Small villages have been relying on the St. Clair County Sheriff’s Department to respond to calls from their citizens about crimes the past two years because they don’t always have officers available, according to county officials.
Now, St. Clair County has drafted a budget for 2025 that includes a possible solution to the public safety issue affecting thousands of people along the eastern edge of the county from Marissa to Summerfield.
County Board Chairman Mark Kern said the 2025 budget proposal sets aside $300,000 for a pilot program to offer money to the towns to help them hire an officer.
Deputies have responded to a total of 223 calls outside of their jurisdiction from 2023 to the end of October this year, according to data the sheriff’s department provided in response to a public records request.
The communities requesting assistance include:
- Marissa, population 1,833: 79 calls
- Fayetteville, population 302: 50 calls
- Lenzburg, population 468: 50 calls
- Summerfield, population 347: 36 calls
- St. Libory, population 628: 8 calls
Marissa, Fayetteville, Summerfield and St. Libory officials didn’t respond to requests for comment. Lenzburg officials declined to comment.
County Board member Ed Cockrell represents District 20, which includes four of the five affected communities, Summerfield being the exception. He said Fayetteville, Lenzburg and St. Libory effectively do not have police departments right now because they have no officers, and Marissa is struggling to hire and retain people.
St. Clair County Sheriff Rick Watson called the $300,000 a good gesture, but he’s skeptical of the plan.
He said the county’s money would be better spent on the sheriff’s department because he thinks it has more stability and less challenges than a small town department, which might struggle to attract applicants and keep up with state training mandates.
“Smaller departments can’t afford to send them to training because they need them on the road,” Watson said. “They can’t afford to pay them. There are so many jobs open, they don’t want to work in a small town.”
Kern said the pilot program would help towns offer a larger salary, and participating towns could decide to band together to share an officer who covers multiple communities.
“You have to pay a fair wage to be able to get the quality of service that we’re going to be expecting in the county, so that’s why if the County Board can come forth and help a community to pay more for their officers, I think it would be a good way to go,” Kern said. “$300,000 isn’t a mountain of funds, but we think it can start the process.”
Kern said the county did not have to cut $300,000 in spending elsewhere in the budget in order to fund the policing pilot program.
“We’re pretty austere budgeters,” he said. “We watch our pennies and so when there’s a program that comes up that we think is worthwhile, then we have dollars to fund that.”
In exchange for participating in the pilot program, the county would ask the towns to help the sheriff patrol the outer county, according to Kern.
Watson has proposed a different solution to County Board members: that the small towns sign a contract with the county to reimburse the sheriff’s department for the time deputies respond to calls outside of their jurisdiction.
Cockrell said he still has some questions about both proposals, and the villages likely will, too.
“Any offer of help is certainly welcome,” Cockrell said. “It may not be an offer that’s affordable, but at least they can look at it. I commend anybody that wants to help these small towns.”
Data shows the villages have been unable to respond to more calls over time.
In 2023, deputies helped with 71 calls, but the sheriff’s department could go long stretches without responding to a dispatch outside of their jurisdiction. After a single call from Fayetteville in February 2023, the department did not respond to another request until August, six months later.
In the first 10 months of 2024, the number of out-of-jurisdiction calls the county has taken increased to 152. They respond to calls every month now.
February 2024 was the sheriff’s department’s busiest month yet for out-of-jurisdiction calls. They accounted for 2% of the sheriff’s total call load that month — 22 out of 1,003.
Four out-of-jurisdiction calls came in on Feb. 7, the most in a single day. First, deputies responded to a Lenzburg call at 12:17 a.m. Then two calls came from Marissa at 10:20 a.m. and 10:50 a.m. The final out-of-jurisdiction call took them to Fayetteville at 11:02 p.m.
The call data from the sheriff’s department did not include details about the crimes reported. Watson said deputies generally respond to calls about crimes in progress or when a suspect is present, such as an active robbery or domestic disturbance.
New Athens Police Chief Tim Buehler said his department also assists Marissa and Lenzburg with calls.
The St. Clair County Board meets to vote on the 2025 budget at 7:30 p.m. on Nov. 25 at the county courthouse and administration building. The board’s finance committee is scheduled to meet twice before then: at 6:30 p.m. on Nov. 18 and at 7 p.m. on Nov. 25.
Editor's note: This story was originally published by the Belleville News-Democrat. Lexi Cortes is a reporter for the Belleville News-Democrat, a news partner of St. Louis Public Radio.
