With a little more than four months under his belt in his new position, Fremont County Sheriff Allen Cooper has made a lot of changes within the office, and he says there are more to come.
When he first took office Jan. 8, he didn’t want to make any drastic changes upfront that would cause undue stress on the staff, but he did make his standards clear, which includes a zero tolerance for lying, cheating or stealing.
“The other thing I hit the staff with is every day you go out and do your work when you contact someone, you treat them like they’re a member of your family – to start with,” he said. “Be as nice as you can, but the only time that we should need to use force is because of that individual’s actions, that’s the last option that we’re left with.”
In the last four months, the sheriff has formalized testing for patrol deputies, which now requires a written exam, physical assessment, an oral board and a staff review. He’s also looking at a commercial competitive test designed specifically for prospective detention officers. The administrative office now is open during the lunch hour and staff is able to register sex offenders and do VIN inspections so that citizens are not having to wait on deputies, and deputies won’t have to leave the field.
Staffing always has been an issue for the FCSO, with deputies typically moving to other jurisdictions for higher pay, but things are getting better, Cooper said.
As of Friday, the office is operating at 87 percent on the detention side and 80 percent on the patrol side. Cooper recently swore in six detention deputies, but he since has had three others leave.
“We are better than we were, there is light on the horizon, but we are still not at 100 percent,” he said.
With a cap of 18 patrol deputies, there are 15 sergeants, corporals and deputies that patrol the county for law enforcement, which is fewer than neighboring jurisdictions, he said.
“At any given time this county is being policed by four deputies, that’s if nobody’s sick, nobody’s training, nobody’s on vacation,” he said. “Occasionally, we are going to have myself, the patrol commander and the undersheriff out; we’ve been regularly trying to hit the west end and make a big loop through the Howard, Coaldade, Cotopaxi area.”
The Fremont County Board of Commissioners is working with Cooper on the salary issues, he said.
“The reality is there is a lot of work that this office needs to do to to make sure that our job descriptions actually reflect the work that we do, that they are in modern language, and that they have all of the components that you are used to seeing in a professional job description,” he said. “The administrative staff here is looking at every job description within the office. We have people in the office still, that are doing things their job description doesn’t even remotely cover.”
Patrol Captain Jeremy Green also currently is working on a staffing study to determine how many deputies are required to police the county properly.
Vertical communication within the office is improving, Cooper said.
He meets with his command staff and supervisors collectively every week so he can stay abreast on what’s happening throughout the office and to find out from them what they feel is working and what needs improvement.
Cooper and his staff continue to look at active homicide cases, and some of the things he plans to look at include creating a path for advancement within the office, increasing the level of security in the jail, a way to have 24/7 medical representation, increasing the number of deputies and staff who have crisis intervention training, increasing the jail-based treatment program, and establishing formal processes within all areas of the FCSO.
Officials in the next couple of weeks will be testing qualified candidates for the marijuana code enforcement position, and by the end of the year, Cooper hopes to have a west end patrol.
“I am trying to hire people specifically for that post,” he said. “I’m looking for people with prior experience in rural law enforcement.”
Looking ahead, Cooper said he will be asking to extend the sheriff’s 1-cent sales tax that voters approved in 2013, which is slated to sunset in 2023.
More capacity needs to be made for the female inmate population which continually is maxed out at 32.
“This facility was not designed to have 30 female inmates,” he said. “I consistently have 30 or more. I am running out of housing space for females.”
At some point, he said, a third type of housing will be needed for transgender inmates, so as to avoid federal lawsuits.
“That’s going to have to require some construction,” he said. “It doesn’t have to happen next year – there is no way that it can – but it is on the horizon for the future.”
For now, Cooper said he relies on his staff to “keep him in check.”
“I told them you gotta know when to tell me no, and you gotta know when I make a mistake, and you gotta tell me when I’m screwing up because I didn’t come into this job knowing 100 percent,” he said.
New sheriff’s deputies listen to Sheriff Allen Cooper during a pinning ceremony Friday at the Garden Park Building. Those who recently graduated from the pre-service class, and those who have been on post for the last two months, include Brandi Camp, Ariel Belfiore, Derek Stansky, Nicholas Krug, Michael Villagrana, Krystal Griswold, Michelle Direks, Brandon Day, Timothy Fisher, Brandi Orton and Vernon Veer, Jr. Photo courtesy Lenny Saint/FCSO