The Teeny-weenie Tennessee town of Linden didn’t budget enough money for the Sheriff’s Dept, & he told them so.
The Sheriff’s Office just ran out of dough.
The County Comission voted against additional funds.
So the Sheriff is laying off Deputies, & preparing to close the jail.
Given the obdurate stupidity of small-town Tennessee government (I speak from experience), it is quite possible the Sheriff will actually have to close his doors.
Can anybody teach me how to talk like a gangster? It could become a “job skill”…
Yeah I live close to Linden. Doesn’t suprise me a bit. In my town about a year ago the police chief got elected sheriff of the county. He was the town’s only cop. He went on to take the sheriff job and the town didn’t replace the cop. We didn’t have a cop for almost a year. Nobody ever noticed or at least never said anything about it. Now they’ve hired the 20 yo son of the sheriff to be cop. Never been to the academy and gave him a badge and gun. Hey his dad is sheriff that’s more qualified than anybody else. :smack:
The whole thing is amazing, but it looks to me like it’s the Sheriff that’s to blame. He was givin a $704k budget, and from day one said “this won’t cover it”. Which means that he knew he had to cut at the beginning, and refused to, so now they’ll have to close it down.
This is not unique to small counties in Tennessee. Right here in my own county, we have small towns that are going broke and have contracted out their police services to the town next door or the county police. We also have some counties in northern Missouri that are so broke the sheriff’s department consists only of the sheriff (they can’t eliminate that - it’s an elected office) and a broken down patrol car. They just hope that the state highway patrol will help if anything gets out of hand.
Do you really think a rural county of 7,000 people can just come up with an additional $11 per head out of nowhere? I agree with Bill H. he should have started cutting months ago.