Gloucester Sheriff Darrell Warren questioned numbers related to his office that were included in an article in the Gazette-Journal on Jan. 25. That article discussed Mathews Sheriff April Edwards’s appearance before the Mathews Board of Supervisors on Jan. 23 to request additional funding for two full-time deputies.
In requesting the funding, Edwards compared the number of sworn deputies in Mathews to the number of sworn deputies in Gloucester and other counties. She said that, while Mathews has one sworn deputy for every 711 people, Gloucester has one sworn deputy for every 420 people.
Warren said that the per-capita figure for Gloucester is incorrect because it includes the total number of sworn deputies, including personnel that are hired only to work in the jail and courts.
“You must compare apples to apples and only include law enforcement deputies/officers,” he said. “You can’t include jail deputies when the other localities aren’t responsible for corrections. It isn’t a true coverage comparison.”
While the sheriff’s office has a total of 88 personnel, Warren explained that only 53 of those should be included in a per-capita count, including command staff, patrol, school resource officers, and investigations. When the county’s population of 39,069 people is divided by 53, he said, the result is one officer per 737 people.
Jail deputies never work patrol, he said, because they attend a completely different academy and don’t have law enforcement certification, while the seven full-time deputies that serve in the courts and do civil process don’t have patrol certification. The one transportation officer the office has provides transports between jails and courts, Warren said, with patrol officers responsible for transporting the people they arrest.
A major issue for all sheriff’s offices is dealing with mental health care situations, and Warren said that, because Gloucester has a hospital, his deputies have to sit with patients with mental health issues from other localities until a temporary detention order is issued. Only then does the sheriff’s office in the locality where the patient lives come and take over responsibility for the patient. Occasionally the office is able to call in an off-duty jail deputy to help with a mental health care situation, he said, “but rarely when they are on duty because we typically operate at minimum staffing levels in our jail.”
Edwards’s response
Edwards said that when she made her presentation to the board of supervisors, the point she wanted to make was how many full-time sworn deputies the Gloucester sheriff has at his disposal, “not how he uses them.”
She said she understands Warren’s separation of jail personnel from law enforcement personnel, but that, under the Code of Virginia, they are all sworn officers with arrest powers, regardless of the jobs they have. Of the 12 deputies she had at the time of her presentation, Edwards said one of them was assigned to the courts, but she included that officer in her total anyway because, as a sworn officer, he can be used in other capacities, if necessary.
“If they’re all sworn, they should be included in that count,” she said. “But he does have a jail to run and more courtroom duties than we have.”
Edwards said she was of the understanding that Warren can use court staff to do transports, work a parade, and handle other situations, while jail personnel can do transports, including of mental health patients. She said she believed that all of these personnel can work special events, as well.
All of those duties are handled by Mathews County’s dozen sworn deputies (now 14), she said, adding, “All I’m trying to do is show how much we have to do with 12.”