Veteran officer turning in badge
By TIM GULLA Ledger Staff Writer tim@gaffneyledger.com

A veteran Cherokee County police investigator is trading in his county badge for a new job, saying a tough decision to leave was made easier by the lack of benefits he would someday face in retirement.

Detective Capt. Mike Fowlkes, the lead investigator for the Cherokee County Sheriff's Office, will leave the department at the end of the March and begin a new career with Duke Energy beginning the first week of April.

Fowlkes said he loves his job, the people he works with, and knowing that his job involved helping others. But he said he'd been wrestling with the decision to leave because of concern over the future.

"It has everything to do with the benefits that are offered," he said.

While all officers are able to participate in the Police Officers Retirement System, Cherokee County does not offer officers extra incentives like retiree health benefits.

South Carolina Highway Patrol and South Carolina Law Enforcement Division employees fall under state benefit guidelines, said Alisa Mosley, executive director of the South Carolina Law Enforcement Officers Association. But there are no guidelines for what individual local and county police agencies offer their employees, as those decisions are made on a local basis and are dictated by local budgets.

She said some counties and local police agencies offer retiree health care, some offer health care until a retiree is eligible for Medicare, and some offer no retiree health benefits at all.

In Newberry County, which is smaller than Cherokee County, long-term sheriff's office employees are given the incentive of partially paid health care in retirement, said Jim Wright, chief deputy of the Newberry County Sheriff's Office and president of the South Carolina Fraternal Order of Police. Newberry County covers 60 percent of the costs while the employee pays 40 percent.

Overall, though, Wright said nothing is uniform in South Carolina for the men and women in uniform.

"There's no uniform salary, no uniform type of merit raise or cost of living raise."

Cherokee County Sheriff Bill Blanton has, on several occasions over the years, sought budget increases to provide for additional salary or benefits, and will likely do so again when the next round of budget hearings approaches.

"I've lost some good, experienced officers in the last several years and Mike is certainly one of them," he said. "It's really going to hurt our department to see him go."

Fowlkes fears others may reach the same conclusions he did about his future if government, as a whole, doesn't address pay scales and retirement benefits for its law enforcement professionals.

"I expect there'll be more (leaving), at some point," he said.

A detective for the past 12 years, Fowlkes became a captain in 2002.

Blanton said Fowlkes also headed the office's SWAT team and was in charge of the Sheriff's Office whenever he or Chief Deputy Joel Hill were out of town or attending to other matters.

Wright said losing an officer who's been on the street for 17 years would be a major loss for any department or community.

"You take a guy that has 17 years," Wright said. "He knows the ins and outs of the law enforcement profession." Nothing is saved when someone like that is replaced with a rookie at a lower salary, Wright said.

And despite the fact police academies are pumping out new officers each day, Wright said many police agencies find themselves constantly understaffed because of turnover.

"Some (officers) are going to other agencies and many are getting out of law enforcement because they cannot provide a decent level of living for their families," he said.

The State newspaper in Columbia recently reported Columbia City Council was considering boosting starting salaries at its police department by as much as 18 percent to stem the loss of officers and fill enough vacancies to meet minimum staffing requirements within its police department.