The San Diego County Sheriff’s Department incurred nearly $900,000 of added costs to provide patrols and security during the month-long construction of eight border wall prototypes by the federal government on Otay Mesa, records show.

Those costs pushed the total local law enforcement extra expenses — primarily overtime and supplies — to more than $1 million for the project.

Most of the expense for the sheriff’s department came in overtime pay for deputies. The county paid out $764,278 in overtime during the month — more than it paid deputies in the regular wages, which amounted to $715,170.


The overtime costs were not the only expenses for the county, which patrolled the area between Sept. 26 and Oct. 26 near where the prototype walls were constructed. Other costs were:

$118,092.66 for miles of chain link fencing, “k-rail” barriers and signs installed before the prototype building began. The fencing wrapped around large parcels of private property on Otay Mesa. The county said it was needed to protect environmentally sensitive habitats in the event that large-scale protests against the project materialized.

$11,101 for services and supplies.

$4,470 for an environmental consultant and permits.

Adding it all up, the county paid out $897,942.22 in overtime, supplies, consultant and permit costs for the project. With the $715,000 in regular wages that would have been paid anyway, the total comes to $1.6 million.

The costs to the county, provided under a California Public Records Act request by The San Diego Union-Tribune, far exceed the costs to the City of San Diego, which also had police patrolling the streets near the building site off Enrico Fermi Drive.

The city paid out $277,898 in overtime, services and supplies. It paid out another $548,446 in regular salaries and fringe benefits to officers scheduled to be on duty anyway and re-assigned to the border project. That brought the city’s total expenses to $826,345.


Adding the overtime, supplies and other non-salary costs for the two agencies together shows that the city and county spent $1,175,840 in security costs for the border wall project.

The city said it is unlikely it will be reimbursed for those costs, though it is exploring options. A spokeswoman for the county could not say whether the county would be reimbursed.

The prototypes were constructed on a small plot of federal land on Otay Mesa, a stone’s throw from the border with Mexico. As the first tangible examples of President Donald Trump’s centerpiece promise to construct a “big, beautiful wall” on the southwest border, the project was the subject of national and international interest.

In the weeks before the work began, the Department of Homeland Security issued a memo to local law enforcement, warning of the possibility of large-scale protests that could turn violent and might resemble the weeks-long protest over the Dakota Access Pipeline in 2016 and 2017.


The county took that to heart and developed security plans near the site, said Alex Bell, the county spokeswoman.

“In the current environment of social media driven events and ‘pop-up’ demonstrations, the Sheriff’s Department evaluated the need to staff law enforcement in sufficient numbers during the initial phases of the border wall prototype construction,” Bell said in an email that accompanied release of the data.

During the 30 days of construction there were no protests or demonstrations, and no one was arrested for protesting at or near the site.The only regular visitors were local, national and international media crews.

When work began, both the San Diego Police Department and the San Diego Sheriff’s Department were out in force. Dozens of patrol vehicles circled the streets near the access point to the building site. In addition Customs and Border Protection and Border Patrol agents traversed the area in SUVs. Streets were blocked off and designated no parking zones for a month.


Local activists opposed to the wall and Trump’s immigration crackdown dismissed the security concerns. In interviews with the Union-Tribune leaders said they were not aware of any protests because activists did not want to draw more attention to what they said was “political theater” for a project that had little chance of ever being fully built out.

Nonetheless, Bell said the county planning and precautions were worth it.

“We are convinced that this uniformed presence coupled with the temporary fencing eliminated any inclination by individuals interested in establishing encampments similar to the Dakota Access Pipeline protests, as well as polarizing demonstrations,” she said.


Twitter: @gregmoran

greg.moran@sduniontribune.com