California Special Services Unit

[1811]

Who's got the scoop on the California Dept of Corrections Special Services Unit (SSU)?

Thanks in advance.

[Kahuna5150]

I'm no expert, but I see you haven't gotten a lot of replies on this one so I thought I would shoot you a reply.

I worked with a SSU guy the other day. He was part of an anti-gang task force and we went with him, some other detectives, and I think Probation officer to a guys house and did a probation search.

The impression I got from the guy I was working with from SSU, (very cool by the way) was they are very much like parole agents, however they are assigned specific cases for investigation and to task forces. They don't get a caseload of Parolee's to check up on. Some of the examples of thing they do are:

Working drug/gang/targeted enforcement crime teams.

Investigating hard core inmates, their families, (if involved in smuggling stuff into prison) as well as those parolee's and sex offenders that are out and about violating their parole or being involved in new crimes.

The best thing he said he gets to go after is the inmates and/or parolees and family members that threaten CDC officers or other CDC employees. They had a case where an inmate had sent out a letter to his cousin or brother or whatever basically saying he wanted the CDC officer killed. The SSU got assigned the case and now the brother/cousin/whatever is serving a nice stint in the Department of Corrections.

They are basically the special agents for CDC. All the guys I have met are older. They all seem to have come over from parole agent positions or some time in service at an institution. One guy was a Lt. that went to SSU and another guy had been a SGT. One parole agent also moved over.

Hope that helps a little!

Kahuna

[1811]

Thank you, sir.

A Parole Agent on my task force basically told me the same thing. He thought maybe there were 30-40 state-wide. He seemed to be impressed with them.

Thanks again.

[Kahuna5150]

No problem. As far as the number of SSU guys being 30 or 40 statewide. Not sure, but that seems a bit low. I know they had a job posting for it about a year ago. Good salary. Topped out at over 6k a month from what I remember.

Take care...

Kahuna