CHARLES TOWN, W.Va. — Jefferson County Sheriff Pete Dougherty is concerned about a reduction in the number of West Virginia State Police Troopers assigned to Jefferson County.
He said there were once as many as 15 troopers stationed there, but as of Jan. 1 only five remained.
Dougherty says the reduction will have a detrimental impact to his staff.
“State Police will not be doing any midnight work,” he told MetroNews affiliate WEPM in Martinsburg. “They will leave in the evening and won’t be back until morning, which means we are just taking our staff and spreading it a little bit thinner.”
Dougherty said there are 600 troopers serving West Virginia’s 55 counties, but if the same ratio of troopers that exists in Jefferson County were applied to the rest of the state, that number would be reduced to just 150.
Dougherty plans to speak with Jeff Sandy, West Virginia’s new secretary of the Department of Military Affairs and Public Safety about the issue in Charleston later this month.
“[Sandy] is a former federal law enforcement officer and a former sheriff in Wood County,” Dougherty said. “I’m going to have a chance to talk to him about the deployment of state troopers.”