Consolidating Law Enforcement Can Save Money and Boost Service. In Brevard, It’s A Non-Starter

About 200 North Carolina towns and cities rely on county sheriff’s offices to patrol streets and investigate crimes. But Brevard wants to improve its troubled Police Department, not disband it.

The Brevard Police Department’s former downtown headquarters

BREVARD — The first thing Mocksville Town Manager Ken Gamble wants you to know about dissolving the town’s police department — it had nothing to do with “defunding police.”

In fact, far from shrinking the presence of law enforcement, the contract Mocksville signed with the Davie County Sheriff’s Office to take over the department’s duties has led to a 75 percent increase in the number of sworn officers patrolling the town’s streets, said Gamble, a one-time police chief.

It has cut response times, he said, and allowed the town to access the resources of a sophisticated “data-driven” Sheriff’s Office.

And by tapping into the agency’s existing administrative and investigative teams — which city taxpayers were already helping to fund — the agreement saved the town about $1.3 million over the first three years of the contract.

Mocksville — a town of about 6,200 southwest of Winston-Salem — is one of about 200 North Carolina municipalities that rely on counties to provide law enforcement, according to a blog post by Jeff Welty, a professor of public law and government at the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill’s School of Government.

That includes many small towns (Rosman, for example) receiving the same level of service as unincorporated areas at no additional cost, but also several cities as big or bigger than Brevard that pay counties to provide the enhanced law enforcement expected by urban residents.

Any consideration of this model locally is likely to remain purely academic for the foreseeable future.

There has been no official discussion about the city contracting the services of the Transylvania County Sheriff’s Office, said both Brevard leaders and Chase McKelvey, the only county commissioner to respond to an email about the issue.

And Brevard officials pointed to a significant downside that Welty addressed in his post and in follow-up emails: turning law enforcement over to a county means at least some loss of control over what cities often see as a central or even defining mission.

But another reason Mocksville pursued its contract with Davie will probably sound familiar to locals.

Brevard’s Police Department has been plagued by high turnover, low morale and rock-bottom faith in city leadership, while prior to the dissolution of Mocksville’s Department, Gamble said, “there was a lot of dysfunction within the agency.”

That doesn’t mean that a law enforcement contract with the county is right for Brevard, Gamble said. “I want to be very careful not to project on any other community.”

But in Mocksville, “the cost savings have been just so significant,” he said, “and the quality of the service that we're receiving now is phenomenal.”

A Matter of Efficiency

Park in Mocksville, NC (Photo by Discover Davie County)

Probably the biggest reason to enlist the services of a sheriff’s office is stated flatly on a page of Mocksville’s website: 

“The traditional municipal policing model is inefficient.”

With a total police budget of $3.95 million and a population of about 7,900, Brevard’s per capita law enforcement spending is in line with Hendersonville, where the police budget and population are about double Brevard’s (though its crime rate is more than 50 percent higher).

But while Brevard is home to about 22 percent more residents than Mocksville, its law enforcement spending is more than twice the projected cost of the smaller town’s department for fiscal year 2021-22 and more than three times its annual payment to Davie under the current contract.

Another indicator of efficiency, or lack of it:

Brevard’s crime rate was significantly lower that of the state as a whole in 2023, according to the most recent statistics available from the North Carolina State Bureau of Investigation (SBI), but its number of sworn officers per 1,000 residents is considerably higher than the average of departments across the state.

Another inefficiency applies to all cities that operate such departments: Their residents pay county taxes for at least some services they don’t receive.

About 16 percent of Transylvania County’s general fund goes to the Sheriff’s Office, according to a budget presentation at a May Commission meeting.

That spending covers some functions that benefit Brevard as much as the rest of the county: court security, for example, and operating the Transylvania County Detention Center. Deputies also regularly back up city police officers on calls, said both Sheriff Chuck Owenby and Brevard Police Chief Tom Jordan.

But deputies are not assigned to routinely patrol the city or investigate its crimes, and operating two agencies creates the same redundancy locally that existed in Mocksville before the initial contract was signed in 2021, according to the town’s website:

“Both the Davie County Sheriff’s Office and the Mocksville Police Department are expending tax dollars to duplicate management, supervision, investigations, crime scene services and other support functions.”

