Asheville – According to the staff report, “The Buncombe County Sheriff’s Office received a letter from one of the Downtown Business Districts’ business owners. In the correspondence, the writer cited problems and concerns expressed by owners, managers, and employees who are experiencing problems due to the homeless population in the Downtown Business District. The Sheriff’s Office held several meetings with the district’s owners, managers, and employees. The problems experienced include assaults, robberies, break-ins, damage to property, disorderly conduct, and more. The Sheriff’s Office agrees with the concerned parties. The environment created by some of the homeless individuals frequenting the business district is unacceptable.”
Sheriff Quentin Miller came before the commissioners to request permission to provide deputy staffing downtown. Specifically, he wanted to add four patrol officers and one Real Time Intelligence Center officer to monitor security camera footage between the hours of 10 p.m. and 2 a.m. on Fridays and Saturdays. This would cost $88,000 for half a year, but Miller was hoping the city would help with funding. The city could, after all, keep its word to defund the police and fund sheriff’s deputies instead. The proposed partnership would cost the county only $56,000 to pay overtime deputies $75/hour and cover incidentals. An example Miller provided of an incidental was a deputy involved in an arrest having to work overtime on his overtime shift. The program would be funded with surpluses from the School Resource Officer program.
Miller said he had been “in conversations” with APD’s Interim Police Chief Mike Lamb over the past few weeks, and he was confident that the partnership was going to be workable. He asked that the downtown businesspeople be patient while details are finalized. They had to make sure participating officers were willing and available to work overtime on the selected shifts, for one thing. Miller explained the program was not intended to detract from anything sheriff’s deputies were doing elsewhere in the county, and it would not supplant any of the roles and responsibilities of patrol officers in the Asheville Police Department. The request had been downgraded from the $186,000 proposal made public on December 5.
“We’re simply saying that we want to go downtown to show presence because we know that staffing at the city has been challenging for them and we want to support them, and again, this is our way of supporting the city. It’s not us trying to take over the city, and so again, I want to make sure we’re clear that once the staffing levels have risen to acceptable numbers, the plan is not for us to continue downtown. If we can leave, we will leave, but again, our whole goal and focus is to ensure the safety of people who are visiting downtown, the businesses as well as the workers,” said Miller.
Typically, the sheriff’s department handles calls for service in the unincorporated parts of the county, but it is authorized to help incorporated areas as needed. The proposed program was billed as a continuation of the department’s 60-day initiative to support public safety downtown, which launched last April. The county has a separate, integrative program, handled by the new Co-Responder Unit. Co-Responders work in teams with a community paramedic, a clinician, and a deputy to connect people living on the street to government services. Miller said his intention is to grow both programs so the first can “hand off” people to the second.
Miller said he wanted to sincerely thank the commissioners for their support. This was in light of public sentiment condemning what have been called “roundups” of homeless people. Users of the term frame the law enforcement actions as colonialist muscle flexes to further dispossess the down and out. Several adherents to this view participated in Defund the Police activism that precipitated mass demoralization and attrition at the police department. The downtown merchants who complained to Miller, however, see “roundups” as protections for clientele and employees against actual threats to persons and property. Miller said the deputies would not only deter crime by their presence, but if a crime were committed, they could respond rapidly, not only to protect victims but to “meet the offenders where they are” and deliver behavioral health services to keep them out of jail.
Miller added that he would like some flexibility in the program. He said he had data indicating officers were needed most during the hours selected, but downtown merchants might have a different perspective. Law enforcement officers are used to deterring crime in one hotspot only to have it resurface in another.