While at the Bexar County Jail Annex supervising female inmates, she saw a woman hanging from a bedsheet. Today, Hunt, 29, is helping the Sheriff's Office recruit people, particularly women, to enroll in cadet classes and become detention officers. Sheriff Amadeo Ortiz hopes the cadets will alleviate staffing shortages that ran up the cost of overtime and housing inmates elsewhere, causing him to overspend his budget by $1.5 million. Last year, the Commissioners Court, seeing the jail population declining and looking for ways to save money, decided to cut 100 officers at the jail through attrition. With the jail staff trimmed by 100 positions as of May, the department again can replace deputies as they retire or resign. While Wolff acknowledges that Ortiz has a complicated challenge, he still maintains that the sheriff ? who's running for re-election against Republican Susan Pamerleau ? is mismanaging the jail staff. To alleviate manpower stresses over the long term and to determine what jail staffing should be, the Sheriff's Office and the county have formed a committee, and a third party will evaluate staffing needs. [...] because of inmates' gang affiliations, Ortiz said, staffing calculations must include a 10 percent contingency to keep rivals apart. Officer Garland Moore, a five-year veteran, works in the mental health unit, where male inmates who are mentally unstable are sent temporarily. The ideal cadet, Sgt. Hunt said, has good communication skills, which are necessary to talk to inmates from all walks of life, and common sense.
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