Athens County Sheriff Pat Kelly requested more funds from Athens County commissioners Tuesday, saying that his office felt overwhelmed.
Law enforcement, especially in Athens County’s smaller municipalities, has been especially taxing to the department, Kelly said to the commissioners during their meeting Tuesday.
“I am getting swamped,” Kelly said. “There is just no way we can keep up at the level we are at.”
The Sheriff’s Office is required by law to cover the villages and other peripheral areas of the county, he added.
County commissioners have already fulfilled the Sheriff Office’s 2013 budget request— which was filed in December— of $1.66 million, which includes overtime, Athens Commissioner Lenny Eliason said.
It costs between $55,000 and $60,000, with benefits, to hire a police officer, Eliason said. He added that he felt the budget for the Sheriff’s Office is sufficient.
It is possible for a municipality to contract with the county Sheriff’s Office — the city would pay money to the office in exchange for extra police coverage.
In this type of situation, deputies do not answer to the city government, nor do they enforce village ordinances, Glouster Mayor Miles Wolfe said.
Glouster, which has two full-time and two part-time officers, is not interested in contracting with the Sheriff’s offict, Wolfe said.
“We’re going to have our own police department,” Wolfe said. “We are not going to contract with anybody.”
The Glouster Police Department is also in the process of hiring another part-time police officer who would work about 25 hours per week, Wolfe added.
If Glouster were to contract its police force with the Sheriff’s Office, it would both have to pay money to the Sheriff’s Office for the extra police coverage and lose revenue accumulated through misdemeanors and traffic citations paid in its mayor’s court, Wolfe said.
Though Glouster’s crime rate is not up, the village is seeing more severe crime such as burglaries, breaking and entering and grand theft, Wolfe said.
“We’re handling our own crime,” he said. “Very seldom do (deputies) have to come up here and answer calls. They don’t handle too much inside Glouster.”
Overall crime in Glouster has been decreasing in the past few years, as opposed to the first decade of the 21st century, Wolfe added.
“It would be nice to get … to where we had no crime at all,” Wolfe said. “I could use another three part-timers or another full-timer; the funding is just not there.”
Kelly was not available to comment after the commissioners meeting.
ld311710@ohiou.edu
