SHERIFF POINTS TO AUDIT RESULTS THAT SHOW SHORTAGES IN STAFFING

Conway's Quest For Funding

Marie Tidwell dreads spending some nights at the Gwinnett Justice and
Administration Center in Lawrenceville.

It isn't the endless public hearings, or even the anger management
classes for unruly teens, that she minds.

It's just that, as a sheriff's deputy sergeant, she has to work an
extra shift --- again --- to check people for weapons.

"We're so short on people that everybody has to work overtime,"
Tidwell said. "I have a 12-year-old daughter, and that's where I need
to be."

Gwinnett Sheriff Butch Conway said he has many employees who, like
Tidwell, are facing burnout, stretched too thin in their current
jobs, let alone being able to take on the added work that comes with
the county's growth.

The sheriff's backlog of warrants has grown to 22,000, a galling
situation for Conway, who ran for office in 1996 criticizing
then-Sheriff Jim Carsten for a backlog of 18,000 warrants. Conway
inherited a jail that was built for 580 inmates and now beds 1,400
some on the floor. Legally required to provide security for the
courts, he's also got deputies working overtime and is uncertain
about what he'll do when two more judges take the bench in January.

Gwinnett County Commission Chairman Wayne Hill said county finances
also are stretched thin, and that all department heads --- including
Conway --- need to tighten the reins on spending.

Now, Hill and Conway are at odds, and Hill no longer boasts around
the state that he has a rare, team-playing sheriff. "I guess I was
wrong," he said recently.

The line may have been drawn this month when Conway sent a letter
putting the county on notice that he may file suit to force the
County Commission to give him more personnel. The county responded by
giving him the names of lawyers he can consult at government expense.

Coming to a head

Armed with the results of two audits, Conway asked for 54 new
employees; the 2002 budget Hill proposed gives him four deputies.

The County Commission is slated to approve the budget Jan. 2, and in
the interim, Conway has been lobbying county commissioners to
overrule Hill on his staffing request.

Hill has dug in his heels, suggesting that more deputies could
translate into a tax increase for property owners.

Conway has offered up some concessions, saying he's open to
reassigning a few deputies assigned to lifestyle education for
schoolchildren and a task force on Internet child pornography. He
also said that, although he has the power to sue, he's willing to
abide by the wishes of an impartial mediator.

"I'm willing to go to arbitration," he said. "Whatever they decide,
I'll live with. Going to court would be a last resort."

Officials defend stance

County officials protest it is unfair to cast them as unresponsive to
the sheriff.

The sheriff's budget has grown more than many other departments' ---
from $14.1 million in 1993 to $16.5 million in 1997 to a proposed
$27.9 million next year.

Since 1998, the county has given Conway 68 new positions, raising his
total to 392, a 22.5 percent increase. The rest of the government's
staffing is up about 18.4 percent.

Even so, Conway has consistently received less money and staff than requested.

In 1998, he asked for $19.5 million and was given $19.1 million. In
2000, he sought $26.25 million and received $24.2 million. For the
2002 budget, the request was $30.9 million.

In his five years, county records show Conway requested 251 new
employees, from financial records assistants and janitors to deputies
and cooks.

Hill said every department head wants more personnel and resources.
"They're all understaffed," he said. "I keep telling people that
there's not a money tree I can go shake. There's a limit."

Hill also argues that help is on the way for Conway, just not right
away. In a couple of years, the county plans to build a $59 million
jail addition and will boost Conway's budget $8 million to $9
million, said Charlotte Nash, county administrator and Hill's right
hand.

For the 2002 budget year, Hill asked the department heads and elected
officials to hold down their requests. He told them $15 million has
been committed to increasing salaries and benefits to make county pay
more competitive in the metro Atlanta market.

"No one is saying Butch is lying, but the message went out, 'Don't be
asking for a big increase,' " said Mike Comer, the county's finance
director. "I guess we picked the wrong year. Or he did."

Audits find staff lean

In 1999, Conway asked the Georgia Sheriff's Association to scrutinize
his department. The association's review team gave the agency high
marks for efficiency, but voiced concerns about staffing.

"Since the opening of the jail, the inmate population has doubled,
but the staff to supervise them has remained relatively the same and
in some cases less," the audit stated. "During periods of staff
shortages, one staff member would cover two posts. This practice is
not only dangerous for staff, it also sets up the county for failure
to properly supervise inmates."

Conway, fearing the County Commission might think the association
audit was biased, asked the county's own Internal Audit Department to
do a similar study. The staff's findings echoed what the sheriff's
association found.

"The Sheriff's Department should continue efforts to obtain an
adequate level of staffing to meet the needs of the organization,"
the June 2001 county audit report stated. "Staffing levels,
particularly at the GCDC [jail], have a detrimental impact on
employee morale."

The head of the Internal Audit Department attempted to clarify her
report earlier this month. Virginia Harris sent a memo Dec. 4, as
things started to heat up between Hill and Conway, saying the audit
didn't mean to suggest the sheriff should seek more staff.

But county Human Resources, drawing from the internal audit, made
projections on Conway's needs.

"If all the sworn detention positions were filled, that would still
leave the department with a ratio of 6.8 inmates per officer, still
above the 5.6 ratio for larger jail systems," said Rod Powell,
director of Human Resources, in a memo dated Oct. 11. "They would
need to add an additional 37 authorized positions to meet the desired
ratio."

