Commissioners receive report of sheriff’s office calls for service

Friday, September 14, 2018

In response to a recent request from Bourbon County Commissioners, Bourbon County Sheriff Bill Martin on Tuesday presented data on his department’s calls for service in 2017 and 2018.

Commissioners held a brief discussion with Martin and Undersheriff Ben Cole during a portion of Tuesday’s commission meeting regarding types of incidents the BCSO handles, response times and communication.

Data on the incident sheets provided at the meeting shows 4,306 calls logged through Sept. 4, 2018 and from Jan. 1 through Dec. 31, 2017. In 2017, there were 7,852 calls for service.

The breakdown of calls shows the types of incidents, as well as the “time it sits in the queue while the dispatcher is waiting for a deputy to clear,” Martin told the Tribune.

“Our calls for service had increased, and so with that, I provided a breakdown of calls,” he said.

The data also includes subcategories, examples of which shows whether an accident is listed as “injury” or “injury unknown,” and how they are typed in by dispatchers.

The information also shows “average stacked time,” which indicates “how long it sits in the queue until a deputy is available to take that call,” response times that indicate the elapsed time from when the call goes out until a deputy is on scene, and the average time a deputy spends on scene.

“To get the whole picture of it, you add the stacked time to the response time, and it gives you the total time it took to get someone on scene,” Martin said, referring to the “on scene” times.

There is also a column that shows percentage of total incidents, which indicates the percentage of that type of incident compared to all other incidents on the list.

“I was requesting four more deputies and the reason why is here’s all the calls here, how long it takes and how much time is spent,” Martin said. “When it takes almost 20 minutes to get to an accident scene … and when deputies are pulled from calls, the original call still has to be investigated.”

Martin had also asked for four vehicles and other equipment those deputies would require and $120,000 in overtime.

Commissioners increased the sheriff’s budget by $100,000 from the 2018 figure, but kept the overtime at 2018’s amount of about $34,000.

During an Aug. 28 county commission meeting, Martin said there were more calls for service during the past year, “which generates more reports, which generates more investigation, which generates more overtime to conduct those investigations and stuff.”

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