Deputies wanted

GARDENDALE Several Gardendale residents claim the Ector County Sheriff’s Office isn’t covering them all that well, while the sheriff said he’s trying to come up with a way to improve coverage with what little his department has.

Gardendale residents Kevin Reed, Dewaine Cunningham and others started a petition drive last week, demanding Sheriff Mark Donaldson send a deputy or two to patrol the community 24 hours a day. Reed said they collected about 160 signatures since the drive began Monday.

“We’re trying to get more people out here because of all the theft,” said Cunningham, whose mother’s home was among the ones burglarized. “They’re breaking in, walking in, and now they’re starting to spend more time and ransack the houses because there’s no deputies out here.”

Reed said he was concerned about a rash of burglaries that have struck the unincorporated Odessa suburb since the start of the year. He estimated there were 35 burglaries since Jan. 1, a number he and several others thought was way too many considering the size of the community.

Donaldson said Friday that his office hasn’t received any of the signed petitions, though Ector County Commissioner Greg Simmons told him there were complaints there about his department’s coverage. The sheriff’s office is looking into using its overtime funds to send more deputies up that way.

“They foresee there’s a problem up there, and they think the patrol’s the answer to the problem… but they may not see them,” Donaldson said. “They may not see extra people up there because they may not be in a marked vehicle.”

Donaldson said he also wanted to set up a meeting with Gardendale’s residents to start up a neighborhood watch. The county currently has them set up in West Odessa and Goldsmith.

Donaldson said he currently has a deputy who patrols north Ector County, which includes Gardendale but isn’t exclusive to it. There are a total of seven deputies and supervisors covering a shift throughout the county.

As for the call loads, most of them for the sheriff’s office come from West Odessa. Donaldson said the sheriff’s office received more than 800 calls from there for the month of September, including 21 burglaries. That compares to 384 calls in the area north of Odessa’s city limits outside of Gardendale and Goldsmith, and 37 calls and five burglaries in Gardendale.

“There’s obviously been some things up there, but there’s things going on all over Ector County,” Donaldson said.

Reed said he spoke several times to Simmons, asking him to get Donaldson to send more deputies to the area. Reed said the response from Donaldson was that the ECSO did not consider Gardendale to be a problem area, and that most of the deputies were needed in West Odessa and south Ector County.

“It has not been a problem, until now,” Reed said.

Simmons said he also hoped to see more coverage in Gardendale if the residents felt they were underrepresented on that front, though adding deputies in the current budget wasn’t an option. Still, he said he didn’t want to “micromanage” and said it was up to Donaldson.

“If he feels it’s adequately covered, I’m not going to try to second-guess it, but it’s my job to tell him residents up there feel they’re underrepresented,” Simmons said.