these administrations and the past. So, this State will not be an insult to the heroes within our departments that take serious risks to defend, serve, and protect it. I will personally visit the State House to express facts of reasoning if the Sheriff is feeling forced into having layoffs within the department. I am very perturbed by how insulting this is to the constituent’s safety within the communities. When any board thinks it’s okay to cause a depletion of any units especially in criminal investigations, that seems as if it’s a board that is catering to criminal activities and is afraid to be caught. In example, California Democrat of assembly thinks it is unacceptable for fraudulent activities that have ripped off their state and the rest of the country to be known to the taxpayers, and to be married to the attorney general of that state is abuse of his power through that marriage. Democrats that I have grown up around, are frugal and they’d want to know. So, what exactly possesses the abuse onto the researchers that discover fraudulence under their constitutional rights. Maybe its ingestion of the feces that have built up in the state of California because Newsom didn’t use the immense funding toward the homeless. There are signs of guilt for being caught in illegalities when certain people in power try defying the very foundation of what our country is based upon by causing uproars that are not sensible. It’s immature. It’s as if a child gets scolded for tattling when that child is brave trying to get help because of a truth that has been unfolded. And if whom that child confides in, is up to no good, that child in that moment is told to not tell anyone which tarnishes that child’s courage. We have investigations of all kinds going on throughout our country. They all matter. Children feel brave enough to speak up. We listen and we address those issues within moments. I will not give up on the betterment. Don’t force our Defense teams into feeling that there isn’t enough to be able to keep them, our heroes, on board because that’s insulting, abusive and is defamation of their characters.