GUILFORD COUNTY, N.C. — The Guilford County Sheriff's Office is holding an information session to look for more detention officers and is offering a $5,000 bonus deal.
"We are going to talk about pay benefits, how you become a detention officer, what the training requires to become a detention officer," said Capt. David Pruitt with the Personnel and Training Division.
The pay is competitive sitting at $40,688.
"There of course are incentives for education, military, prior experience so that pay can increase, so we will talk about that. We will also talk about our step plan that we currently have our lateral pay plan, so if you have experience and want to lateral over to Guilford County we can offer more money," said Pruitt.
Currently, 65 officers are needed at the center. Officers said 33 participants signed up at Wednesday's session.
"Before this was happening we were relying on just our openings through the county website and some advertisement but this seems to have really helped draw some attention to us," said Maj. George Moore with the Court Services Bureau
Guilford County Commissioner Skip Alston spoke about the information sessions.
"I think that the sheriff has been very assertive in doing what he needs to do to address the problem and stop the bleeding from officers going to other counties and to also recruit and build the vacancies that we have now. We have a lot of vacancies within the sheriff's department and he is making a great effort to make sure that we address these issues," said Alston.
They plan to hold the sessions once a month from 6 p.m. to 8 p.m. at the Sheriff's Office.