Pulaski County Sheriff Jeff Richwine continued pleading his case for higher wages last week. “Our people are the lowest paid in every category with dispatch, jail, and the deputies, except the jail staff and our dispatchers make more than Cass County,” Richwine told the county council. “The deputies are at the bottom. The dispatch and the jailers are next to the bottom.”
He showed council members a series of videos, including deputies helping to perform CPR on an overdose victim and jail staff responding to a number of disruptive inmates. Richwine said the jail remains understaffed, and a number of the inmates are individuals dealing with mental illness who don’t necessarily belong in jail.
“If you’re not aware, there’s a crisis in this country with mentally-ill people, and they wind up in jail,” he said. “It’s a shame that they’re there. It’s not the judges’ fault. It’s not our fault. It’s not anybody’s fault, other than, I think, state government and the federal government, whoever shut all these mental hospitals down.”
But he said the hardest employees to find are dispatchers, who are essential not only for police to do their jobs, but also firefighters and EMS.
Richwine didn’t have a specific request for pay increases but said he would have one eventually. “You know, you give the medical people a raise. I’m not going to just stand by the sidelines and not be up here asking, too, because I think my people deserve it just as much,” he said.
The sheriff acknowledged that some of his employees have left for jobs closer to home, but others have left for more money.
