By the end of his first month in office, Sheriff Brad Youngman had the Daviess County Sheriff’s Office fully staffed for the first time in years. The addition of deputies allowed DCSO to create a narcotics unit and expand the investigations division. Youngman said his staff is committed to being proactive and is excited for the changes and projects coming from DCSO.
Youngman said when he and his command staff first started meeting in the late fall, one of their first priorities was reaching a full staff (the maximum number of officers is determined by the Fiscal Court in their annual budget).
“We started actively recruiting people for different positions,” Youngman said. “Probably the addition of the narcotics unit and the expansion of investigations was where we needed people the most. So we started making some calls, and there were some people reaching out to me after the election that were wanting to get back into law enforcement that had left.”
The last new hire started January 31, giving DCSO 39 full-time sworn law enforcement officers from top to bottom, plus 24 part-time court security positions.
“It’s important to have a fully staffed department because of the services that we provide to people,” Youngman said. “They pay taxes, they expect safety. We talked a lot during the campaign about safety, and that starts with having the right deputies on the road able to respond to things.”
Previously, DCSO did not have a full-time narcotics unit. It’s now fully staffed with three detectives.
“We do have a pretty significant drug problem in this part of the country and state,” Youngman said. “The difference here was how many sets of eyes we had looking at it. This is a big county with a lot of people and we’ve not always had that many people out there looking. The city, state, and federal agencies have always done their part, so we needed to make sure that the county sheriff’s office was doing their part and coming at it from a team approach.”
And traditionally the criminal investigations unit had six detectives total, including the commander. There are now eight detectives including the commander, with four officers in general investigations and three in special investigations.
“I have a background in investigations,” Youngman said. “One goal was to be able to investigate more of the cases that come to the sheriff’s office, not just having people make a report and then have it go unsolved. We really want to get that closure rate up on all investigations.”
But the overall goal is still safety, he said.
“Safety can mean a lot of things, but it is proactive law enforcement, it’s getting drugs off the street, it’s identifying areas that we need to do better, it’s being seen more in different parts of the county where we haven’t always been able to get to,” Youngman said. “What I’ve always wanted to do is to not just respond but be proactive. All of that goes back to you’ve got to have the right people in place.”
With departments both locally and across the country struggling to maintain full staffs, Youngman is proud DCSO is able to attract quality candidats.
“There’s not a lot of people that are wanting to do this job. It is a hard job. You don’t get rich. You don’t really want to get famous,” he said. “But I think what we’ve been able to do here is sort of cut through all that. With some of the changes that we’re proposing to this department as well as the voice that we’ve given the rank and file deputies to have a stake in the decisions that are made, that’s what sets us apart from other agencies. What we’ve been able to do, I think, is create a department where there’s a lot of excitement, there’s a lot of buzz, and there are a lot of things that we’re going to be doing here over the next few months that the guys want to be a part of.”
Youngman said he’s adamant on making sure everyone at DCSO has a voice, as that’s a key to retaining officers and making sure everyone is performing their job to the best of their ability.
“I made them a promise on day one that I would listen to their ideas and that we would do as much as we can,” he said. “Morale is something that I take very seriously. There are very few things that they really want in return for the job they do. If you can give them some of those things, I think they take a lot more pride in their work and they’re happy to be there. And they’re gonna want to stay here because this is where they’re going to get what they want.”
