U.S. ‘Nothing But You and the Cows and the Sirens’ — Crime Tests Sheriffs Who Police Small Towns

Ross County, with its rolling forested green hills and quaint two-century-old county seat, is an image of idyllic rural America. But as night fell here on a warm Tuesday in May, chaos descended on the Ross County Sheriff’s Office. A neighbor called to report a disturbance, likely a violent domestic dispute, and another called to report a man slumped over the steering wheel of his pickup, likely an overdose. Calls of other suspicious vehicles came flooding in. The violent-crime rate in rural areas rose above the national average for the first time in a decade, according to the most recently available data from the federal government. Though cities, on average, still have a higher violent-crime rate than rural areas, large metropolitan areas are safer than they have been in decades, while small communities in some states are getting more dangerous. “It is nothing but you and the cows and the sirens,” said Sgt. Brenton Davidson, a patrol sergeant at the sheriff’s office. “You are seeing more violence, and you never know where your backup is coming from.” Small departments, where budgets and the number of deputies have remained stagnant, are overwhelmed. The number of sheriff’s deputies patrolling 691 square miles in Ross County, which sits some 50 miles south of Columbus, has remained at four over the past two decades. The population over the same period has increased to 77,000 from about 72,000. Starting pay for deputies is $35,000 a year, compared with the Ohio average of about $60,000.