Faced with a rising crime rate, the Hesperia City Council plans to increase the staff at the Hesperia sheriff’s station by eight in the next fiscal year.
A preliminary decision was reached last Wednesday, at the council’s mid-year budget review, to add four new deputy sheriffs, a sergeant and three support personnel to the Hesperia station of the San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Department.
The move comes in response to calls for service rising by 31 percent, crime rising by 17 percent (from 6,403 to 7,214 incidents) and serious crime rising by 13 percent last year. City officials estimate Hesperia’s population has risen from 70,744 in June 2005 - the end of the previous fiscal year - to approximately 81,000 today.
“We got a really decent increase in population and a really similar increase in crime,” Captain Joe Cusimano of the San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Department said Friday.
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