A hike in starting pay for Dauphin County Sheriff Deputies has led to a surge in new hires, allowing the department to transition from a skeleton crew to a full complement able to execute its duties.
In July, Dauphin County 25 of 53 sheriff deputy positions were vacant. Since then, the department has brought on 16 new deputies, the greatest surge in recent years, according to Dauphin County Sheriff Nick Chimienti.
That came after a Feb. 9 vote in which Dauphin County Commissioners approved raising deputies’ starting pay from $16.89 an hour to $24.39.
The Dauphin County Sheriff’s Department’s responsibilities include issuing licenses to carry firearms; prisoner transportation; courthouse security; serving protection-from-abuse Orders, warrants and eviction notices.
Chimienti said serving warrants and PFA orders is especially dangerous because it involves going to a person’s home and either arresting them, or taking their guns. These tasks have dramatically increased over the years, and the low pay for doing that dangerous job, Chimienti said, caused morale to bottom out in the last few years.
Unspent money that was reserved for vacancies in the sheriff’s office was spent to increase the starting wage of new hires for 2023, according to Jennifer Fitch, Dauphin County Spokesperson.
Dauphin County is slated to spend $3.1 million total on wages and salaries within the Sheriff’s Office, according to the 2024 budget proposal. That’s a $422,857 increase from the 2023 budget, Fitch...
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