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Pickens County moves to dissolve marshal's office, shift enforcement to sheriff and civilian code officers
Summary
After a consolidated public hearing, the Pickens County Board of Commissioners approved repeal and amendment measures to remove references to the county marshal's office and to formalize civilian code enforcement while designating the Pickens County Sheriff’s Office to provide law-enforcement assistance.
The Pickens County Board of Commissioners on a unanimous voice vote approved repeals and amendments that will remove references to the county marshal's office from the code of ordinances and formalize a civilian code-enforcement office while relying on the Pickens County Sheriff’s Office for law-enforcement assistance.
Bill Wood, who presented the proposal during a consolidated public hearing, said the marshal's office — established in January 2003 — combined civilian and quasi-law-enforcement functions that in practice conflicted. “We basically just made the decision to handle this from a standpoint of inside this organization that reports directly to you to focusing on the civilian piece and not the law enforcement piece and how the sheriff's office assists,” Wood said.
The board approved repeal of chapter 2, article 5 (the marshal's-office provision). The board tabled a separate vote on the full repeal of chapter 42 to allow additional review; the chair said chapter 42 contains quasi-law-enforcement offenses (assault, truancy) that more properly belong to the sheriff's office.
Commissioners approved grouped amendments to replace marshal references with references to the county’s civilian code-enforcement office and to add explicit language for assistance from the sheriff’s office across multiple chapters, including chapters 1, 4, 13, 16, 18, 21, 38, 54, 58 and 67. The board’s actions are procedural steps aligning ordinance language to the operational change rather than adopting new enforcement programs.
The board held public-comment slots at the consolidated hearing but recorded no public testimony on the marshal changes that prompted the ordinance updates. The commission said the changes are intended to reduce duplication of enforcement functions and to clarify roles between civilian code staff and the sheriff's office.
The repeals and amendment package will proceed to final signatures as required by ordinance; the board’s clerk will circulate the signed ordinances for execution.
