Trenton Police Department Takes The Heat At City Meeting

By LYDIA BERGLAR
News Editor

Thanks to a citizen’s inquiries, the Sept. 9 meeting of the City of Trenton Board of Commissioners focused heavily on whether or not the Trenton Police Department is fulfilling its duties adequately to the point of needing two new officers. Late in the meeting, Mike Norris (police commissioner) stated that he encourages officers who are tired on night shift to take naps at city hall.

Kicking off the meeting, Alex Case (mayor) returned to last month’s discussion of replacing the flooring in the commission room and small meeting room using Special Purpose Local Option Sales Tax (SPLOST). The total bid from Walker Interiors is $7,064.80.

However, Norris said he would like to hold off on the flooring until next year’s budget is set. Case and Monda Wooten (street commissioner) explained that SPLOST funds are not impacted by the FY25 budget.

Norris said, “I know we’re low on SPLOST money already, and we don’t know how much we’re going to have to spend from the upcoming SPLOST money.” Case responded, “The SPLOST budget’s already set. It’s been set for the next six years…We gave this to you last month, and you had no discussion with me or anyone about this until tonight.”

In the end, Norris said the expenditure is fine, adding, “I know I got several concerned taxpayers about the millage rate…Our fixed income citizens, they’re kinda hurting right now.” Case responded, “If people’s got it frozen in their current exemptions, Mike, their taxes don’t change.”

While the carpet in the meeting room is stained and unattractive, nice-looking flooring is hardly essential to the city’s core responsibilities. However, Norris did not use this as his argument.

A homeowner in the city, Cody Doyle, had requested to be on the agenda to offer public input on the FY25 budget, so he then spoke. He acknowledged the rising costs that the city faces and asked Norris about the two new police officer positions mentioned at last month’s meeting.

Doyle asked what the estimated cost (salaries and equipment) for both officers is. Norris said it will cost about $100,000 the first year for two officers and two sets of equipment, but that doesn’t include two patrol cars. He said the department has one spare car and new cars are purchased through SPLOST for roughly $63,000 (complete with equipment), but Case corrected him that it was about $88,000.

Doyle asked for data showing how much traffic in the city has increased, since Norris cited this as a reason for needing more officers. Norris said, “We don’t have a traffic counter to actually go out and count like I’d like to, but our school system’s got a lot more traffic in it, all the buildings. The lineman center is growing constantly.”

Doyle asked if the Trenton PD officers have been busy handling traffic and pulling cars over. Norris said yes.

Doyle asked if call volume has increased enough to justify two new positions. Norris did not answer that question but said the department only has one officer on duty for night and weekend shifts.

Doyle then said he found traffic data on GDOT’s website that is accessible to anyone. The data shows that, overall, traffic has not greatly increased in Trenton. The Sentinel looked up the same data and found the following Annual Average Daily Traffic (AADT) reports (available at https://gdottrafficdata.drakewell.com/publicmultinodemap.asp):

GA-136 in front of Guthrie’s

• 2018 – 17,300
• 2023 – 14,600

Highway 11 in front of Ingles

• 2018 – 11,400
• 2023 – 11,500

Highway 11 between Jenkins Park and flea market

• 2018 – 12,800
• 2023 – 11,700

GA-136 in front of Mapco

• 2018 – 12,800
• 2023 – 12,800

Doyle said he gathered data about officers and calls through an open records request. “I’m not here to discredit officers. I’m just here purely to look at spending this money and the budget.”

He said that over the last four years, one officer completed more traffic stops than the rest of the officers combined. “You’ve got one employee that seems to be doing their job while the rest of them don’t seem to be getting out and actually patrolling. I do understand that some of these are on night shift, so they probably have lower numbers from that.”

The Sentinel also submitted an open records request to see this data and found that from 2021-Aug. 22, 2024, one officer completed 1,858 total traffic stops. The next highest number was 541 stops by an officer who worked part time in 2021 and 2022 before becoming full time in 2023. The third highest was 334 total stops, and this officer was employed full time every year. One officer (also employed full time every year) only completed 103 traffic stops total.

Doyle said, “How can we trust that this $188,000 investment going to public safety is going to be used correctly when it doesn’t seem like the employees we have are doing what they’re supposed to be doing?”

Next, he presented data about call volume, which the Sentinel also looked into. Of non-officer-

initiated incidents (i.e. excluding traffic stops and patrol checks and only looking at calls made to 911), Trenton PD has an annual average of 2,670 calls (2021-2023) and a daily average of only 7.3 calls.

