Once it was very infrequent when a law enforcement agency was short on officers.
“I took the test with 200 other guys,” recalled Marshall County Sheriff Bill Helms. “And there were one or two openings and that was it.”
These days, though, it has become even rarer when a police department or a sheriff’s office is not actively attempting to attract new members. City and county officials have used signing bonuses as bait, and they have increased the base pay and benefits, too. In Marshall County, Helms began advertising an increased, $52,000 annual salary in July 2021 with hopes of filling his seven openings.
The sheriff since has signed on three new deputies, but that still leaves his department four deputies short to patrol one of the largest and most rural counties in the Mountain State.
“It’s not just here in Marshall County or in the Northern Panhandle,” Helms insisted. “All of the sheriff’s offices in the state communicate with each other all of the time, and that’s how I know they’re now offering $55,000 in Wetzel County now. And it’s just going to continue with the pay going up and up, and that’s because there’s always going to be the demand for law enforcement, but if no one wants to do it anymore at the pay we have now, there’s only one answer.
“We have to protect and serve, and I’m not sure why men and women don’t seem to want to do this job anymore,” he said. “Is it the pay? Is it the crime? The hours? I’m not really sure, but the only thing that’s worked is increasing the pay, so it looks like that’s going to have to continue.”
Especially, Helms stressed, if PTT Global America does make the announcement that a $10 billion petrochemical “cracker” plant will be constructed just over the Moundsville Bridge in Belmont County.
“Oh, my goodness, if those folks say they’re going to build the cracker, that would change the ball game completely,” he said. “They would need a lot of folks to build that (plant), so that means we’ll need a lot more deputies than what we have now.”
More People, More Crime
It was in July 2015 when officials with PTT Global announced their interest in the Dilles Bottom area of Belmont County. At the time First Energy’s Burger Plant was still standing, and the nearby neighborhood was sparse but still riverfront in nature.
But change, most believed, was coming, and since the power plant has been demolished and so have most of the homes. The land, in fact, has been sculpted, and permits have been acquired by the Thailand-based company.
Marshall County officials, in fact, began communicating with elected officials in Beaver County, Pa., the location where Shell Polymers constructed a $7 billion “cracker plant.”
“It seemed like a lot of things moved very quickly, and then everything stopped,” Helms remembered. “It was delay after delay, and then the pandemic hit and it sure seemed that killed it. We did hear it wasn’t a dead deal last summer, but just recently we’ve heard some positive things.
“I’m not making any decisions until I hear it from the company officials that this is actually going to happen. We’ve been waiting too long to do anything else at this point,” he said matter-of-factly. “When I did hear some good things this time, it made me remember when the gas and oil traffic first arrived to Marshall County more than 10 years ago, and it was a really crazy time for us.”
The drillers, frackers, and pipeliners showed up unannounced, too, and before Helms knew it campgrounds were covered, hotels and motels were full, ginormous trucks and trailers crowded roadways, and farmland transformed into what became known as “Gasland.”
“We scrambled. We really did. It was all very sudden,” the sheriff recounted. “It was like an invasion and it took us a while to catch up, so we don’t want to experience that ever again. With the cracker, though, it does sound as if we’ll have some time to prepare because of the foundation work that has to take place before anything goes vertical.”
The petrochemical plant would employ approximately 600 workers that would earn more than $75,000, according to officials with Jobs Ohio. That compensation level, Helms believes, will lead to an across-the-board increase in wages across the region.
And yes, that includes the future salary for deputies in Marshall County.
“I do realize that if they do say they’re going to build the cracker, it’s going to be crazy again. How could it not be? We’d be talking 5,000 new people in this community,” Helms said. “And yes, I do believe if that decision is announced, we’ll have to start paying much more than $52,000 per year for new deputies without a doubt.
“We need deputies to do the jobs we have now,” he said. “And, again, if that cracker plant comes? Our commissioners will have to increase pay, and they are going to have to make it so attractive that we’re pulling people from outside this area to come here. That’s what I believe we’ll need to do because we already know a lot of the issues that come along with that kind of increased population. There are positives and the vast majority of the people who will come in will be terrific folks, but with more people comes more crime, too.”
