Wednesday, April 24, 2024
During an average 12-hour shift, Sheriff Roger Deeds is lucky if he has four or five deputies available to patrol the 437-square-mile county.
“We should be at eight on a shift because of call volume and the growth of the county,” Deeds told the Hood County News.
Staffing challenges may soon get even worse.
Deeds said that his department is “spread very thin and getting thinner.”
Four deputies recently resigned, and Deeds said he has been told that four more are considering leaving or are awaiting the completion of background checks at other agencies where they have applied.
One deputy was fired, so that created another vacancy, according to Deeds.
For the most part, the staffing shortages come down to money, or the lack of it. Deeds is not the only county elected official to say that employee retention problems are due to the county not offering competitive pay.
Higher pay for county employees means higher property tax rates, which the Hood County Commissioners Court has been loath to impose.
Deeds said that other law enforcement agencies are offering sign-on bonuses and overtime pay.
Hood County offers neither.
Deputies work long hours to help cover staffing shortages, but they get comp time instead of overtime pay.
Oftentimes they cannot use their comp time because of the very staffing shortages that caused the long hours to begin with, Deeds indicated.
“People get burned out working for free,” he said.
Ever since deputy Sgt. Lance McLean was fatally shot responding to a disturbance call in June 2013, Deeds has wanted deputies to work in pairs. However, there simply are not enough of them for that to happen.
Deeds said that he needs 70 employees but has just 54.
Not all of those employees are deputies on patrol. That number includes a chief deputy, investigators, and a street crimes unit.
Deeds said that one deputy has asked to be reassigned to work security at the Ralph H. Walton, Jr. Justice Center. Two are in field training, which means that they are not yet able to work solo, and one deputy is being sponsored by the SO to attend the police academy.
For years, Deeds has warned members of the Commissioners Court that public safety is being threatened by the retention problem.
The court has changed during those years and so has the pay for deputies — it’s gone up some — but Deeds indicated that it has not increased enough to cause deputies to stay.
County Judge Ron Massingill said that even though the budget for the 2022-2023 fiscal year has been adopted, the Commissioners Court can make adjustments to it. He indicated that he would be in favor of doing so once the county has a better idea of what extra money might be available.
“We’re not going to let the safety of Hood County go down the drain,” he said.
With the county growing, “protecting” the public “is getting harder to do,” said Deeds, who has been sheriff for 14 years.
“This is not the same quiet county that it was in 1987 when I moved here,” he said.
In an email to the HCN, the sheriff stated, “It is looking very bleak for the future with no way of attracting qualified peace officers to work here. Minimum staffing or even below a minimum now will be unsafe for citizens and my people.”
