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Officials Hope Upgraded Retirement Will Help With Summit County Sheriff Department Recruiting Effort

Utah State Capitol
KPCW Radio

The Summit County Sheriff’s Department is having some problems recruiting new officers. Lt. Andrew Wright said they will see if recent legislation will help the situation.

Lt. Andrew Wright said the issue on Capitol Hill deals with the retirement packages for public safety officers. He said it’s a debate that seems to come up every year.

“Back in 2011 they had changed the public safety retirement so that it required new law enforcement officers, public safety officers, to work 25 years and have a 37.5% retirement after that 25 years of service,” Wright explained. “Prior to that it was a 20-year service at 50%. What we have seen and all law enforcement agencies across the state have experienced over the last several years a challenge in recruitment. Because you know when you get paid a fairly low wage to be in law enforcement, to deal with the stress, and sometimes the controversy that surrounds law enforcement and what we do. It's pretty tough to swallow that 25-year retirement and only get that 37.5%.”

A bill was presented that they hope can improve the situation.

“We would have loved to see it come back to the 20 years at 50%, but they were able to get at 25 years and bring it back up to 50%,” Wright continued. “Of course, it effects agencies, effects cities and counties they're going to have to pay more into the system. I've had the opportunity of sitting on Summit County's legislative committee and so I was able to work closely with some of our County councilors Kim Carson and Glenn Wright. We appreciate their support in this and they have said that they feel that this is important.”

Lt. Wright said the bill goes into effect in May, and they’re anxious to see how it impacts recruitment.

“Right now, we're down seven deputies just on our patrol side,” Wright said. “We've been down deputies for over a year now trying to recruit. We're getting low applicant numbers, we’re getting lower quality of applicants. So, we'll see if this is one of those recruitment tools that we can use to try to attract some good quality deputies to come and work in summit county.”

He said they have made some new hires.

“We got three new deputies within the last couple months,” Wright continued. “Two of them are experienced which we were excited about. When you have a young law enforcement team it's nice to have someone that's got some tenure that can come in and help provide a little bit of mentorship to our current deputies. We hired a brand-new deputy who is in the Police Academy he graduates next month. So, we're excited to get him out to work we just hired one in our court services. We've been down in all aspects of our office, different divisions so we got a female deputy that starts with us next Monday on April 1st and then we're always seem to be recruiting for dispatch and in our jail.”

Known for getting all the facts right, as well as his distinctive sign-off, Rick covered Summit County meetings and issues for 35 years on KPCW. He now heads the Friday Film Review team.
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