Toccoa Police Chief Outlines Equipment Needs for Department

Toccoa Police Chief Jimmy Mize is hoping to get enough funding from the City to fill two much-needed positions.

At their annual planning session Monday, the City Commission heard from Mize who said they have two important personnel needs.  The first, he said, is a full-time training officer.

“In the past, the City has always had a full-time training officer,” Mize told the Board. “The last couple of years, for some reason, we’ve kind of veered away from it. Last year, we started with training an officer who wants to do the training position full-time. We want to implement that into a full-time position. Right now, it’s a part-time position.”

Mize said the part-time training officer has completed most of the training, but has a couple more classes to take.

The other personnel need is a second Drug Task Force officer.

Mize said having one full-time Drug Task Force officer has helped his department bring drug arrests back up, but he said a second officer is needed.

“It’s worked out good, but we want to strengthen it a little bit more and put another agent in there with him,” Mize said. “We do have a gang problem and the task force works both; the gang problem and the drug problem. So, it would just strengthen his position and strengthen the help that we get with that.”

Mize told Commissioners that in 2019 he also wants to work on replacing his officers’ weapons.  He said the current weaponry is old and outdated and needs to be brought into the 21st century.

“We have some aging shotguns from the early ’80’s and we’ve had to pull them from the

road becaue they’re just not safe. Most of the handguns we have are the Generation 1 Glock,” he said. “Back in the early 90’s the City transitioned from the Smith & Wesson handguns to the Glocks and Glock now is into a Generation 5. A lot of the upgrades that Glock has made include rails on them for lights to go under the gun. If they’re out at night or are clearing a building at night they don’t have to hold a flashlight in one hand. So, we’re kind of behind the ball on that.”

Mize said he has already started checking on buying new weapons and pointed to a company in Georiga that has a buy-back program in which they will buy his department’s old weapons and replace them with new ones.

Mize also told the Commissioners he continues to need to replace aging police cruisers and would like to replace three current older vehicles with new ones.

Commissioners said they would likely put that request on the next Special Purpose Local Option Sales Tax which starts in October 2020.