Jax Daily

The Sheriff’s office is floating a proposal to add 40 additional police officers using some excess jail funds.  According to the Times-Union’s story from this morning, the expansion will represent the first time we’ve added officers to the force in almost a decade…

Jacksonville officials announced plans Monday to hire 40 new police officers, the first expansion of the force in nearly a decade.

The city is using unspent jail funds to pay for new additions through the end of the city’s fiscal year, Sept. 30. But with the city facing a 10 percent drop in anticipated property tax revenue and warning of potentially dire budget cuts, no one is certain where the funding will come from after that.

Operation Safe Streets and the other recent attempts to increase police presence have relied on either overtime hours for existing officers, or have involved reassignment of officers to street duty.  It seems that no new officer positions were actually created during this time. 

But here’s a question I’ve heard many people ask today.  If the Sheriff’s office hasn’t hired new officers in 9 years, why has the department’s budget exploded by millions upon millions of dollars over that same period?

I truthfully don’t know what the answer is.