AIKEN COUNTY, S.C. (WJBF) – An Aiken County, South Carolina native and current police chief of Salley Jarrod Goldman is throwing his hat in the ring for sheriff of Aiken County.
The experienced lawman says that he has a plan that would reduce the number of property crimes in areas he feels are currently under-represented by law enforcement.
“There are some things I would like to see as change personally as a citizen and taxpayer of Aiken County,” Goldman told NewsChannel 6’s Shawn Cabbagestalk.
Chief Goldman feels his knowledge and training and time in law enforcement would help him do that.
His focus, at least initially, would be areas he feels are under-represented by law enforcement. That’s where a resident deputy program will come into play where a member of law enforcement will be regularly be assigned to a specific area.
“They will be there kind of like a Monday-Friday or Tuesday-Saturday however we think it’s going to be best implemented,” Chief Goldman added.
There’s at least one deputy on the road in any given area per shift. If a serious crime happens, under the current structure, authorities would have to leave their assigned locations – leaving those areas unprotected, according to Chief Goldman.
“They will back up our road deputy that’s already there by doing that, we cut down on some of that time and the resident deputies take some of the caseloads off of our investigators so we want to kind of keep property crimes to the resident deputies that way they have that personal connection with the continuants in the area.”
Although he would like to see nine resident deputies on the road, realistically Chief Goldman says five will be on the payroll if he wins, in the beginning, in the rural parts of the county like Beech Island, Monetta, Wagener, Windsor, and Jackson.
The Aiken County native also wants to revamp how narcotics is investigated at the sheriff’s office.
“I would like to bring the county into regions. We have five narcotics investigators, I would say either four or five regions and assign those investigators to a region and when you start seeing numbers coming in for each region then we can hold those investigators accountable,” Chief Goldman shared.