Making Consolidation Work

When the Mocksville Town Board first approved the contract with Davie, it faced the prospect of raising taxes to cover a decline in sales tax revenue and increased solid waste costs.

Among its policing controversies were an ongoing suit filed by a former officer claiming retaliation (since rejected by a federal court) and an earlier dispute about the department’s use of an adopted stray cat as its social media avatar. Though mostly played for laughs in media reports, it revealed serious rifts between the agency and Board members.  

The town’s original three-year contract with Davie came at an annual cost of $1.35 million, which climbed to $1.49 million with its five-year renewal in May. 

The agreement mandates response times and robust staffing levels, 3.5 patrol deputies per shift in the city compared to the two patrol officers that were typical of the Police Department.

As part of the original deal, Mocksville turned over patrol vehicles and other equipment to the Sheriff’s Office. City officers were allowed to apply for the expanded number of jobs at the larger agency, Gamble said, and almost all of them secured law-enforcement employment.

Garnering public support for the deal was the hardest part, he said, requiring educational outreach and firm commitment among Town leaders.

“I think probably the biggest hurdle that has to get passed is that political hurdle,” he said.

Also required, he said: close cooperation between municipalities and their county commissions and sheriff’s offices.

Owenby sounded more receptive to the idea than any other official interviewed. State law gives his Office jurisdiction in Brevard and the agency not only provides backup and investigative assistance to the Police Department, but conducts some operations in the city, including traffic enforcement, he said.

Though he is not asking for his office to be the sole provider of law enforcement in the Brevard, he said, “I would take it on. Because here’s the thing. I live in the city so I want my folks to have just as much coverage as the county does.”

But besides McKelvey, who said he is trying to learn more about consolidation, none of the other commissioners or County Manager Jaime Laughter responded to emails asking if they would be willing to consider it.

And though Brevard and Transylvania have recently cooperated on infrastructure and economic development projects, they have also clashed over, for example, the extension of city utilities along soon-to-be widened Wilson Road and support of the multi-use Ecusta Trail.

A law-enforcement agreement between a county and municipality with a history of tension, Gamble said, “is kind of like having a baby when your marriage is going bad. You don’t want to do it.”

It’s a Defining Service. But Is It Effective?

Brevard City Manager Wilson Hooper

The objections Brevard leaders raised to consolidation didn’t focus on the city’s relationship with the county but on a big-picture issue: what it means to be a city.

Mayor Maureen Copelof called law enforcement “a basic, core responsibility of city government” and said she would have “very serious questions” about any plan to turn loose of that duty.

For similar reasons, City Manager Wilson Hooper said he has not explored the idea of a contract with the Sheriff’s Office and has no plans to do so unless directed by Council.

“Cities exist,” he said, “because people who live in denser areas have higher service-level expectations than what a county government can easily provide.”

This can be seen, for example, in Brevard’s robust planning and public works departments, Hooper said, “and I think that’s especially true of law enforcement.”

City residents, he said, expect “quicker response times, more visible presence in the community, more attention to local cases, so that they are processed quicker and more effectively than a sheriff's office, whose service area is so much larger, can do on its own.”

Jordan pointed to public engagement that doesn’t show up in statistics about the size of the force or the crime rate.

Some of the Department’s work in the community is highly visible, he said, such as staffing festivals and other special events. Much of it, including the coordination of crime-watch groups, is less so.

“I'm working with two or three different neighborhoods about establishing community watch programs, and that requires liaison,” he said. “There are a lot of different aspects of the Police Department that aren't necessarily tied to a crime rate.”

But both statistics and comments from residents call into question whether the city receives more effective law enforcement than the rest of the county.

The Brevard Department’s clearance rates — 22 percent of all crimes and 33 percent of violent crimes in 2023 — were both well below the Sheriff’s Office’s rates in those categories, according to SBI, 31 percent and 66 percent respectively.

City resident Carole Deddy, a retired lawyer, said she was left with doubts about the Department after her report of a complex 2023 burglary, which was first referred from the Department to the Sheriff’s Office and later to SBI.

“I've had experience with the Brevard police, and the people I've dealt with are very nice, but they don't have the tools, they don't have the equipment, they don't have the contacts,” she said.

