Despite major efforts this year by the Guilford County Sheriff’s Department to attract patrol officers, detention officers and other employees, the numbers of vacancies in the department have continued to increase.

According to information from the Guilford County Human Resources Department, as of Thursday, Sept. 12, the Sheriff’s Department has 90 vacancies – with the majority of those being detention officers.

The department has 54 detention officer vacancies, 32 deputy sheriff vacancies and 4 vacancies in administration.

In April, there were 78 vacant positions in the Sheriff’s Department and at that time there was alarm over those high numbers – and department officials were scrambling to do everything they could to attract new officers.  The Sheriff’s Department has held special job fairs, put out press releases to local media to let the public know of the need and taken other steps as well, but nothing has seemed to help.

Those April vacancies were up from March, when there were 74 vacancies with the following breakdown: 22 vacant deputy sheriff’s positions, 45 detention officer positions and 7 administrative slots.

Guilford County Sheriff Danny Rogers has said the problem is due to his department’s need for pay raises to compete with the salaries at other law enforcement agencies.   However, several county officials said this week that Guilford County is paying a highly competitive salary based on recent research that they have seen.

After the Guilford County Board of Commissioners ended last week, some county commissioners and other county officials stuck around and discussed the growing vacancy problem in the department as well as possible causes and solutions.