DeKalb County Sheriff Patrick Ray has made a proposal to the County Budget Committee that could add a new detective and two deputies, without using new funds. One scenario could end up with the county even saving money.

The Tennessee General Assembly adopted legislation this year to fund up to $75,000, per school, in for an SRO Officer. In DeKalb County, the sheriff must apply for the state funds, which are recurring each year.

“The state is going to give $75,000 to each school and the school resource officers’ salaries will come out of that. Anything left can be spent on an SRO position whether it be for uniforms, guns, vests, gun safes, vehicles, etc.,” Sheriff Ray told the committee. Sheriff Patrick Ray says his plan would allow him to use already allocated funds in his budget (currently for SROs) to add another detective and two more deputies to his staff.

Currently, each school in the county has an SRO. Three SROs are funded by the county, while two are funded by the school district.  All five SRO’s work for the sheriff’s department with their salaries in his budget.

“The way we have the budget right now is the school district funds two of the SROs and the county pays for three. The five SRO salaries are in my budget under “salaries,” and with the benefits and all it comes to a total of $323,982. The school system reimburses their part ($128,982) for two SROs back to the county general fund,” said Sheriff Ray.

With “maintenance of effort,” the county cannot cut salaries, or the number of employees in the sheriff’s department budget, without the sheriff’s consent. Although the salaries for all five SRO positions are currently in the sheriff’s department budget, Sheriff Ray said he is willing to surrender the maintenance of effort requirement for the two positions, for which the school district reimburses the county, but he wants to keep the maintenance of effort for the other three funded by the county, and to shift their duties from SROs to a detective and two deputies. If this is approved, he would apply for the state grant to fully fund all five SROs.

“What we want to do is apply for the state grant for five SROs and get $75,000 per school,” said Sheriff Ray. “We would ask to keep the three (officer positions) the county is paying for now because they are already in the budget. With one we would like to make a detective position and the other two for deputies.”

“With the five SROS we already have, there is a maintenance of effort, but if we could keep those three officers, I would give back the two that the school system is paying for totaling $128,982. I would give back that amount in SRO salaries from my budget because I don’t think it’s right for me to keep all five SRO salaries in my budget when the school is paying for two, and the county is paying for three. If you leave all five in there, the county will have to continue to pay for all five,” said Sheriff Ray.

“We have three detectives there now and one of them is mostly doing drug work. That’s all he does, but he often borrows one of the other two detectives to help him because he can’t do drug buys and everything by himself,” said Sheriff Ray.

“The other two have different things they do. For example, we do adult protective services. If someone mistreats the elderly, then they have to investigate it. When we have child sex crimes, one of the detectives work those and that’s a full-time job with meetings and everything that has to be done. Our detectives also do all our burglaries and thefts and anything else that requires investigation work. They are on call every three weeks which is part of their job,” he explained.

“As for the two SRO officer funded positions we want to reassign as deputies, if we could keep those positions that would make another shift for us because we currently have a swing shift officer. We run three per shift, but some nights like tonight (Tuesday) we have two officers on because one is off duty. The Smithville Police Department has as many officers, if not more, than we have on a shift.”

“We’re also having to do Alexandria now because they don’t have but one or two officers there, so we are running all their calls because nobody is there after 10 p.m. We also do mutual aid with the Smithville Police Department. A lot of times we have to take calls for them too because they are tied up. That puts a strain on our department to do all that,” said Sheriff Ray.

Some committee members had issues with the plan should the State decide to discontinue its SRO funding. With five new state funded SRO salaries being added to the sheriff’s department budget, in addition to the three the sheriff wants to reassign, that would mean the county’s future maintenance of effort responsibility would increase by having to pick up the tab for the five positions the state had been funding.

Sheriff Ray said that with recent events, the state defunding the SRO program is not likely, but until such time the county would not be out any extra expense because the three SRO positions he wants to reassign to other duties are already funded in his budget. Sheriff Ray added that he would probably be unwilling to apply for the state grant for the SROs if the county doesn’t accept this proposal. In that event, the current SRO plan would remain in place with the county continuing to fund three SROs and the school district reimbursing the county for the other two SROs.

Sheriff Ray also said that another SRO is needed at DCHS and he has asked Director of Schools Patrick Cripps that the school district continue to fund one SRO position to give DCHS two SROs.

“I met with Mr. Cripps this week and asked that he keep one SRO for us to put at the high school. That SRO could also fill in for one of the other SROs when they are out,” said Sheriff Ray.

Sheriff Ray plans to address his proposal with the entire county commission during a meeting of the whole session on Thursday, June 22 at 6 p.m. at the County Complex prior to the next regular monthly meeting Monday, June 26 at 6:30 pm.