Sheriff Vigil: manpower shortage a crisis

Starting last month, the Dona Ana County Sheriff’s Office has been forced to cut services. Due to a lack of funding, Sheriff Kiki Vigil says they haven’t been able to pay their deputies high enough salaries. Therefore, he says, they’ve been losing deputies to departments outside the county, which has left them severely understaffed.

ABC-7 obtained a memo detailing services deputies are no longer responding to.
Unless there is an imminent threat, deputies will not respond to warrants at local courts or the detention center, calls on an interstate, welfare checks for children youth and families or any medical calls. The Sheriffs Office will also respond with a minimum of two deputies for all calls involving any type of criminal violence.

“Before we’ve been able to get to those calls within five to 10 minutes. Now it may be hours and in some unfortunate incidents it may take days,” Captain Greg Garland with the Dona Ana County Sheriff’s Office said.

Garland says the Sheriff’s Office is now forced to have lower response times for some incidents because they’re severely understaffed.

“We cannot compete with the city of Las Cruces with their salaries,” Sheriff Kiki Vigil said.

Vigil says they don’t have enough funds to pay their deputies higher wages. They’re now short staffed and in return, have to cut services.

“We’re having to prioritize because we’re really spread out thin,” Vigil said.

“He was fully funded and that’s really important. He’s got the funds, he’s got the resources,” Commissioner Billy Garret said.

While Garret says the Sheriff’s Office has enough funding, Commissioner Benjamin Rawson disagrees.

“We dedicated $4 million to go to the sheriff’s office and that has not happened in this budget,” Rawson said. “I know the chairman and I disagree on that and we will continue to disagree on that because the numbers are simply not there.”

The Sheriffs Office tells ABC-7 they have about 130 deputies on staff but they’re authorized to have 163.