Montezuma County Sheriff Steve Nowlin is asking the county commissioners for a $280,000 budget increase, citing increasing crime and a heavier load on his staff.
The commissioners have asked all departments to slash their spending by roughly 10 percent because of an anticipated reduction in revenues from the county’s largest taxpayer, Kinder Morgan. Nowlin said the volume of calls to the sheriff’s office has increased over the past year or so to an average of around 1,000 a month. Nowlin said there are generally just two or three deputies on duty at any given time to cover 2,000 square miles of terrain and ideally there would be double that number. He reminded the board that in August, one deputy had to fight for his life for more than 10 minutes with a suspect trying to take his gun because backup took so long to arrive. Nowlin said the sheriff’s office is becoming more of a reactionary force rather than working to prevent crimes and that doesn’t sit well with him. In addition, the detention center is housing more than a hundred inmates compared to an average of 72 a year ago. Nowlin’s proposed budget would total approximately $4.75 million. The commissioners said they would take his request under consideration
