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| DEKALB SHERIFF ‘STREAMLINES’ MANAGEMENT STAFF TO BOOST LINE-LEVEL STAFFING AND EFFICIENCY |
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DECATUR, Ga. – DeKalb County Sheriff Thomas Brown is streamlining his upper management staff and reallocating those positions to make his operation more efficient and to compensate for understaffing in several critical areas of operation.
He moved closer to that goal with today’s Board of Commissioner’s (BOC) action approving his request to eliminate 12 senior-level positions and create 13 deputy sheriff positions, five warrant technician positions and one part-time investigative aide.
The new positions will help to more appropriately staff the Sheriff’s Office Domestic Violence and Sex Offender units. The additional personnel are also needed to provide courtroom security and to serve the nearly 18,500 outstanding warrants received from the various police agencies. The warrant technicians are needed to process the warrants, including entering the data into national and state crime databases.
“I plan to accomplish through attrition what I didn’t want to do by firing good employees. Since first assuming office I have felt that our organization was ‘top heavy’ with staffing. I have been working on this for the last four years by not filling positions as senior-level employees retired and by empowering line-level supervisors with more decision-making authority,” Brown said.
Reallocation of senior level positions to critically needed deputy sheriff and warrant technician positions will in part compensate for positions not funded in the county’s 2005 budget.
With BOC approval, Brown commissioned a staffing study in 2004. The study recommended an increase of 90 detention officers, 32 deputy sheriffs and seven warrant technicians. In response to the study, Chief Executive Officer Vernon Jones proposed and the board approved funding for 57 new detention officers in 2005.
Brown said that the deputies and warrant technicians not allocated in the budget, to the extent possible, will come by way of today’s BOC action.
“These positions will go a long way toward addressing the lack of personnel and our high overtime usage,” Brown said. “However, while we will do our best to control overtime, we’re going to need some phase-in time before we see the reduction levels that the county would like.”
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