GILBERT, S.C. — The Town of Gilbert could be moving closer to getting a police department. Right now, the town doesn’t have one, but the mayor says he thinks one is needed.
“We’re not gonna be able to do it by ourselves unless we annex, and although we do need to annex, to protect our citizens here with what's going on with the growth and all, I want that to be something everybody's happy with,” Mayor John Reeder said.
Reeder, the mayor of Gilbert, says the conversation of starting a police department has come before the town council in the past, but says the main issue is funding.
“We had tried to get one for a little while, and we just found out that the amount of money it was going to take to do it, we'd be able to run it for a little while, when it wouldn't be long, with the cost of insurance going up, it was going to go from $10,000 to $20,000 this coming year,” he said.
According to the mayor, with the growth coming to the town, this police department would be beneficial.
“The county says that we're gonna have like, 4000 something houses between Batesburg- Leesville and Lexington here. The growth, you can see it as you drive out of here. It's all over the place, and a lot of people are coming in, but we needed it before. Our sheriff is doing the best he can, but he's short on people and we need our crime investigated here. We'd like to have somebody roving all the time,” he said.
Currently, the Town of Gilbert is served by the Lexington Sheriff's Department. Community members like Christi Madeline say having a local police department would make the town feel safer.
“It would just be nice to know again, like comfort and knowing that if something ever happened, they were right there. Instead of people coming from Lexington,” she said.
According to Reeder residents have started a petition for a police department, he says he’s reached out to state lawmakers for potential help in funding the agency.
“We're having trailers taken, four wheelers, catalytic converters, you know, just folks knowing that there's somebody around that's going to be on the watch for them. Right now, we just got a community. They watch out for each other, but having that police car drive around, it's going to make a big difference,” Reeder said.
Mayor Reeder says the matter could be taken up again at their town council meeting on September 9th.