WINNSBORO – During the Feb. 17 Fairfield County Council meeting, Fairfield County Sheriff’s Chief Deputy Brad Douglas said the Sheriff’s Office is already working on its budget for fiscal year 2025-26, and that he has serious concerns as to whether the department can safely sustain its services in the county until the new budget year begins July 1, 2025.
Critical Situation
“We’re in a critical situation with our vehicles,” Douglas told council members. “We’ve had to rent vehicles because we had no available spares. We’ve had situations arise where on-call officers’ vehicles broke down when they were responding to scenes. In one particular instance, an investigator – who’s assigned vehicle had previously broken down, leaving him stranded on the side of the road – was responding to a call of a deceased person when the spare vehicle he was driving also broke down, again leaving him stranded. An off-duty investigator had to be called in to respond.”
“Officer safety is a real concern for us,” Sheriff Will Montgomery said. “I want to make sure that we are putting our deputies in vehicles that allow them to do their jobs safely and efficiently. Our responsibility is to provide the law enforcement services to our citizens that they deserve, and to provide effective public safety for the entire county. We need safe and dependable vehicles to do that and, right now, we don’t have that.”
Douglas said the department has been low on vehicles for two-and-a-half years.
“During that time, we were also down over 15 deputies – over 25 percent of our department’s manpower – so the lack of vehicles was not as impactful then since we didn’t have the deputies to drive them,” Douglas said.
Now that the department is almost fully staffed, Douglas said the full effects of its vehicle crisis is being felt.
“We recently secured an SRO grant for three SRO vehicles which has freed up three older marked patrol cars that we can add to our patrol fleet, but that really doesn’t put a dent in our aging fleet,” he said.
High Mileage, Aged Vehicles
Going into detail, Douglas said that 48 patrol cars – not including spares – have over 100,000 miles; 14 of those have over 150,000 miles; and four of those have over 200,000 miles. Douglas said twenty-six of these vehicles are 10-15 years old.
“All of these vehicles are driven every day and present a number of serious safety hazards,” Douglas said. “High mileage vehicles are more prone to engine, brake, and transmission failure which can compromise the vehicles’ performance during emergency response situations.
“And these high miles are not normal high miles. They’re much harder miles and take an unnatural toll on the vehicles,” he said. “These miles are run up under heavy and stressful use, sometimes at high speeds over prolonged shifts.”
Douglas pointed out that these are actually the department’s better vehicles.
“Our specialized unit vehicles – criminal Investigations, civil process/Court security, narcotics, etc. – are in even worse condition,” he said. “Some have over 200,000 miles, with most falling into the 150,000+ miles range.
“We have historically had a pool of spare vehicles with 4WD capabilities for severe weather events when our deputies are often responsible for transporting essential personnel – 911 dispatchers, Board of Disabilities staff, nursing home staff, etc – if they are unable to get to their places of work,” Douglas said.
He said the department’s ability to transport these personnel was significantly compromised during the recent cold weather events.
“We had to rely on overtime to get those few deputies – whose vehicles are equipped with 4WD – to assist in providing these services.”
High Cost of Repairs
Douglas said older, high mileage vehicles lead to more repairs.
“We’ve already gone well over our vehicle maintenance budget this year just to keep our deputies in running vehicles,” he said. “This past year, we’ve put new transmissions in several vehicles that are over 10 years old, and we’ve put new engines in even older cars.”
Douglas said the department is going to have to paint some of its vehicles that are over 10 years old because, he said, “they are embarrassingly unprofessional looking.”
“This is glaringly evident when we work with neighboring agencies,” he said.
With a sustained call volume and increasing responsibilities, Douglas said the department’s work load is only going to get heavier and the need for reliable vehicles greater.
A Better Option
“Over the last five fiscal years, we’ve received 18 new vehicles (excluding grant-funded vehicles and replaced wrecked vehicles), that’s an average of 3.3 new vehicles per year.
“Continuing this trend has us retiring our vehicles at approximately 15 years of age. If the county continues to purchase vehicles the way that we always have, we will continue to live on the edge of these vehicles’ capabilities by running them until they literally fall apart,” Douglas said. “We will always be in this crisis and without the ability to properly protect our citizens.
“There’s a much better option that we hope the county will consider,” he said. “We’ve identified a leasing program that many agencies (big and small) are going to. This is a system that ensures that safe, dependable, and professional-looking vehicles are always in service. While initial costs are slightly higher, these programs demonstrate that they effectively offset these costs through far fewer maintenance costs/issues and higher resale values which we receive credit for.
“We would love to have an opportunity to have a leasing vendor give a presentation for county council and the administration to consider,” Douglas said.
Only Council members Don Goldbach and Peggy Swearingen had input and asked questions concerning the leasing program. After they spoke, Council Chair Clarence Gilbert said he would be willing to sit down and discuss the department’s vehicle needs.
