Pubdate: Wed, 18 Oct 2006 Source: Asheville Citizen-Times (NC) Copyright: 2006 Asheville Citizen-Times Contact: http://www.citizen-times.com/ Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/863 Author: By Jordan Schrader, Staff Writer IN FIRST JOINT APPEARANCE, MEDFORD TAKES ISSUE WITH DUNCAN'S PLAN ASHEVILLE -- Their first appearance of the campaign in the same room gave Sheriff Bobby Medford the chance to respond to challenger Van Duncan's plan for a reorganization of the Buncombe County Sheriff's Department. Medford said at a Leadership Asheville forum today he once contemplated a version of Duncan's plan to get more deputies on patrol by installing 12-hour shifts but abandoned it out of concern that it would put officers at risk. "At eight hours," the Republican sheriff said after the forum, "attention span goes down, alertness. You wreck more cars, have more officers injured." His Democratic challenger says the change would actually improve the safety of officers and county residents by providing enough manpower to send two officers instead of one to potentially dangerous spots. The candidates also debated the department's effectiveness in drug enforcement. Drugs, the candidates agreed, loom as the biggest problem the county faces in the coming years. "There are drug houses and people selling drugs in neighborhoods that 18 years ago were unheard of," Duncan said. Duncan cited state statistics showing the department made 43 drug arrests last year, compared to 911 for the Asheville Police Department. But those numbers don't take into account the work of the eight sheriff's deputies who make up the majority of the county's drug-enforcement agency. And Medford said the statistics were incorrect information from a new state system that should not yet be used as a reference. He put the total number of drug arrests at more than 600. "You can't go on statistics which come from a computer somewhere that don't have all the information," Medford said. - --- MAP posted-by: Elaine