Becker County has typically provided funding to staff at bare minimum staffing levels.  While these low staffing levels have been marketed that they are “saving taxpayer dollars”, they lead to added liability to the county, inability to effectively shoulder workload, inhibit proactive initiatives and programs, burnout and mental health issues in these positions that are already considered high stress positions, and turnover which results in additional dollars being spent in hiring, backgrounds, and training new staff. When you break down these numbers below, you see some of the staffing issues that need to be increased.

PATROL

While not readily available, in 2017, I began digging through MN’s Uniform Crime Report staffing data for the entire state as we could not get our County Board to understand how understaffed we were and provide funding to increase our staffing. What I discovered in those reports after doing some calculations was that in MN, Becker County was #87 of 87 counties (dead last) in staffing of Deputies per capita. That mean that our Patrol Deputies served more citizens and shouldered more workload per Deputy than every other Sheriff’s Office in the entire state. Becker County is an extremely active county with a visiting tourism population that is not even counted in our population statistics that are part of the Uniform Crime Reports. That visiting population comes to Becker County year round but with very large spikes for our summertime celebrations, concerts, lake cabin owners, and other events.

In 2018, with these numbers, Sheriff Glander and I were able to finally begin getting some movement in staffing. We secured our first additional Deputy Sheriff since 1999 when we went from 21 to 22 Full Time Deputies in 2018. Leading up to that time, our volunteer Auxiliary Deputy Unit also began to dissolve due to legislative changes that no longer allowed part-time Peace Officer licenses being issued and new more stringent training requirements. That unit officially ended in 2022, which assisted us for many years in additional staffing when needed, but specifically for those spikes in tourism and call load.

Since 2018 to date, we have secured 6 additional Deputies bringing FT Deputy numbers from 21 to 27. At 27 Deputies, the Becker County Sheriff's Office is #80 of 87, which means we are still in the bottom 9% of Sheriff's Offices in the state of MN for Deputy staffing per capita.  This is how far behind Becker County is in staffing and means that we will are asking your Deputies to do more work with fewer staffing resources. This prevents us from providing the proactive community policing we would like to provide.  Becker County is a very busy county for a Sheriff's Office and needs additional staffing for our citizens. 

JAIL

Jail staffing is also in need of additional full-time personnel.  There are many shifts where our jail is typically operating at what the Department of Corrections considers "minimum staffing". This has the same reflection on the jail staff as it does on the Deputies.  We have many part-time positions that are intended to fill in those gaps, however most of those PT positions go unfilled or have an extremely high turnover rate as most people are looking for full-time employment. Even though the positions are there, they are vacant or are short time employees, then find employment elsewhere, so do not provide the intended staffing levels, and again cost money in the hiring, backgrounding, and training, just have them leave a short time later before their training is completed or they are off probation. This is a cost burden to the taxbase and a burden to the other Correctional Officers staff that rely on these positions to support them in the workload and schedule.

DISPATCH

Our dispatch center also needs another full-time Communications Officer (Dispatcher) position.  In June of 2021, with the help of our local Fire Departments, we were able to secure another Communications Officer, which allowed for nearly  24/7 coverage of two Communications Officers in our Dispatch center.  We are still short several hours each week where we only have one Communications Officer on duty. Critical incidents can and do occur 24 hours a day. One critical incident can overwhelm a dispatch center with multiple 911 calls being handled at one time, paging appropriate units, notifying other assisting agencies of the need to respond, handling radio traffic, logging data, obtaining caller/witness information, sending a public notification warning to our citizens, notifying other non-public safety entities like public utilities, tow companies, MNDOT/County Highway, etc. For one dispatcher to handle just one incoming emergency call can be very overwhelming. Having multiple emergency calls at one time, one Communications Officer on duty doesn’t provide the level of staffing Becker County residents deserve when they are calling in an emergency as a reporter or if they victim of an emergency themselves.

We need to build our staffing numbers for our Correctional Officers, Dispatchers, and Deputies to allow for expanded patrols, adequate shift coverage for call taking, and capacity to handle vacancies for instances like open/vacant positions, vacations, sick personnel, and/or extended leave. This will also assist with staff being able to take time off, prevent burnout, and increase safety across the board for staff, as well as provide a much higher level of Public Safety service to the citizens of Becker County.

I want to work to get Deputies back into the schools through a School Resource Deputy (or Deputies), and reinstate the D.A.R.E. (Drug Abuse Resistance Education) program.

Getting Deputies into the schools will address the safety gap in several of our schools and provide relationship building with our youth. This will also be part of the increase to our staffing levels that will provide additional staffing in our peak summer call load when school is out of session. It becomes a win for our schools for safety and security, and a win for our citizens during our busy summer months where we are stretched extremely thin in our staffing for when our citizens call us for service.

Minnesota’s County Jails are being used as housing for mental health patients that cannot find open beds in MN’s broken Mental Health system. We need to engage our legislators to continue to find additional funding to secure new facilities to treat our populations in mental health crisis. When I began my law enforcement career, mental health in MN was privatized and effective. I remember bringing people in to get help and facilities like the Fergus Falls State Hospital and Prairie St. John’s in Fargo. We would get them in that day and the person would get the help they need. Now the state of MN had waiting lists that have been over one year for someone to find placement and have used our county jails as a “holding place” until a bed is available. This is unacceptable, immoral, and is being driven by the state’s inability to manage a crisis they decided to take on.

We also need to fight to take back common sense control of the oversight in our jails from the DOC (Department of Corrections). The DOC has provided unrealistic expectations and directives to MN jails that the DOC themselves cannot and do not comply with in their prisons even though they are enforcing them in their oversight of the county jails. This goes along with enforcement of the new legislative mandate that correctional facilities continue a person's pre-incarceration medication, regardless of their current state or when the prescription was issued. This takes away medical professionals ability to determine the best treatment for the inmate and mandates they administer medication that they know may not be in the best interest of the inmate, but since the legislature passed a law that they must just “give” the medication anyways or the medical provider will be breaking the law. This is a no win situation for our jail medical staff.

Maintaining and expanding funding for the Becker County Drug and Violent Crimes Taskforce.

State funding, with the financial crisis in MN right now, is an unguaranteed resource.  I want to ensure that Becker County's Taskforce members have the funding to continue to fight illegal narcotics and violent crimes in Becker County in the event the state cuts funding statewide to Violent Crimes Task Forces.

I will fight to keep Becker County on top of advancing technology in law enforcement, such as upcoming 911 to 988 transitions, Next-GEN (next generation) 911, drone and counter drone technologies, satellite broadband data, and expanding and new technologies in the future. I have been instrumental in getting us to our current advances in technology. That drive and determination will not stop to ensure our Sheriff’s Office has the tools they need to be effective Public Safety leaders in Becker County.