Who needs another committee?

By Staff
Jan. 26, 2003
Suffice it to say that enough has been written and spoken over the past months about the Lauderdale County Board of Supervisors' insistence on continued use of county patrolmen that many voters have grown tired of the debate. Supervisors effectively, but temporarily, ducked the issue the other day as they formed a committee to look into how the experience and skills of the five county patrolmen might be put to better uses.
In all of Mississippi, Lauderdale County stands alone in the employment of five county patrolmen who work directly for each of the five members of the board of supervisors. The question was raised again last week whether Lauderdale County knows something the other 81 counties do not.
The answer is an emphatic "no." There is nothing unique to the operation of county government here.
The continued employment of county patrolmen good people with law enforcement skills who have no arrest powers is a throwback to the beat system where individual supervisors handled their own business. Lauderdale County supposedly operates now under a county unit system where supervisors act as a board of directors for all of county government.
The continued employment of county patrolmen in the roles to which they are currently assigned separate from the county's major law enforcement agency the Sheriff's Department  is simply not an effective use of taxpayers' money. The only possible exception is the assignment of Supervisor Craig Hitt's county patrolman in District 3 to animal control, but even then his role is limited in scope.
Funding for the five county patrolmen positions and all of the equipment that goes with the job should be managed by the sheriff's office.
This is not a comment on the skills of the current county patrolmen. It's a comment on a system that continues to waste money through the ineffective use of positions that could prove to be valuable in local law enforcement.
Supervisors need to climb out of their "let's appoint a committee" mentality and take immediate action to assign these positions to the Sheriff's Department.