CENTRAL FLORIDA,None — 9 Investigates heavy fuel use in the Orange County Sheriff's Office.
Sheriff Jerry Demings recently asked for more money to cover a $3 million shortfall caused, in part, by rising fuel costs. Orange County taxpayers cover the gas bills for hundreds of Orange County deputies, who commute mostly on the taxpayers dime.
READ: OCSO Full Response About Fuel Use
"They get to drive around for free. I would love to be able to do that. That would save me thousands of dollars a year, said driver Gabriel Thornberry.
About 1,600 deputies and civilian workers in the Orange County Sheriffs Office have take-home cars. The county pays for their gas on-duty and to and-from work. When fuel costs peaked in April at $564,996, we asked for fuel reports. They show, some drivers are burning much more gas than expected and are commuting beyond county lines.
Among 13 of the heaviest fuel users, seven drive home each night from Orange County to Lake, Brevard, Osceola and Seminole counties.
A driver of Chevrolet Impala #1026, for example, lives in Lake County. The average Impala in the sheriffs office current fleet uses 103 gallons of gas per month. But #1026 used an average of 212 gallons, including 243 gallons in March. Its monthly gas cost was nearly $350 more than the departments own average.
As another example, the deputy assigned to Ford truck #7022 lives in Brevard County. He averaged 277 gallons of fuel a month, that's more than double the sheriffs office F-150 average of 125 gallons of fuel. Another Brevard-based deputy averaged 270 gallons in his F-150.
To put that into perspective, 270 gallons of fuel at 20 miles per gallon could take you from Central Florida to Anchorage Alaska, with more than 600 miles to spare. And, WFTV found 164 cases of vehicles using more than 200 gallons of fuel at least once during the three months that were studied.
We conserve wherever possible, said Capt. Angelo Nieves, a spokesman for the Sheriff's Office.
Nieves said, fuel use is down 2 percent overall in the agency, and that deputies burn much of their gas on the clock.
There's a lot of fuel use when you have someone whos conducting a lot of traffic stops, working the highways, Nieves said.
But for now, the agency has no plans to change its fuel policy. Seminole and Lake Counties have similar policies.
Out-of-county deputies do reimburse a small fraction of their gas costs each month, depending on how far out of Orange County they live. Officials say all that driving also has another benefit: high visibility, which is a crime deterrent.
WFTV
