The Union County Sheriff’s Office will soon have some new deputies on the roadways.
Sheriff Jamie Patton told the county commissioners Wednesday that the new deputies will not all go out at once, but the new three will take solo patrol shifts by the end of May.
“Our new-hires are progressing well. As it stands, we have one slated to go solo patrol May 18. The second one to go solo patrol is May 25. The third will go solo patrol May 29,” he said. “We still have one in the early stages that are training.”
That is Joe North, a former police officer in Richwood. Patton said the training is going well and more updates will come in the summer.
Since the hiring, the sheriff’s office has also had two resignations, one March 28 and one this week.
There is still an ebb and flow of people, Patton said, after spending much of the last few years seeing numbers dwindle.
At one time, the sheriff’s office was down nearly a dozen deputies and Patton traveled the state recruiting and visiting training academies. Pay was a factor, he said, especially for those looking to come into the county’s housing market, which has risen consistently in recently years.
In November, Patton worked with the commissioners to up the sheriff’s office contract, increasing to the office budget from $9.4 million to $10.6 million. The increase in salaries was done to be more competitive with surrounding agencies such as the City of Marysville but also central Ohio in general. That change in pay took effect on Jan. 1.
The new contract allowed Patton to hire four deputies with the understanding that more could be hired in the future if those get filled.
In addition to patrol, there will be new staff in the dispatch center also but Patton said there are still vacancies there, too.
“We’re still needing three positions within dispatch but just remember two of those positions are new, brand new positions that we added into the budget for 2024,” he said. “To be full staff, we’re only down one but with the two positions we added in ’24 for the communications center, we’re down three.”
He said there are interviews scheduled for those positions next week.
Patton also told the commissioners that, with the exception of heavy traffic and a few minor incidents, the solar eclipse went smoothly for the county.
“Everything was pretty much handled,” he said.
He said he traveled on U.S. 33 before noon Monday and was surprised by the number of cars headed west toward Marysville.
“It was a little eerie because, at that time of day, 11 o’clock, with two or three cars going eastbound but hundreds and hundreds, thousands of cars going westbound, which is just unusual to see,” he said. “So we had some congestion in and around the city and it started to back up from (U.S.) 36 toward the rest area, everybody just getting on and off and trying to get on 33.”
He said the heavy traffic flow continued up through 8-9 p.m. Monday evening especially as travelers moved from Union to Franklin County through Dublin.
“We had some crashes, rear-end crashes, people not paying attention and fender-benders but luckily nothing real serious,” Patton said.
There was some concern leading up to the event that drivers on the more rural roads may pull into the driveways of private properties but Patton said that wasn’t an issue.
“There was a lot of folks pulled off into public areas like cemeteries,” he said. “There was quite a few people sitting in un-graved areas of the cemeteries, which is good they got off the roadway.”