HERNANDO COUNTY, Fla. — As more people move to Florida, there's a greater need for more first responders. In Hernando County, the sheriff's office is down dozens of deputies.
The Hernando County Sheriff's Office covers just under 500 square miles.
10 Tampa Bay's Malique Rankin spoke with Hernando County Sheriff Al Nienhuis on the difficulty the short-staffing creates for the sheriff's office in answering every call.
How does the sheriff's office determine how many deputies are needed?
"There is no 100% formula that works in every situation," Nienhuis explained. "But you can use a ratio of the number of law enforcement personnel for every 1,000 people in the population."
Nienhuis explained areas with high tourism, popular sports teams and other factors play a role in determining an appropriate number of law enforcement officers.
"But when you look at the Hernando County Sheriff's Office and compare it to the statewide average, which takes every law enforcement agency into account, we are significantly lower than the vast majority of those," Nienhuis said.
How many deputies does Hernando County need?
"We have about 1.3 deputies per 1,000 people," Nienhuis said. "Currently, the average statewide is about two and a half deputies or police officers, depending on the jurisdiction per 1000 people.
"So because we have 200,000 people in the county, we could actually add about 200 deputies, and still, be about average."
Nienhuis said the county's need for more deputies is directly related to the area's population growth.
"We're able to hold our own because we have good people but we're getting to the point where our focus has got to be on adding those additional deputies to do things that the public wants, like additional traffic enforcement, additional narcotics investigations, and of course when they're not busy doing proactive patrol, trying to deter some of that crime and make people feel safer," Nienhuis said.
What happens when you just don't have enough law enforcement officers?
"Response times are directly related to the number of people that you have working, along with the size of the jurisdiction and the county," Nienhuis said. "Of course, more and more people are moving into some of those more rural areas, which has a big concern with response time."
The sheriff also credits the good behavior in the public for deputies not having to feel overworked.
"Having very high standards, having good people who do a good job and treat the public is important," Nienhuis said. "But sometimes, you just need more people and when you increase the population, that is certainly the time that you need to have more people."
How much does it cost to hire a new deputy?
"We don't plan on adding 200 in the near future because we couldn't train 200 people," Nienhuis said. "When you talk about equipping a deputy in the first year salary, you're probably talking about $125,000, maybe a little bit less than that the first year.
"So if we were to add 10 deputies, [it would be] well over a million dollars just in that first year."
How many additional deputies will the sheriff's office budget for next year?
"Our budget isn't due until June 1," Nienhuis said. "We're working through that we try to push the budget process down as far as we can possibly for it to go to in educating those individuals in the agency about how the budget process works.
"But rest assured, we're definitely going to be adding deputies, and maybe even some of the support staff because obviously, as population increases, the jail increases and the need for detention deputies increase as crimes increase."
He also said that forensics technicians, call takers and the county's 911 center are also needed.
"We're going to do our very best to present what we absolutely have to have for the coming year and a half," Nienhuis said. "We're going to try and do it at the very best cost that we can possibly get for our taxpayers."
How does Hernando County stay competitive in pay with neighboring counties?
"That's always a challenge because some of the counties to our south have a much larger tax base, and the police departments and the sheriff's offices can often pay more money," Nienhuis said. "Although we're relatively competitive, we might be a little bit below those, but I think we make up for that in our standard of living."
The sheriff also said that the county provides a good quality of life, which allows them to remain competitive in hopefully bringing in new deputies to persuade them living in the area.
"We tend to do very well when it comes to attracting good people and once we get them here, we don't have tremendous turnover," Nienhuis said. We can't take our eye off the ball because if those counties and city police departments get too far ahead of us in salary, of course, it's hard to catch up."
What is the sheriff's office's plan for hiring more deputies?
"We have to prioritize," Nienhuis said. "Sometimes you just need people and that's going to be our priority for the next several years."
"But we're also going to do it incrementally because we certainly don't want to lower our standards. I think some of the law enforcement agencies throughout the country that you see have issues with community relations, I think a lot of that has to do with them being in a hurry to hire a lot of people and in the process, lowering your standards."
Nienhuis said he wants to remind the people of Hernando County that he is going to do his best to not only bring in more deputies, but to also hire those who will care about the local community.
To learn more about the job opportunities available at the Hernando County Sheriff's Office, click here.
Malique Rankin is a general assignment reporter with 10 Tampa Bay. You can email her story ideas at mrankin@10tampabay.com and follow her Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram pages.