Clark sheriff wants to hire five new deputies
Burchett tells county commission positions needed with calls up.
The Clark County Sheriff’s Office is requesting additional deputies for its force to address an uptick in calls to the office.
Sheriff Deborah K. Burchett told the Clark County Commissioners this week that the office is requesting between $500,000 to $700,000 to hire four deputies that would serve on road patrol and a deputy to spearhead the service of legal papers.
Burchett told commissioners that the sheriff ’s office is in “a bit of a crisis.”
Burchett told the commissioners that calls to her office are up roughly 3,500 from last year. In addition, in the past week, the sheriff ’s office has confiscated 40 guns in Clark County, from 40 different people, through traffic stops.
“We can’t run with the same amount of deputies in 1980 as we are today,” she said.
The sheriff ’s office has 90 deputies, with 23 serving on road patrol covering three shifts.
Her office hopes to hire corrections officers into deputy positions, then fill the vacant corrections officers positions, Burchett told commissioners during its informal session Wednesday The county has 29 corrections officers.
In 2019, the sheriff’s office began to hire corrections officers to work in the Clark County Jail instead of deputies as a cost-saving effort.
Multiple deputies of the Sheriff’s Office, Burchett said, are already funded through contracts with roughly 20 partnering agencies. For example, one of her deputies, funded through Interfaith Hospitality Network, which provides housing to Clark County’s homeless residents, is assigned
to an area near hotels on Leffel Lane in Springfield, where Burchett said her office has seen an abundance of activity.
“Leffel Lane is a nightmare,” she told commissioners.
A road patrol deputy has been sent to assist the deputy assigned to Leffel Lane. A minimum of three cars are on patrol during the day, and the third shift includes four patrol cars.
“We’re just trying to keep our deputies safe and our community safe,” Burchett said.
Much of Leffel Lane falls under the jurisdiction of the Springfield Police Division. The News-sun inquired about the number of cases that were associated with Leffel Lane since the pandemic’s beginning and in 2019, and the police division asked the newspaper to file a public records request.
The county commissioners did not act on the request for deputies during Wednesday’s meeting, but they did note they would revisit the conversation in December when the board discusses the county’s budget.
Commissioner Rich Lohnes pointed to a result that could occur with the increase in manpower to the county’s streets: the number of arrests made will increase, which will also increase the number of people housed in the county’s jail and the costs to the court system.
“We’ve got another issue ahead,” Lohnes said.