Cherokee County Sheriff Roger Garrison and his opponent in this year’s election, David Waters, may not agree on who should lead the agency of 332 sworn officers, but they do agree the economy will be the biggest challenge for whoever voters choose in November.
With 30 deputy positions lost and $3 million stripped from the agency’s budget in recent years, maintaining services and working with the Board of Commissioners on future finances will be paramount for the next election winner.
Garrison, 50, who recently announced he is seeking a sixth term, has pledged to do everything he can to avoid staff cuts even if his budget continues to shrink.
“It’s tough to keep employees motivated, but in general it’s tough to be an American right now,” said Garrison, sitting in his spacious office in Canton earlier this month. “I’ve fought for employees. We haven’t had furloughs or layoffs.”
The primary election is July 31.
Waters, a lieutenant in the Forsyth County Sheriff’s Office, swigged coffee and chatted comfortably during a lunch break meeting on Wednesday. At 54, Waters said he could retire now. But he wants to cap his career in the county where he is a lifelong resident and where he started his law enforcement career as an officer for the Waleska Police Department.
Waters says he thinks county residents are ready for a change and thinks he can find ways to trim the budget. He believes the agency right now is top-heavy with high-salary supervisors.
There are currently 13 supervisors on any given shift in the ranks of captain, lieutenant, sergeant and corporal to supervise 16 deputies. Waters says he would not lay off supervisors but would demote or reassign several to save money.
“I don’t need a lot of managers,” Waters said. “I have the experience, expertise and knowledge to lead.”
Waters, who lives in Ball Ground, has worked two stints at the Sheriff’s Office under several of Garrison’s predecessors, moving up the ranks to become captain over uniform patrol. He worked for five years as an investigator for the Cherokee district attorney before moving to the Forsyth County Sheriff’s Office, where he currently supervises investigations including the Internal Affairs and Narcotics divisions.
If elected, Waters said, he would improve the Neighborhood Watch program; create a School Resource Officer program and Citizen Police Academy; and improve the turnaround time for obtaining police reports by installing better technology in all the patrol vehicles.
Garrison, who has spent two decades in office, disagreed with Waters’ assessment of his agency as being too top-heavy. Those supervisors are needed to cover operations spread among five precincts, 10 patrol zones and 432 square miles, Garrison said. He said overseeing non-ranking employees, whose age average is 26, is necessary since they have the ability to take someone’s freedom and use deadly force.
Under Garrison’s tenure, the agency became one of the first in Georgia to obtain national accreditation through CALEA (The Commission on Accreditation for Law Enforcement Agencies) in 1996, which signals it has met numerous internationally recognized professional benchmarks.
Crime remains low in Cherokee compared to other parts of the metro area, but both property and violent crimes are rising.
The county saw only two murders between 2007 and 2010, but rapes quadrupled from three a year to one a month during that time frame and robberies more than doubled from 11 to 26, according to FBI statistics released in October. Burglaries, larcenies and motor vehicle thefts were also up substantially, with the total number of property crimes rising from 1,514 in 2007 to 2,010 in 2010.
Garrison, who chaired the board of the Office of National Drug Control Policy’s Atlanta HIDTA (High Intensity Drug Trafficking Area) in 2010, said one of his priorities will be to keep disrupting the cartels that peddle prescription and illicit drugs in Cherokee and other parts of metro Atlanta.
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