The Stanislaus County Civil Grand Jury issued a report critical of how Sheriff Jeff Dirkse conducted himself as he pushed the county to abandon the Stanislaus Regional 911 dispatch center and go with a trial software system formulated by Oracle and dispatched through Ceres’ call center instead.

The panel accused the sheriff’s office of “political tactics, threats of litigation, personal attacks, refusal to work with key operatives, and the appearance of intimidation” which has damaged both personal and working relationships with interrelated government agencies and personnel. They recommended the hiring of a professional mediator to iron out relational damage between the Sheriff’s Office, the county and the city of Modesto.

The Grand Jury also recommends that Board of Supervisors create a Stanislaus County Sheriff’s Oversight Commission or inspector general by the end of the year.

The long and contentious fight over dispatch services came to somewhat of a compromise in March when the Stanislaus County Board of Supervisors allowed Dirkse to move ahead with their preferred computer-aided dispatch systems. Supervisors remained supportive of the CentralSquare CAD system in use by the city of Modesto’s police and fire departments and hoped to keep all parties within the SR911 dispatch center — under a Joint Powers Authority agreement. Dirkse was initially adamant about breaking free and teaming with the city of Ceres’ call center to utilize a product designed by software giant Oracle, which offers integrated records-management and jail-management systems to go along with its CAD system. Ceres has since been ruled out as accommodating the sheriff’s needs because of costs, leaving him to use Oracle at the existing 911 center in Modesto.

When Dirkse learned that supervisors were unsupportive of his recommendation in January to go with Oracle, the sheriff asked for legal funds in anticipation of a legal showdown. A legal quandary presented itself since Dirkse maintained the board has no constitutional right to interfere with investigative or prosecutorial procedures of police – and he considered dispatching to be an investigatory function – but claimed forcing him to use CentralSquare was doing precisely that, and threatened legal action against the county. Complicating matters is that county supervisors control the sheriff’s department budget.

Supervisors’ 5-0 vote to move ahead with CentralSquare while freeing Dirkse to partner with Oracle, was a deal that seemed to sidestep a potential courtroom showdown between the board and Dirkse.

The grand jury heard a number of critics who suggest that the Sheriff’s Department is a “guinea pig” with the Oracle product. They have expressed concerns that the Oracle product is untested, unproven, and not ready for deployment, having only been utilized in four or five jurisdictions smaller in size and less. Dirkse, however, said Oracle is the future of dispatching and points to significant financial savings. He said CentralSquare is an outdated, “one size fits all” product and a waste of money.

Oracle has pledged five years of free use of the product but the actual annual costs following the trial period remain in question. The Grand Jury noted that Dirkse has “yet to provide comprehensive, vetted financial details for utilizing the Oracle system” despite multiple requests by county officials.

The Grand Jury wrote that despite the compromise “initially seen as a positive move forward, much skepticism has been expressed concerning the viability of the stated startup date of September 15, 2025. Contention continues within several of the key working relationships. The details of the structure of the combined dispatch center, leadership, and control remain volatile issues.”

The panel noted that “many serious doubts have been expressed” about the development, timeline, and viability of a CAD to CAD connection bridge between a Central Square System and an Oracle system still under development.

“Estimates for developing a functional bridge for a CAD to CAD connection range from three months to more than one year. It is widely anticipated that there will be many glitches in implementing the two systems working in tandem.”

During its 20 hours of interviews and review of documents, the Grand Jury found within the community “deep divisions of alignments, positions, opinions, and perceptions.”

“The current atmosphere surrounding the multiple stakeholders, officials, members of the community, and observers is one which includes mistrust, accusations, isolated refusals to work cooperatively, collusion, hurt feelings, frustration, anger, and resentment. Several individuals revealed having felt threatened and intimidated due to retaliation, aggression, personal disregard and disrespect.”

Regarding Dirkse, the panel heard “multiple shared concerns,” with some suggesting he was “intimidating,” “threatening,” inflexible,” “off the rails,” “unprecedented,” “retaliatory,” “vindictive,” “Jekyll and Hyde,” “a bully,” and said he “surrounds himself with loyalists,” that it’s “his way or the highway,” and that it is “all about power and control for him.”

The sheriff himself explained that he’s learned that “being stubborn and combative works in getting what I want,” the report said.

The report alluded to Dirkse making derogatory comments about Stanislaus County CEO Jody Hayes and members of the Board of Supervisors when he met with local business leaders to lobby supervisors for a switch to Oracle. Dirkse admitted making the comments, saying “I call it like I see it,” but later added that his characterizations of the county CEO “were not tactful.”

The Grand Jury also looked into the sheriff’s office serving of a search warrant on SR911 to ascertain if dispatch center personnel misused of law enforcement CLETS information being available to firefighters. The panel looked into the “optics of the search warrant being served on Friday, January 24, 2025, before the Sheriff’s Office presentation scheduled for the Board of Supervisors on the following Tuesday, January 28, 2025” which were perceived as suspicious and heavy handed. The Sheriff’s Office defended its actions as being necessary for DOJ compliance and that it “was conducted appropriately by the book.” While the Sheriff described the investigation as fully justified and expressed no regret about the investigation, the perceptions of other stakeholders about the timing and circumstances resulted in multiple negative reactions including the comment that “he did it to shut her up.”

The Sheriff’s Department found that no criminal violations took place. While the system flaw has existed since at least 2012 and possibly as early as 2008, the SR911 Director and CAD Engineer knew or should have known about the problem and hadn’t taken it seriously enough to fix it.

Staff reporter Joe Cortez contributed to this article.