POLICE ADJUST IN LEAN TIMES

Area Departments Cope With Thinning Ranks, Tightening Budgets

Police in Gaston, Lincoln and Cleveland counties say they won't expect much
relief from problems including low officer retention and aging equipment in
the new budget year.

Most departments already have seen their workloads increase while their
budgets decreased in the last couple of years. Most also are understaffed,
in part because positions are frozen and officers are being lured away by
higher salaries to other departments or to the private sector.

The Gastonia Police Department has lost 22 officers in the last five years.
It currently has 159 officers and can afford to hire only 10 more because
of budget cuts, Police Chief Tim Adams said.

To make sure there's always a certain number of officers on the road,
police have cut back on training from 40 to 24 hours, Adams said. Officers
still receive basic yearly training, but they now take specialized courses
only every other year on topics such as how to handle somebody firing a gun
inside a building, he said.

A smaller police force, along with an overworked staff, also means that
complaints about loud music and other community concerns don't get the
attention they deserve, Adams said.

"I'd like to see a quick response to problems," he said. "We could do it
better."

Losing police officers isn't a new problem.

Darrell Harkey, who worked as a Lincoln County sheriff's deputy from 1966
to 1969, recently told a recruit to prepare to live on a tight budget.

Harkey said he left the department because he was offered a higher salary
at a textile mill as a dyeing manager.

"It's so tempting," he said. "You can't become a police officer and buy a
new house and a car and have kids and send them off to college."

Cleveland County Sheriff Deputy Raymond Hamrick said his department loses
officers mostly because of the high cost of benefits.

A new officer who earns $24,000 a year currently pays about $6,000 in
medical insurance for the family, Hamrick said.

To lessen the financial blow, next year's budget contains a request for a
salary increase from about $24,000 to $26,000 for new officers. But it's
still unlikely to offset much of the rising cost of health insurance,
Hamrick said.

The department also requested $200,000 to hire four narcotics investigators.

"Drugs continue to be one of our biggest problems, and it leads into other
cases, like break-ins and thefts," Hamrick said.

It's unclear whether county commissioners will approve his requests. The
board has followed a conservative trend in the last three years, Vice
Chairman Ronnie Hawkins said.

"He's not the only one with a wish list," Hawkins said. "He might have to
tighten his belt next year."

Lincolnton Police Chief Dean Abernathy proposed a slightly higher budget
this year than last year, including a request for $81,800 to replace four
aging patrol cars.

In his budget proposal to city officials, he states that no grants were
available this year to buy cars as they were in the last two years.

Abernathy said he's had to be creative when his department faced an
unexpected expense, such as losing a patrol car in an accident. He turned
his car into a patrol car and bought a used one with insurance money they
collected from the accident.

Other departments have turned to grants when their needs weren't met locally.

Belmont Police received $225,000 in federal grants to hire three officers
in the last year, and Gastonia police recently used $156,000 from a federal
grant and seized drug money to buy a command vehicle, which can serve as an
operations center during a hostage situation.

Cleveland County deputies seized a record amount of marijuana and cocaine
in the last year, so they'll use almost $175,000 in seized drug money to
buy six new patrol cars.

Gaston County police have been cutting costs by bringing experts to their
department since they cannot afford to send officers to out-of-state training.

"We've really challenged ourselves to keep things in-house," said Gaston
County Police Chief Bill Farley. "We've been modestly successful."

Shelby Police Chief Tandy Carter said his budget proposal includes money to
step up training at his department.

He said he wants a trained polygraphist on staff and an officer certified
to reconstruct accidents because their expertise would make a big
difference when prosecuting drunken driving cases.

Carter also wants to send someone to the University of Tennessee's Forensic
Anthropology Facility, also known as the "Body Farm," to become an expert
in crime scenes.

Although police officials expect more budget cuts this year, two
departments already have something to look forward to. Both Belmont and
Gaston County police expect to move into more spacious buildings by the end
of the year.

"If you had to gauge the mood, the building is such a big thing for us,
that it's a bright spot in the budget," Farley said. "We've been waiting 15
years."

Proposed Police Budgets for Fiscal 2004-05:

* Gastonia: $12 million, a decrease of less than 1 percent from last year.

* Shelby: $4.2 million, a 3.5 percent decrease from last year.

* Lincolnton: A little less than $2.3 million, an increase of almost 5
percent from last year.

* Belmont: City officials are still working on the department's budget.
They expect it to be a little higher than the current budget, at $1.9 million .

* Gaston County: City officials are still working on the department's
budget. This year's budget was $9.9 million.

* Cleveland County: $7.1 million, a 14 percent increase from last year.