Thursday, March 13, 2014

Sheriff's race: Candidates Jones, Waggoner spar over patrol numbers

Knox County Sheriff candidate Bobby Waggoner issued a release today that said “at any given time, there are fewer than 30 officers on patrol in Knox County.”

Sheriff Jimmy “J.J.” Jones, called it “a lie,” adding that “it shows just how out of touch he is.”

“You’re not supposed to get desperate until the end of the campaign,” Jones said.

Waggoner, Jones and Charles “Sam” Hammett Jr. will square off in the May Republican primary. There are no Democratic candidates.

Waggoner, a retired chief of detectives with the KCSO, in his release said the department “is still working from a patrol map that’s more than two decades old.” He said the department’s patrol division consists of five shifts that cover a 24-hour period, and that 28 officers are assigned to each shift. He said of those officers, as many as five “can be off on vacation or personal leave” or in training, etc.

So, I asked the sheriff about this and he said it’s hogwash. He said the office uses “calls for service statistics” to determine how many patrol cars and officers should be available. He said that during a period from 12:30 a.m. to 5:30 a.m. “there’s a possibility” that there are 30 officers on patrol, “but any other time there’s 100 to 125 patrol officers, patrolling the neighborhoods.”

He said stats show that during the early morning hours calls for services and accidents drop, so not as many officers are needed. (I guess most people are asleep.)

Jones also said that the department also has 70 detectives and more than 40 folks on the radio, so if something goes wrong, he’s got an army on hand to take care of business.

He added that if Waggoner, who joined the department in 2001, was so concerned about patrol numbers then he should have approached him when he was an employee.

3 comments:

Unknown said...

[Sheriff Jones] "He said that during a period from 12:30 a.m. to 5:30 a.m. “there’s a possibility” that there are 30 officers on patrol, “but any other time there’s 100 to 125 patrol officers, patrolling the neighborhoods.”

That math just doesn't add up. The basic break down is this:

5 shifts of officers at 28 per shift. Each shift on a rotating schedule of 6 days on, 4 days off. Rotating days, evenings and nights every 10 days.
One of the five shifts covers each of the patrol shift times as follows:
Day shift roll call is 545am and the tour is complete at 230pm. Afternoon tour is 145 roll call, tour is complete at 1230am.
Night tour is 845pm roll call and 630 am tour is complete.
28 officers per shift, 1 shift assigned to each tour. With vacations, inservice training, sick days an average of 15-18 officers will work per tour.
With a total patrol division of 5 shifts, 28 officers per shift, how do the numbers work that you can say with a straight face that you have 125 people on the road during each tour?
Either Mike Donila misunderstood, or, our current sheriff is the one that is out of touch.

Read for yourself everything that Robert Waggoner has to say at
www.waggonerforsheriff.com

“You’re not supposed to get desperate until the end of the campaign,” Jones said.
Since when is telling the truth "desperation"?

Unknown said...

"So, I asked the sheriff about this and he said it’s hogwash. He said the office uses “calls for service statistics” to determine how many patrol cars and officers should be available. He said that during a period from 12:30 a.m. to 5:30 a.m. “there’s a possibility” that there are 30 officers on patrol, “but any other time there’s 100 to 125 patrol officers, patrolling the neighborhoods.”

He uses "Calls for Service" stats to determine how many officers should be available? Its simple. Each of the 5 shifts have 28 people assigned to it. That includes 5 supervisors, and usually 2 probationary officers in training. Out of 28 people, that leaves 21 who are designed to answer calls as most supervisors will hold calls until a busy unit will get back in service. Out of that 21, there are vacations, sick days, training days, inservice days, comp days, that need to be scheduled. So if we are lucky, we will have 15 to 18 people, including supervisors, working on a shift that is devoted to called for service. That does not include the Traffic Unit who works 8 to 4 Monday through Friday who's primary mission is to work wrecks and and deal with traffic related problems, not to answer calls for service. That does not include the Officers assigned to the School Division who's mission is to secure the school grounds and can not answer calls for service as they are assigned to a school and can not leave. Even if these were all added together during peak manpower times on dayshift they will still not add up to "100 officers patrolling your neighborhoods".

I will give the Sheriff the benefit of the doubt that he does not know what his patrol shifts consist of or what they do, because the only other explanation is that he is a liar and considers the people of Knox County to be stupid.

Unknown said...

March 12 & 13th 2014 - Knox county Sheriff

Officers - Patrol zone for DAY SHIFT
----------------------------
1 - East
1 - Covering East & South
1 - South
2 - North
2 - West

These are patrol officers that were assigned a zone to respond to calls.

8 total officers on patrol during the day shift which is the most likely time to have a home invasions/burglaries.

Dispatch was holding calls for service 30 to 45 minutes during this shift for these 2 days.