Josh Fisher, a city resident who works as a security manager, has an ongoing dispute with the city about what he says should be a basic function of a community force — staffing the Greenville Highway crossing for his son and other students of Brevard Elementary School.

That issue has been resolved, Hooper said, “We have someone there every day, most days, at 7:30 am,” the time requested by the school’s principal.

But Fisher said the coverage remains spotty and he has launched an online petition calling for the resignation of Jordan and Capt. Dan Godman, whose training certifications were stripped by a state commission after it found evidence of abuse at a Blue Ridge Community College law enforcement training program Godman helped teach.

Godman was also named in two past complaints about harassment or bullying from former female officers. Though an outside human resources firm ruled that the accusations were without merit, these former officers and others described a work environment rife with hostility and intimidation.

Fisher’s concerns extend beyond the “the crossing guard issue,” he said, “I think the professionalism within the police department is just not there.”

And though Council member Lauren Wise supports retaining the Department, the officers he sees are in patrol vehicles, he said; he doesn’t see them talking to residents or walking downtown.

“That’s especially troubling to me,” he said.

Does Brevard Really Want A PD?

Some of the lowest marks the city received from the Department in a 2023 employee satisfaction survey were about Brevard’s commitment to the force.

Only six percent of respondents reported “confidence in the elected leaders of the city,” and 18 percent said these leaders “demonstrate people are important to the organization’s success.”

Rick Harbin, who retired from his post as a lieutenant with the Department last spring, echoed these opinions, saying the Council’s and Manager’s lack of concern for law enforcement is the underlying cause of the agency’s chronically high turnover, which has led to potentially dangerous short staffing of patrol shifts.

The Council spends more time talking about bike trails and the downtown social district than the Police Department, he said.

“They’re not interested in anything anybody has to say,” Harbin said about the concerns of officers. “They’re not interested in what's best for the city as far as the citizens are concerned, or anybody in the Police Department.”

That is absolutely not true, said Council members and high-level staffers, pointing to a long list of actions they have taken to respond to signs of trouble in the agency. Rather than talking about disbanding the Department, they said, their goal is to improve it.

The results of the survey prompted, among other actions, the expansion of training opportunities and the creation of an advisory group to allow officers to share concerns.

The city has been able to refute the charge of missing evidence included in a September letter to Council members from Rick Tullis, president of the Mountain Chapter of the North Carolina Police Benevolent Association.

An ongoing audit of the Department’s evidence room has so far accounted for more than 99 percent of the items documented in case files, Jordan said. That’s well above the industry standard of 95 percent, he said, and none of the missing items are needed to prosecute current cases.

To support his charge that Department leaders had retaliated against officers, Tullis (who did not respond to a request for comment) cited an abrupt change to shift schedules that reduced the number of free weekends for patrol officers.

Jordan previously said that the new schedule’s regular hours were aimed at improving officer well-being, and added last week that the schedule has been modified to give officers more free weekends.

Turnover remains a problem, Hooper and Jordan said. Since September, one officer left to take a job closer to family elsewhere in the state and a detective abruptly resigned. The Department, funded for 25 sworn officers, currently has five vacancies and one temporarily unfilled slot left by an officer on military leave.

But the city has ramped up its hiring efforts and recently recruited three new candidates, Jordan said.

He attributed much of the dissatisfaction among officers to efforts to professionalize the Department by pursuing optional state accreditation, which bolsters standards for practices such as the use of force.

“It’s change,” Jordan said of accreditation, “and you’re going to have people who like things just the way they are.”

Another move towards higher standards, Hooper said, is a planned third-party “assessment” of the agency.

This will include interviews of Department employees and an analysis of policies to identify “strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats to the BPD,” according to a request for qualifications from companies seeking to perform the study.

The city significantly raised officer pay last year and, after seeing the results of the employee survey, promptly moved Police headquarters from the basement of City Hall into a building east of downtown at a cost of $150,000 for renovation and $125,000 for annual lease payments.

The Council’s willingness to spend this money, Wise said, clearly refutes the “unfair” charge that the city doesn’t care about the Department or its employees.

“When officers had an issue with the headquarters, it took us a matter of months to get them relocated,” he said.

Allocating such funds is “unfortunately” the best way for Council members to show officers “how important they are to us . . . to make sure they know they are well-provided for and well taken care of.”

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