Thursday March 28th, 2024 3:24PM

Banks County approves $350,000 advance funding for patrol vehicles

HOMER — The Banks County Commission has supported Banks County Sheriff Carlton Speed’s request to replace several aging vehicles in the fleet.

At Tuesday night’s meeting, commissioners voted to allow the sheriff’s office to utilize up to $350,000 in future 1-cent Special Purpose Local Option Sales Tax collections to purchase five first response Ford Explorer Interceptor SUVs to be used by the department’s shift supervisors.

Asked by Commissioner Charles Turk about fuel mileage, Chief Deputy Shawn Wilson said the V6 Turbos will be comparable in mileage to the agency’s Dodge Chargers.

“As with all law enforcement agencies, patrol vehicles really rack up the miles,” Wilson told AccessWDUN. “It doesn’t take but about four years for a county vehicle to reach that 150,000-mile mark.”

Wilson told commissioners the sheriff’s office tries to follow policy guidelines set by the Association of County Commissioners of Georgia (ACCG) regarding maximum mileage. That means first-response vehicles should be retired by about 150,000 miles to remain in keeping with ACCG’s insurance pool guidelines.

Not every agency is able to meet those guidelines, but Wilson said he and Speed feel it is important to do so.

“We try to abide by that if at all possible for safety for our deputies,” Wilson said. “The money is coming in to us from SPLOST. We already have that money that’s been allotted to us by the taxpayers. What we do is we come every so often, and the commissioners go ahead and forward that money to us, then when the SPLOST actually reaches the money they just take that money back and put it into their fund.”

Purchasing the new SUVs will allow the sheriff’s office to retire some older Ford Crown Victoria patrol cars, while also giving sergeants more cargo space to carry specialized equipment that can be used routinely.

Additionally, the vehicles are suitable for patrol.

“They’re not just your regular Ford Explorer,” Wilson said. “They’re the pursuit-rated SUVs. Those will go to our sergeants, our supervisors, so that they can actually get to areas that maybe one of the patrol cars cannot get to, and they also are able to carry more equipment in those vehicles than what you could put into the trunk of a Dodge Charger, such as jacks, AEDs and just things that you might need for emergency situations that you just can’t fit in the trunk of the car.”

Additionally, last week the sheriff’s office used $50,000 in drug seizure money awarded by the courts to purchase four used vehicles for the agency’s command staff, enabling them to retire administrative vehicles that are well beyond the recommended mileage cap.

“We purchase quite a bit from our drug forfeiture funds,” Wilson said. “That’s funds that we seize from drug dealers, and we send it through the court. It’s a civil process that goes to the court through due process. We have to prove our side of the case, that this is money that has been received through illegal transactions.”

Once the court awards the money to the sheriff’s office, it can purchase specified items with those proceeds, such as equipment, vehicles and bulletproof vests.

“Those are some of the things we can buy with it,” Wilson said. “We just purchased four SUVs. They’re Ford Explorers, 2009-2010 models. They came from a local dealership through the U.S. Forest Service. They have anywhere from 35,000 to 52,000 miles on them, and we purchased four of them for $50,000 so we think that’s a really good benefit for our command staff. These are not vehicles that will be on patrol, but they’re for administrative purposes. We do a lot of behind-the-scenes things other than just report to first response calls.”

The administrative vehicles will allow the sheriff’s office to retire some high-mileage units currently in use, one of which has logged more than 300,000 miles. Again, Wilson said safety is a concern so they want to upgrade in the best way possible to meet the agency’s needs.

  • Associated Categories: Homepage, Local/State News, Politics
  • Associated Tags: Banks County, Banks County Commission, Banks County Sheriff's Office, Sheriff Carlton Speed, Chief Deputy Shawn Wilson, patrol vehicles
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