COASTAL OBSERVER

The Georgetown County Sheriff’s Office won’t enter into an agreement to provide law enforcement for a proposed municipality in the Pawleys Island-Litchfield area. The decision last week by Sheriff Carter Weaver leaves proponents of the incorporation effort without a key element required by state law.

“If incorporation is finalized and municipal law enforcement arrangements are established, we will continue to provide limited law enforcement services, in the midterm, within the area,” Weaver said in a letter to the Pawleys Island Litchfield Municipal Study Group. “Those services would not be deemed consistent with current staffing.”

Andy Hallock, who chairs the study group, declined to comment other than saying that they are formulating their response.

State law requires that the proposed town show it can provide “a substantially similar level of law enforcement services” to what currently exists as part of its application to the S.C. Secretary of State’s office to hold a vote on incorporation.

The study group has gathered signatures on a petition to the state and prepared a feasibility study for a town in the 29585 ZIP.

The group’s plan calls for law enforcement that the area receives from the county to continue if voters agree to form a municipality.  Weaver said when the group first went public with its effort last year that it couldn’t count on that.

Last month, the study group proposed a two-year agreement that the sheriff’s office would provide “the same number of officers, working the same scheduled shifts and performing the same law enforcement services.” After that, the town government would negotiate a new agreement.

“I must respectfully decline to enter into such an agreement at this time,” Weaver said in his letter to the study group.

He cited four reasons: legal authority, limited resources, financial liability and municipal autonomy.

While the sheriff has county-wide jurisdiction, “the law does not obligate nor specifically authorize the Sheriff’s Office to serve as a municipality’s contracted police department,” Weaver wrote.

He declined to comment further. “The letter speaks for itself,” he said.

To provide “continuous, dedicated” coverage to a new town would require additional staff and equipment. “At present, these resources are neither available nor budgeted within the County’s fiscal plan,” Weaver wrote.

And he added, “No planning for these specifics has been established by those pushing for incorporation even after numerous requests from this Office to do so.”

Weaver also said the  study group has not budgeted for law enforcement “nor have they entertained discussion of such monetary needs.”

Entering into the proposed agreement “without full financial guarantees and legal protections could expose the County and the Sheriff’s Office to fiscal and operational risks,” Weaver wrote.

He told the study group that the sheriff’s office will work with a new town, but that “a locally controlled department is best positioned to enforce municipal ordinances, set community-policing priorities and develop neighborhood-level partnerships.”

Weaver said he is open to “revisiting” the issue if circumstances change and that “I am hopeful that incorporation efforts and messaging will now give law enforcement services the attention that it deserves.”