County Commissioner's Office

County Talk
By
Lamar Paris - Commissioner

Q. We have heard that our Sheriff’s Dept has more deputies than they need. Can’t we lower our taxes by having fewer deputies?
A. First, you have received some inaccurate information. Our Sheriff’s Dept has 31 officers and two secretaries. They all perform vital function for this county. The officers are made up of the following:
There are four shifts of four officers each that are on the road and on call 24/7. (16)
We have four investigators that have received specialized training. One of them is our DARE (drug education in schools) officer (4), two school resource officers that are stationed at school except in the summer(partially funded by the school) (2), two full time and one part time courthouse security officers-required by judges (3), one officer that is required to serve the hundreds of warrants and other court papers full time (1), one animal control officer (1), two officers work narcotics full time, this includes the K-9 officer and drug dog (2), two supervising officers for the entire force who perform all the above operations in addition to supervision. (2)

Seventeen of these officers also work as CERT team members with full training in drug enforcement, emergency intervention and many other functions similar to a SWAT team. They have been very successful in numerous drug bust operations in our county and as you recently read, assisted and led entry in Gainesville in one of the largest ever drug bust in Georgia. This operation was successful because of surveillance information partially provided from our department.

Q. How many calls do our officers respond to?
A. August-494, Sept-419, Oct.-441, Nov 327, Dec.-359. That is an average of 408 calls per month or 14 calls per day.

Q. How many officers work at the jail?
A. There are 22 correctional officers required to operate the jail 24/7. In addition, our Sheriff’s deputies are often required to make transports to other jails and usually several times a week taking some inmates to the Rome, Georgia psychiatric facility. This ties up our officers many times during the month.

Q. Do we have enough deputies to adequately protect the county?
A. There are many times and situations where the county could use additional man power in any department. However, we try to keep the minimum staff required to perform at an optimal level the majority of the time.

Q. How difficult is it to recruit new deputies?
A. Good deputies are extremely hard to find. It is a tough job and therefore difficult to fill vacant positions. When we added four new positions in last years budget, it took a year to be able to fill those positions. That is one reason that we try to keep regular pay raises and insurance benefits in our budget so that we are able to maintain a quality employment workforce, while at the same time keeping our payroll within reasonable limits.

Q. What is the largest problem that our deputies must deal with?
A. There are very many, but over the past 5 months a few examples of calls:
60 burglary reports with 10 in progress, 58 damage to property, 88 domestic in progress, 21 discharge of firearms, 11 fights, 43 funeral escorts, 60 juvenile complaints, 111 motor vehicle crashes w/injury, 227 with no injury, 13 vehicle thefts, 61 random license checks, 14 suicide or attempts, 74 suspicious persons and 90 suspicious vehicles, 73 thefts by taking, 29 threats, 134 transports, 1006 traffic stops. This is just a sampling of the over 100 different categories of complaints the Sheriff’s dept receives. Many single calls end up requiring many man hours in dealing with the problem, including writing reports, dealing with wrecker services, insurance companies, attorney’s, judges, families and friends of victims and defendants, continued investigation, etc. This list does not even include DUI’s and drug related arrests, even though some of this list may include these as part of the case.

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