JACKSONVILLE, Fla. \u2014 Action News Jax has learned the overall number of sworn officers employed by the Jacksonville Sheriff\u2019s Office is below the national average. <\/p>\n
Right now, JSO says they currently have 1,804 officers employed, and they are budgeted to have 1,909 officers. <\/p>\n
This means there are currently 105 vacancies.<\/p>\n
The FBI says in 2019<\/a> the national average was 2.4 sworn police officers for every 1000 inhabitants.<\/p>\n Given the current data we have, JSO is currently averaging about 1.8 officers for every 1000 residents. <\/p>\n Sheriff TK Waters says he\u2019s aware of the shortage but wants to be considerate of the city\u2019s budget. <\/p>\n \u201cI don\u2019t want to go and ask for 300 new officers in one city. That\u2019s a lot. And that\u2019s going to cost taxpayers a lot,\u201d said Sheriff Waters. \u201cAt the same time, we have to gradually increase.\u201d<\/p>\n During Monday\u2019s JSO town hall, Sheriff Waters said he hopes to get more officers in the future. This comes as the Sheriff has touted decreases in crime this year.<\/p>\n \u201cIf I\u2019m fortunate enough to be here next term, which is my hope, then we\u2019re going to continue to work on that part of it, continue to try to grow and build the agency,\u201d said Sheriff Waters. \u201cOur city is getting larger. I don\u2019t mean land-wise, I\u2019m talking people-wise. So we have to have the numbers that are necessary to serve our public.\u201d<\/p>\n Sheriff Waters stressed that, as for right now, his officers will continue to work hard and move the manpower where it\u2019s needed to make sure the calls get answered.<\/p>\n >>> STREAM ACTION NEWS JAX LIVE <<<<\/b><\/a><\/p>\n [DOWNLOAD: <\/b>Free Action News Jax app for alerts as news breaks<\/b><\/a>]<\/b><\/p>\n [SIGN UP: <\/b>Action News Jax Daily Headlines Newsletter<\/b><\/a>] <\/b><\/p>\n Click here<\/b><\/a> to download the free Action News Jax news and weather apps, <\/b>click here<\/b><\/a> to download the Action News Jax Now app for your smart TV and <\/b>click here<\/b><\/a> to stream Action News Jax live.<\/b><\/p>\n Action News Jax Top Stories<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"JACKSONVILLE, Fla. \u2014 Action News Jax has learned the overall number of sworn officers employed by the Jacksonville…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":950678,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[5136],"tags":[12189,5229,382744,12187,12783,3188,723,29918,11561,13819,7310,13035,8423,425,29917,12498,57513,38099,382745,67,586,132,5230,68,2969,57517],"class_list":["post-950677","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-jacksonville","tag-action_news","tag-america","tag-dougal_county_jail","tag-duval_county","tag-fbi","tag-fl","tag-florida","tag-foglio","tag-jack","tag-jackson","tag-jacksonville","tag-jacksonville_sheriffs_office","tag-jso","tag-local","tag-madison","tag-sheriff","tag-tanika","tag-tk_waters","tag-tk_watters","tag-united-states","tag-united-states-of-america","tag-unitedstates","tag-unitedstatesofamerica","tag-us","tag-usa","tag-waters"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/116960664426560694","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/950677","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=950677"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/950677\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/950678"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=950677"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=950677"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=950677"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}