LICKING COUNTY, Ohio — With more and more people living in central Ohio, there comes a need for more officers to protect them.
10TV's Boomtown initiative is committed to covering the rapid growth in central Ohio while seeking solutions to the challenges that come with it. One local sheriff's department is making sure it's ready for the people moving in.
The Licking County Sheriff's Office is adding more than 20 deputies this year thanks, in part, to its first-ever cadet class.
“Our instructors are the ones who we are going to be working with a lot. All the instructors at COTC themselves are local. They are all retired and have been here for 20-plus years and having our people come in and train us and getting to know their faces is huge,” said Cadet Gerret Moss.
Moss was born and raised in the area. He went away for four years to serve in the Army and is back now serving in a different role.
“Being able to protect them and the community I live in is huge,” Moss said.
He is in the first-ever Licking County Sheriff's Office cadet class and they just graduated.
“Everyone talks about Intel, but it is Intel plus. There are other companies coming to the area. The more people coming to this area. Columbus is starting to grow our way. We just have to be prepared for the growth,” said Licking County Sheriff’s Office Captain Chris Barbuto.
The need was so great for additional deputies, the department decided to hold its own class.
“We have a shortage of law enforcement officers. This model of your partnership presents an opportunity and a path forward,” said Attorney General Dave Yost at the cadet’s graduation.
“The benefit about having our own is that we can train our people the way we want to have them trained. We can train them on when we do report writing, we can train them on our software system. When we do different crime scenes things, we can train them on the technology we use,” Barbuto said.
The sheriff's office already hired seven new deputies this year, and when these 15 deputies are done with field training, there will be a total of 22 new deputies in the department.
“With all that growth, we just need to be able to staff our patrol division,” Barbuto said.
While the sheriff's office builds staff for future growth to protect and serve, the department is also looking to possibly build new substations to have those deputies spread across the county as it rapidly increases in population.
“We need to start talking now, so in five years we can implement those plans,” Barbuto said.
“We are very very lucky. I'm very lucky. Just the experience in total has been amazing. I can't thank the sheriff's office enough for allowing us to do this. Not many places do something like this,” Moss said.
This story is part of 10TV's "Boomtown" initiative — our commitment to covering every angle of central Ohio's rapid growth. This includes highlighting success stories, shining a light on growing pains and seeking solutions to issues in your everyday life.