Packed in at jail

The sheriff's office has a multitude of duties. Chief among them are
operating the Gwinnett County Detention Center, or jail; protecting
the county courthouse; and serving civil papers and criminal warrants.

The detention center, which was built for 576 inmates and handles
more than 1,400, is where the greatest stress is, Conway said.

Deputies are responsible for overseeing the detention center's
inmates, most of whom are awaiting trial or transfer to the state
prison system and some of whom are sleeping three to a one-man cell.

The sheriff's association report said Conway's office is turning
short-term responses into long-term solutions.

"This will only work as long as no one makes an issue of it," the
report stated. "Not only are some of your strategies questionable by
constitutional standards, they also violate some of the basic
principles of direct supervision."

The detention center's staffing level is about 38 percent lower than
those at other large jails, county auditors found. In 2000, that
meant the center had one officer for every 7.7 inmates, when the
standard for jails of similar size and design was one officer per 5.6
inmates, county auditors found.

To come up to standard, the center would need 37 more deputies,
according to calculations of the county Human Resources Department.

Of the 47 new positions requested for 2002, Conway asked for 26
deputies and a cook to supplement the detention center's current
staff of 194 deputies and 64 civilian workers.

Court security thin

In the division charged with maintaining court security, staffing is
so thin that Sheriff's Maj. William H. Shepherd sometimes has to sit
in court himself.

A capital murder trial due in January is likely to require an extra
seven deputies.

"If I can't get help from other divisions, I don't know what I'm
going to do," Shepherd said.

The county's internal audit noted that hours of courtroom service
have increased signficantly since 1989, and the number of deputies at
the courthouse has not kept up.

In 1989, there were 40 authorized positions. Twelve years later,
there are 43 authorized positions, and four of them have been
reassigned to the detention center.

The audit said the court hours, and the deputies needed to protect
during them, are affected by new laws, the addition of more police,
and a population cresting at 615,000. And the county is adding two
more courtrooms in January.

Starting in January, the county will have 23 courtrooms in operation
with 24 full-time judges, 16 part-time judges and 37 deputies
standing guard. In 1997, the county had 21 full-time judges, eight
part-time judges and 33 courtroom deputies.

The Sheriff's Department also provides round-the-clock security at
the Gwinnett Justice and Administration Center, although Conway has
threatened to end after-hours security.

Serving summonses

The Civil Division's 26 deputies serve summonses, subpoenas, family
violence protective orders, evictions, probate orders, property
seizures, condemnations and bad check citations.

Conway said the backlog of papers to be served has averaged about
36,000 a year since 1997. In 2001, the number grew to about 48,000,
including evictions, which were up 102 percent since 1997, and family
violence orders, up 175 percent in the same period.

For the civil division, Conway has asked for two deputies, two
part-time deputies and an administrative assistant in the 2002 budget.

Maj. Cathie Higgins said on a good day, a deputy might serve papers
on 20 or 30 cases, but still have 20 left to do.

"Every paper we don't serve, we have an attorney saying, 'What's
going on?' " said Sgt. Charles Parr.

A second division, field services, focuses on arrest warrants, the
division Conway targeted in his 1996 campaign. The department gets
30,000 warrants a year, a 44 percent increase over the volume in
1997, Conway said.

Gwinnett has 42 positions authorized for warrant service, but has
moved 11 to cover the jail. Conway has asked for 10 more deputies to
ease the caseload.

This year the sheriff began requiring two deputies per car on the
potentially volatile warrant detail. It is safer, but cuts down on
the number of warrants served.

"You have to cover the back and the front of the house," Conway said.
"It's more practical to have them together than wait 20 minutes for
one to arrive. And it's a safety issue."

The Sheriff's Department has other programs that are outside the
scope of his constitutionally mandated duties. One of those is
ADVANCE, which teaches fifth-graders the virtue of good decisions and
the hazards of poor ones. It requires seven full-time deputies.

ADVANCE stands for Avoiding Drugs, Violence and Negative Choices
Early. Conway launched ADVANCE, unconvinced of the effectiveness of
the DARE (Drug Awareness and Resistance Education) anti-drug program.
DARE had operated largely out of the Gwinnett Police Department, and
a deal was struck that Conway's staff would take over ADVANCE in
exchange for five positions previously committed to the poice
department.

ADVANCE has brought deputies into the classroom to talk to 31,000
students, and with the growth in schools, it will need another deputy
in 2002 and two more in 2003 to be effective, Conway said.

. "If it helps kids avoid negative choices and drugs, and we've
accomplished something for the future, what's that worth?" Conway
asked. "If there was public demand, then I'd drop it, but I don't
think that's going to happen."

He also has voiced a willingness to reassign a deputy working with
the Innocent Images task force, which investigates child pornography
and child exploitation through the Internet.

"I know for a fact we saved one child right here in Gwinnett County,"
Conway said. "How do you put a price on that?"

Amid all the pressures, he has had to juggle priorities.

To alleviate crowding at the detention center, the county spent $1.2
million last year to convert a gymnasium into a 180-bed housing unit,
called M Pod, and to provide 11 deputies for its staffing.

Conway had asked for 12 deputies for M Pod and a total of 34 for the
whole jail. But, he said, the 11 new people had to go to fill
shortages in the existing facilities.

"That [opening the new beds] wasn't the high priority," Conway said.
"If the recipe calls for four eggs and they only give you three, you
can't make a cake. I hate it. But it's a matter priorities."