How bad is understaffing at Bibb County Sheriff’s Office, and how do officials combat it?

The last time the Bibb County Sheriff’s Office was fully staffed was about 15 years ago.

“We had a little celebration for it,” said Sheriff David Davis.

Today, the office has a staff of around 700 people, said Davis, and the Bibb County public safety budget indicates nearly every department in the sheriff’s office is understaffed or overworked.

The fiscal year 2025 public safety budget report, which outlines the sheriff’s office’s budget highlights, performance measures, goals for 2025, and the office’s accomplishments in 2024, shows the extent of the office’s staff shortfall. Different departments and units contributed to the report with details on staff members they hired or lost, the technology they obtained, arrests they made and more.

The budget went into effect Monday. Of the $58 million allotted to the sheriff’s office, 66% is given to personnel for benefits and salaries. Davis said the office added 30 to 35 more staffers compared to last year.

“So many years we were just treading water, every time we’d lose somebody we’d hire somebody,” Davis said. “This year we’re keeping ahead of the curve.”

But 35 isn’t enough.

The office of professional standards wrote that it has six vacancies, the violent crimes unit wrote that it would like to hire two more investigators, and Davis said the amount of patrol cars on duty is less than he’d like.

Additionally, both the violent crimes and property crime units wrote that they were overworked.

“ The property unit would like to add more investigators to bring the unit up to full staff … We would also like our investigator’s caseload to be brought down to a more manageable level per investigator,” read page 233 of the budget report.

Understaffing makes job ‘more dangerous’

To meet its manpower needs in 2024, the sheriff’s office hired part-time officers from other agencies. Fire department staff worked as bailiffs to help with courthouse security, and the corrections department hired more than 100 part-time deputies to “support squads with limited manpower,” according to the 2025 budget report.

Dean Dabney, a criminal justice and criminology professor at Georgia State University, said understaffing plays an important role in performance and culture.

“It has all sorts of problems, from morals to response times to everything,” Dabney said. “If you don’t have enough people to do the job, it gets more dangerous for the people that are doing the job and they burn out, they just can’t keep up.”

While the budget report indicates hard-to-manage work levels, the office managed to solve 68% of homicides in 2023, 50% of violent crime over the last five years, and 42% of property crime over the last five years, all of which are above the 2022 national average , according to the BCSO.

But Davis said police response times are still a weak spot for the sheriff’s office. While the responses to violent crimes are quick, Davis said, a lower-priority incident like a stolen lawn mower or a car break-in may take an hour or two to respond to until an officer is available to take a report on it.

Davis says the office is improving compared to last year, but no agency is perfect.

“I’m always gonna say we’re about 100 people short,” said Davis.