Sheriff responds to misinformation shared during meeting
NEW PHILADELPHIA (WJER) (Feb. 13, 2025) – It seems the Newcomerstown residents who attended Tuesday’s community meeting were given some inaccurate information.
During the forum, Mayor Pat Cadle stated that sheriff’s deputies can’t enforce the village’s ordinances. However, Sheriff Orvis Campbell says that’s not true.
“Let’s say that they had no one on midnights tonight and one of my guys who is not permanently assigned there took a call there: Well, he probably wouldn’t use village ordinances. But if they hired deputies to be Newcomerstown deputies and that’s what the village wanted, they wanted them to cite under village ordinance for all of their traffic [violations], we would do it.”
He hopes council decides to retain the village police department, but he says his office will provide as many officers as requested if that’s not the case.
“He had announced that I had given him a price for two deputies and that’s all I would give them. That’s simply not true. We never discussed the number of deputies because I didn’t know their budget. I gave him a price of one deputy. I also gave him a price for a sergeant in case they wanted a local supervisor down there. He could have said, ‘Ok. Give me five of those. Give me the total.’ You just multiply by five.”
Attendees were also told that deputies wouldn’t be available to police village events. Campbell says they already provide security for parades and festivals in other communities and would gladly do the same in Newcomerstown.
“There was a suggestion there about a kid who was in crisis at the school, and that their officer sat with them and did a very nice job. We were at Tusky Valley for a month, had people there everyday all day, after events, and we don’t have a contract with them. We just feel like that’s our job. So I was highly offended they would suggest we wouldn’t do those, because all the services he was talking about we do every day, we would happily do.”
Campbell reached out to Cadle, who apologized and said it was a misunderstanding.