Wooten responded to Doyle and the commission, explaining that aside from a major emergency, she will not vote for any increased expenditures until the animal control problem is addressed. “I have great respect for our officers, but I’m not going to vote for anything like that until we focus on this animal problem we have here…Our street department could use a lot of things. Those guys get hurt all the time…They work hard every day. There’s a lot of things they could use to make their job easier, but they know how I feel about this: We have got to focus on this animal problem.”

Case agreed with Wooten that animal control is a public health issue and said the budget has allocations for the animal control facility.

Wooten and Doyle repeated that they are for public safety and support our officers. Doyle said, “I do love public safety, and I think we have a good police department, but we can do better.” Norris said he appreciates Doyle’s research because he had not seen these figures.

The board then approved the 2023 financial audit amendment and discussed the 2025 budget schedule and millage rate hearings. Norris and Wooten had not discussed their departments’ budgets with Case, but Terry Powell (parks and animal control commissioner) and Lucretia Houts (fire and utility commissioner) had. The commissioners were confused by the procedures and seemed unaware that the public millage rate hearings had already been advertised.

Case explained the proposed millage rate (see the accompanying article in this issue of the Sentinel) and asked for input from commissioners. Only Wooten volunteered a response, saying, “I’m always for taking the growth…If we don’t take the growth and we don’t try to keep up with things, we wind up or somebody else is sitting in this chair ten years from now and they wind up where we were at with our sewer department: outdated and behind.”

The other three had to be asked directly what they thought. Each said they want to accept the growth.

Case asked the commissioners if they wanted to hold a public workshop session to discuss the budget. Houts and Powell did not see a need for one, noting that they had no plans to change anything. Norris wanted to hold a workshop session. At first, Wooten wanted to as well, but she eventually admitted, “I have failed in this situation. I should have already met with our mayor, and I haven’t…I just want to go over [my department’s budget] with him.”

In the end, the board decided to hold a budget workshop on Sept. 24 at 6 p.m.

Norris read the police report. In August, Trenton PD answered 228 calls for service, conducted 1,777 business checks, responded to four animal complaint calls, five domestic disturbance calls, five trespassing calls, 14 suspicious person/activity calls, and worked 16 traffic crashes. From 83 traffic stops, 59 citations were issued.

Houts reported that the Trenton Fire Department answered 114 calls in August, seven of which were fire related and 57 of which were canceled en route.

Readers may recall that at last month’s meeting, citizen John Huffman requested monthly reports and online information about animals that are currently housed in the city pound. During the animal control report by Powell, no mention of animals in the pound was made, nor is the information available on the city’s website.

During Citizens Participation, the Sentinel asked the commissioners (particularly Norris, Houts, and Powell) if Doyle’s presentation influenced their thoughts on whether or not Trenton PD needs two new officers. When none of the commissioners responded, Case offered, “I’ll say my side. When Mike and Steve [Beaudoin (police chief)] had talked to me about it, I just didn’t see it happening, but they can make the request.”

Wooten furthered, “I don’t look at how many tickets our officers write. I’ll be honest with you, I don’t want our officers out here badgering and pestering people.” Case said, “Well, if they’re breaking the law, they’re breaking the law.” Wooten explained that she is in favor of officers giving warnings when possible, to which Case noted that the data shows that officers give warnings often.

Doyle reiterated that he does not want to criticize officers, however, “I see some officers sitting in places they shouldn’t be sitting, and it makes me think, ‘What are they doing?’ And that’s the whole reason I started digging into this stuff. They’re hiding behind funeral homes, sleeping, taking naps next to the American Legion, not doing their jobs.”

Norris responded, “For sleeping, I don’t like that. As a matter of fact, they’ve been told that if they get sleepy, especially at night, I’ve asked them to come in and lay their head on the desk for 15-20 minutes. A 12-hour shift at night’s hard to do.”

Doyle noted that he has a version of the data showing the names of each officer, in case the commissioners would like to see it.

Case said, “They work 12 hours; they got 12 hours to rest. I don’t let my dispatchers sleep…I’ve sent people home and fired them for that.” Wooten added, “I don’t tell Timmy to pull over in the bulldozer and sleep.”

Switching topics, Jerry Kyzer (Trenton fire chief) noted that cars parked on John Street are blocking the street. Case said, “We have got to look back on our street parking ordinance.” He said linemen staying in apartments on John Street are parking on the street. “They’re permanently parking three of four trucks on the southbound lane all night long and all weekend long.”

Case plans to look into this and return to the topic at the Oct. meeting.

Kyzer also requested that a Trenton PD officer patrol Sunset Drive in the early morning hours to address speeders and drivers not stopping at the stop sign on Church Street. Norris made no comment, but nearly everyone in the room noted that they’ve witnessed the issue on Sunset Drive.