The Athens Police Department is down two men. The Athens County Sheriff's Office is down one.
Police departments across the country are facing staff losses as their officers, often reservists in the armed services, are called up to serve in a military stretched thin by wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
And in departments with less than 30 officers or deputies ' like the Athens Police Department and Sheriff's Office ' the loss of even one or two staff members is felt acutely, officials said.
It does create a burden on the department
said Athens Police Chief Rick Mayer, whose office paid $240,100 in overtime for 2006 in part to compensate for the loss of the two men who are away on military leave.
That year was the first that both officers were gone. In 2005, with only one officer gone on military leave, the police department paid $164,339 in overtime. The previous year, with neither officer gone on military leave, the police department paid $175,258. All those totals include payments related to Halloween, when many officers work overtime unrelated to the military leaves of their colleagues.
Including Mayer, the Athens Police Department has 24 officers. When the two officers away on military leave return to work, the department will have 26. The city is in the process of hiring two more officers, but that process won't be completed for at least six months, said Athens Mayor Ric Abel.
The sheriff's office, usually staffed with 23 deputies, is down to 22 as Deputy Aaron Maynard serves overseas in Iraq. Though the sheriff's office has not billed any overtime because of Maynard's military leave, fewer officers have been forced to handle more calls each, said Sgt. Bryan Cooper, who supervised the night shift on which Maynard worked.
Maynard left the Sheriff's Office in February, went to Iraq in August and because of President Bush's recent proposal to send more than 20,000 new troops to the country, it is unclear when he might return, Cooper said.
A daytime officer was moved to the night shift to keep night staffing at two deputies and one sergeant on duty, but daytime staffing has fallen from six people on duty to five. The result is that each deputy is handling about 100 more calls than normal a year, Cooper said.
When you're dealing with minimum staffing anyway you take away one guy it really hurts the shifts
he said. That basically took a guy who handled anywhere from 500 to 600 calls a year.
Cooper said the quality of service provided for each call has not suffered, but the lower staffing has caused a backup in the court summons deputies are supposed to serve, and it has forced an afternoon supervisor to start transporting prisoners back and forth from jail. The person who did that previously is now filling in as a regular deputy on the day shift.
A national problem
The staffing problems in the Athens Police Department and the Sheriff's Office have been realized in departments big and small across the country. According to an analysis of U.S. Justice Department data from June 30, 2002, to June 30, 2003 published in October 2006 in The Police Chief, a law enforcement trade journal, 23 percent of law enforcement agencies nationally had officers who doubled as reservists and who were called up for active duty.
Only about 2 percent of law enforcement officers nationwide were called up for active military duty, according to the analysis, but that figure includes 3.7 percent of officers at law enforcement agencies serving towns with populations between 10,000 and 49,999. The U.S. Census Bureau estimated Athens' 2005 population at 20,918, after an actual census from 2000 showed its population of 21,342.
Police departments in Nelsonville, Marietta, Bowling Green, Kent, Logan and Oxford ' all of which have populations close to that of Athens ' reported having no officers away on military leave.
'Natural Fit'
Athens police Lt. Anthony Fish, stationed in the Washington, D.C., area on a homeland security mission, said police work is a natural fit for those with military training because the two have similar command structures. He left the police department in April 2006 to complete some military training and will return in January of 2008.
People getting out of the military tend to gravitate toward police work or something in the criminal justice lines
said Fish, who joined the Army Reserve in 1990, three years before he began in Athens Police Department.
Fish, who typically works one weekend a month and two weeks a year for the Army, said staffing in the police department has been a perennial problem, but lack of funds, not the military, is mostly to blame.
You can't blame it all on the fact that the military's taking two of us away
he said.
As a first class sergeant with 16 years experience in the Army, Fish is paid about $42,000 a year for his military service, not including benefits, according to military pay tables. He earns $27 an hour as an Athens police lieutenant.
They go together well
Officer Shane Hartley, a captain in Ohio National Guard who left in July 2005 and will return to Athens in 2008, said he doesn't think the jobs of army and police officers necessarily match up, but the discipline is the same in both occupations. http://www.thepost.ohiou.edu/ads/10http://www.thepost.ohiou.edu/ads/10
Our jobs are completely different
but as far as personal values
personal traits
they go together very well
he said.
Hartley earns a basic pay of about $69,000 a year for his military service, not including benefits, according to military pay tables. He earns $22.50 an hour as an Athens police officer.
Though a person's regular employer will sometimes make up the difference in civilian and military pay, the city of Athens does not do this, said city auditor Kathy Hecht. Nor does the Sheriff's Office, said fiscal officer Vicki Marshall.
A civilian who takes a military leave can return to work as normal and is eligible for any promotion that might have occurred in his or her absence, said Captain Marshall Jackson, a spokesman for the Ohio National Guard.
