Aiken County Sheriff seeking to add staff to deal with gang violence

May 12—Aiken County Sheriff Michael Hunt spoke about his desire to add four new employees to his staff to investigate gangs locally during Aiken County Council's Budget Work Session on Tuesday at the Aiken County Government Center.

The new hires would work in the Sheriff Office's Special Operations Division and function as a gang intelligence operation "so we can keep up with the gangs and track them, keep up with who the players are and what they're doing," Hunt said.

"They also would have the responsibility of crime suppression," he continued, "so that when we have these upticks in crime in these neighborhoods with gang violence, they would be responsible for going there and getting this under control."

In making his case, Hunt described gang violence as a growing and widespread problem.

"If any police administrator in the country tells you they don't have gangs, they're not telling you the truth," he said. "We've been pretty fortunate to manage them the best we can here, but we have seen an uptick, and I personally think it's time to have a separate unit that devotes all their time to gangs and gang violence."

Hunt's requests for the 2021-2022 fiscal year also included a system that would be used to fingerprint children during community outreach efforts, three new speed radar guns to replace devices "that are getting some age on them" and four new civilian crime scene technicians.

"We have a separate Forensics Division now," Hunt said. "We have three folks in that division."

Their efforts involve collecting evidence and analyzing it in a lab.

They are "backed up," Hunt said.

The sheriff was among the elected officials who made presentations to County Council during the Budget Work Session.

Earlier this month, County Council unanimously approved the first reading of an ordinance that would establish the county's 2021-2022 fiscal year budget.

The second reading is scheduled for June 1, and the third and final reading is set for June 15.

Before the vote on the first reading, County Administrator Clay Killian presented the budget draft he and his staff had prepared.

Killian's recommended figure for the General Fund, which provides money for the county's day-to-day operating expenses, is $75,049,531 for both revenues and expenditures.

That amount represents a $1.4-million increase over the adjusted budget for the 2020-2021 fiscal year, Killian said.

Also representing the Sheriff's Office during Tuesday's Budget Work Session was Capt. Nick Gallum, who is the jail administrator and is in charge of the Aiken County detention center.

He asked for eight new positions there.

The inmate-to-staff ratio at the detention center is nearly 5 to 1, Gallum said. Nationally, it is 3.3 to 1.

During the 2020 calendar year, detention center employees worked an average of 212 hours of overtime, he reported.

Aiken County Coroner Darryl Ables told County Council he would like to add a deputy coroner to his staff, and he also wanted a new vehicle for that new deputy coroner.

The number of autopsies, overdoses and deaths investigated are increasing, Ables said.

Second Judicial Circuit Solicitor Bill Weeks also talked about the increasing workload for his employees. He asked for two new attorneys and one new paralegal for his staff.

Other elected officials also made requests Tuesday.

After they spoke, County Council Chairman Gary Bunker made the following comments to his fellow County Council members:

"I do think that we've heard a lot compelling presentations from our elected officials. Actually, I've not seen so many new positions requested at one time in a very long time.

"But we have to note that since the (proposed) budget that has come to us is already balanced, that anything else that we wish to do to the scope side has to be paid for with either increased revenues or reductions in other departments. We're not like Congress where we can say, 'Oh wonderful, let's spend another trillion dollars' and we have a Federal Reserve to back us up. We have to spend no more than we take in."