Jamestown City Council Public Safety Committee meeting (January 6, 2025)
Jamestown City Council Public Safety Chair urges council to approve hiring police officers this month.
City Council has a resolution on their desk to hire five police officers.
Council member at large Jeff Russell said that Police Chief Tim Jackson‘s goal is to have the officers hired by the end of February and in training, “If that doesn’t happen, then he would run the risk of losing those potential candidates to other agencies and it make things much more difficult for him.”
Russell said the concern is that the officers would still be in the Police Academy if hired right now, “So, we would have to begin to pay those five officers and if those officers got hurt during training then it could potentially become a 207C issue. We’ve done this in the past with other officers who were hired while they were in the Academy.”
Russell added that, in his opinion, the numbers the department is operating under right now is “unsafe,” and, thus, the hiring is needed as soon as possible.
If all hired, this would bring the number of officers in the Police department back up to 62.
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