With a Trigg County Sheriff’s Office fleet in dire need of upgrades, the Trigg County Fiscal Court added a motion to its Tuesday agenda, and unanimously approved the purchase of a Dodge Charger valued up to $27,000 from Freedom Dodge in Lexington.
The decision came after second-in-command and Major Mike Sandbrink described a critical situation with vehicles — in which the county-approved purchase of two Chevrolet Tahoes hasn’t yet come to fruition due to a lack of computer chips, a transport Crown Victoria approaches more than 250,000 miles and no longer has a working odometer, and a 2015 deputy Tahoe is all but decommissioned after running up more than 140,000 miles in patrols.
A year since early reports from the offices of Sheriff Aaron Acree and his administration, magistrate Alana Baker-Dunn noted something needed to be done.
Acree also updated the fiscal court on what’s been a particularly busy year for his sheriff’s office.
And according to him, calls for service have been particularly high — especially in the Rockcastle, Linton and Cerulean areas.
And burglaries, according to Acree, have dropped significantly in those areas.
He added that domestic calls have seen a slight uptick — not uncommon during summer months in which families are together more frequently — and calls for vehicular wrecks and criminal complaints have increased in the Land Between the Lakes area.
With the U.S. Forestry Service beyond inundated and limited with its number of agents, Acree said the Trigg County Sheriff’s Office has had to handle more caseload there.
One considerable positive with more calls serviced in the last year: more arrests. Acree said his department has seen a significant increase in felonies charged.
And he didn’t mince words.
Sandbrink, meanwhile, said he’s already been involved with a significant panel through the U.S. Forestry Service, in regards to the voluminous calls coming from the LBL area. It’s 17 miles one way from the Trigg County Courthouse to the Golden Pond Welcome Station, and if the Trigg County Sheriff’s Office is specifically dispatched to take the lead on a call, deputies are looking at 35-to-40 miles round trip — pulling them away from other parts of the county that require just as much, if not more, service.
Trigg County Judge-Executive Hollis Alexander said there once was a significant bleed of support and boots on the ground for LBL, with more than 20 officers for the Tennessee Valley Authority and up to 14 from the U.S. Forestry Service.
Now, U.S. Forestry staffs three officers for the region — and often pulls them for wildfires in the western United States.
Sandbrink duly noted this was not an attack on any specific law enforcement agency, but more of an airing of grievances and critical concern about an area that’s not being properly patrolled and serviced.
