POLICE ADJUST IN LEAN TIMES

Area Departments Cope With Thinning Ranks, Tightening Budgets

Police in Gaston, Lincoln and Cleveland counties say they won't expect much relief from problems including low officer retention and aging equipment in the new budget year.

Most departments already have seen their workloads increase while their budgets decreased in the last couple of years.  Most also are understaffed, in part because positions are frozen and officers are being lured away by higher salaries to other departments or to the private sector.

The Gastonia Police Department has lost 22 officers in the last five years.  It currently has 159 officers and can afford to hire only 10 more because of budget cuts, Police Chief Tim Adams said.

To make sure there's always a certain number of officers on the road, police have cut back on training from 40 to 24 hours, Adams said.  Officers still receive basic yearly training, but they now take specialized courses only every other year on topics such as how to handle somebody firing a gun inside a building, he said.

A smaller police force, along with an overworked staff, also means that complaints about loud music and other community concerns don't get the attention they deserve, Adams said.

"I'd like to see a quick response to problems," he said.  "We could do it better."

Losing police officers isn't a new problem.

Darrell Harkey, who worked as a Lincoln County sheriff's deputy from 1966 to 1969, recently told a recruit to prepare to live on a tight budget.

Harkey said he left the department because he was offered a higher salary at a textile mill as a dyeing manager.

"It's so tempting," he said.  "You can't become a police officer and buy a new house and a car and have kids and send them off to college."

Cleveland County Sheriff Deputy Raymond Hamrick said his department loses officers mostly because of the high cost of benefits.

A new officer who earns $24,000 a year currently pays about $6,000 in medical insurance for the family, Hamrick said.

To lessen the financial blow, next year's budget contains a request for a salary increase from about $24,000 to $26,000 for new officers.  But it's still unlikely to offset much of the rising cost of health insurance, Hamrick said.

The department also requested $200,000 to hire four narcotics investigators.

"Drugs continue to be one of our biggest problems, and it leads into other cases, like break-ins and thefts," Hamrick said.

It's unclear whether county commissioners will approve his requests.  The board has followed a conservative trend in the last three years, Vice Chairman Ronnie Hawkins said.

"He's not the only one with a wish list," Hawkins said.  "He might have to tighten his belt next year."

Lincolnton Police Chief Dean Abernathy proposed a slightly higher budget this year than last year, including a request for $81,800 to replace four aging patrol cars.

In his budget proposal to city officials, he states that no grants were available this year to buy cars as they were in the last two years.

Abernathy said he's had to be creative when his department faced an unexpected expense, such as losing a patrol car in an accident.  He turned his car into a patrol car and bought a used one with insurance money they collected from the accident.

Other departments have turned to grants when their needs weren't met locally.

Belmont Police received $225,000 in federal grants to hire three officers in the last year, and Gastonia police recently used $156,000 from a federal grant and seized drug money to buy a command vehicle, which can serve as an operations center during a hostage situation.

Cleveland County deputies seized a record amount of marijuana and cocaine in the last year, so they'll use almost $175,000 in seized drug money to buy six new patrol cars.

Gaston County police have been cutting costs by bringing experts to their department since they cannot afford to send officers to out-of-state training.

"We've really challenged ourselves to keep things in-house," said Gaston County Police Chief Bill Farley.  "We've been modestly successful."

Shelby Police Chief Tandy Carter said his budget proposal includes money to step up training at his department.

He said he wants a trained polygraphist on staff and an officer certified to reconstruct accidents because their expertise would make a big difference when prosecuting drunken driving cases.

Carter also wants to send someone to the University of Tennessee's Forensic Anthropology Facility, also known as the "Body Farm," to become an expert in crime scenes.

Although police officials expect more budget cuts this year, two departments already have something to look forward to.  Both Belmont and Gaston County police expect to move into more spacious buildings by the end of the year.

"If you had to gauge the mood, the building is such a big thing for us, that it's a bright spot in the budget," Farley said.  "We've been waiting 15 years."

Proposed Police Budgets for Fiscal 2004-05:

* Gastonia: $12 million, a decrease of less than 1 percent from last year.

* Shelby: $4.2 million, a 3.5 percent decrease from last year.

* Lincolnton: A little less than $2.3 million, an increase of almost 5 percent from last year.

* Belmont: City officials are still working on the department's budget.  They expect it to be a little higher than the current budget, at $1.9 million .

* Gaston County: City officials are still working on the department's budget.  This year's budget was $9.9 million.

* Cleveland County: $7.1 million, a 14 percent increase from last year.