Plans taking shape for new Aiken County Sheriff’s Office building
AIKEN, S.C. (WRDW/WAGT) - Major upgrades are needed at the Aiken County Sheriff’s Office.
The sheriff tells us it won’t be long before some of their aging equipment gives out.
However, with a new headquarters on the way, they are still in need of more funding.
In Aiken County, justice is served from a building built decades ago - and it shows.
That’s all going to change with a new headquarters, and as they work with Aiken County Council on their budget, Sheriff Marty Sawyer says for the new facility, they’ve hired an architect and the design phase has already started.
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They swore an oath to serve and protect, but for some deputies, that oath begins inside an office with a leaking ceiling and ends at a desk inside a 70-year-old jail cell.
”This building is past due and and we’re going to move as fast as we can,” said Sheriff Marty Sawyer.
With a new $30 million headquarters, ”Our new building would have all the latest and greatest technology security for our employees. We were talking earlier about somebody if they wanted to, could just basically, come in that door by a little bit of force,” said Sawyer.
For Sawyer, it’s more than construction, it’s a promise to the people and to the men and women that wear the badge.
”I think it’s what is going to help more anything in morale because in this building we are totally out of room. We have no more office space right now. We can’t have any training sessions, and I want to start having community meetings and citizens’ academies,” said Sawyer.
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Sawyer knows these walls well, his dad worked here in the late 1970s.
He says he’s fighting to give the next generation a better place to work.
”Right after I took office, Chairman Bunker and Brian Sanders said, ‘We have this money, when you want to start building a building, let us know,’ I said. ‘I want to start building a building.’ We started that week making phone calls and preparing, and we haven’t slowed down since,” said Sawyer.
The improvements won’t stop at the building, they’re working with Aiken County Council on their budget for new vehicles, stun-guns, and in-car and body-worn cameras.
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”We have to have body-worn video, there’s no question. But in-car cameras, they capture a lot of stuff that body-worn cameras won’t capture. Technology is the way law enforcement is headed,” said Sawyer.
With every brick, nail, and beam, the Aiken County Sheriff’s Office is laying the blueprint for a safer, stronger future.
Meanwhile, Sawyer also tells us they are in the process of starting a new sheriff’s foundation to employees and the youth.
“It will allow us to help a deputy or help an employee here or detention center personnel if they’re struggling financially because of the medical reasons or they’re hurt at work or they just something happened, they need a little money,” said Sawyer. “The second thing is we want to be able to offer scholarships to underprivileged children who may have the opportunity to go to a band camp or an art camp or a basketball camp with their family and can’t afford to send them.”
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