6-29-04 - Their job is to serve and protect but for police officers in Sherman, protecting you is getting harder to do. The problem – the department has the same number of officers on the streets as they did 14 years ago.

The city ranks below the state average for the number of officers per citizens, and PD officials say that contributes to the city’s crime ranking of 42nd in cities over 10,000 people statewide.

Like in most departments, Sherman police officers work a 12 hour shift, which means in a city of 35,000, only five officers are on patrol during each shift.

At 60 officers total, the department hasn’t grown since 1990, while the city’s population has grown by 7,000.

The shortage of officers creates obvious problems, including delayed response times.