Local resident has response for Sheriff’s quest to get dedicated sales tax for police pay raises.

To address Sheriff Johnny Moats editorial:

In the Jan. 18, 2017 edition of The Polk County Standard Journal, you wrote a letter to the editor asking for citizens to speak up for local officers to receive pay raises. In your letter you use statements such as “ALL state law enforcement personnel” and you speak specifically about the Georgia State Patrol Officer and their pay increase received in Jan. 2017. You paint a picture that the State Trooper offices “virtually close their offices at five every day” and “very few of them regularly work on weekends, holidays or nights”. While I will not dispute the fact that law enforcement officers are in need of a pay raise for the job they do every day, I would like to address some misunderstandings I feel you included in your letter to the Editor.

In your article you state “the base pay of a State Trooper starts at $46,422 after his/her ‘basic’ training”. In addressing your statement regarding “basic training”, this implies to the reader of this article that all training is the same for all law enforcement, which would be incorrect. A State Trooper participates in 32 weeks of training, which will encompass 1533 hours of P. O. S. T ( Peace Officers Standards and Training) credit when they graduate. Most local Police and Sheriff’s Deputies com- plete a “Mandate” school which consists of 11 weeks at 408 hours of P.O.S.T. credit. The pay increase that was given on January 1, 2017, also comes after more than 8 years without ANY type of raise for these State Officers, while the cost of living still increased during this period.

You told the citizens of Polk County (or anyone who reads the Facebook post) that these offices virtually close at five every day, and that very few of them regularly work weekends, holidays or nights. I would like to simply say to those same citizens of this county that the Georgia State Patrol Post that covers Polk County is operational 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year. Their office does not close for calls for service and t here are State Troopers, who work around the clock. There are local law enforcement agencies around the state and even within Polk County, such as the Aragon Police Department that are not operational 24 hours a day. While the Post, which covers Polk, is located in Bartow County due to being moved out by the Polk County Commissioners in 2012, there are still State Troopers, who both live and work right here in Polk County. I am sure if you asked them or their families about being off most nights, week-ends and holidays, they would quickly correct you…because this is not a valid statement.

While the Georgia State Patrol is a support agency, they are used in many instances throughout the state where local authorities do not have the resources to conduct such things as, investigating traffic crashes, civil disturbances and traffic enforcement on all state, county and city roads within the state of Georgia. The State Troopers can be (and on many occasions have been) called to different parts of the state of Georgia to aid these local agencies without extra cost to those counties or cities, which they respond to when there are civil disturbances and natural disasters. With citations that are written by State Troopers in these local counties or cities, all of the “fine money” goes to that particular county or city, not the Georgia State Patrol. This is virtually free revenue to those counties or cities to be used by the Commissioners within their local areas. This is money that the Commissioners might be able to budget in order to assist their local officers with a pay raise, which they deserve.

With Polk County being one of the few counties outside of the metropolitan areas in the state of Georgia that has both a Sheriff’s Department and a County Police Department, maybe it would be beneficial to the citizens of Polk County to combine both of these departments together. With this combination you could streamline salaries within these agencies (which could be used to increase the pay of these officers), create broader resources availability, and more personnel for calls for service. The combination of these two agencies could also create a better pay scale, which in turn could attract more candidates for these positions. I am not speaking of laying anyone off, but by combining t hese t wo agencies, there would be one salary for a commander of the group instead of two, and a reduction in overhead by having one agency instead of two.

While I am not opposed to any law enforcement officer receiving a raise in the base pay for local Police and Sheriff’s Deputies pay, I would simply state that if the same standard of pay is to be used as compared to the Georgia State Trooper, then the same training requirements should also be used for these Officers and Deputies. I support having well-trained and well paid police officers in our county. The County Commissioners are the ones who decided what a local law enforcement officer is to be paid, so that is where the representative for the officers needs to turn. Respectfully, Rita Tanner