WV State Police Story Archives - West Virginia Public Broadcasting

Locality Pay Moves Back To Legislative Front Burner

State employee shortages in critical positions like state police, corrections and health care are often acute in border counties, where neighboring states offer better pay.

Lawmakers with the interim Joint Standing Committee on Finance heard from Division of Personnel Director Chery Webb on Monday. She explained West Virginia has a limited geographical pay differential system already in place. She said agencies can explain their circumstances and apply for a pay differential approval.

“What the geographic pay differential allows you to do is to set the pay for a specific area for a specific classification based on data to address an issue that may be occurring in that area,” Webb said.

She gave an example of the Department of Veterans Assistance requesting a pay differential for the Barboursville Veterans Home.

“They were having a very hard time getting licensed practical nurses. It becomes challenging because Barboursville is competing with Huntington and with the state hospitals as well as the private ones,” Webb said. “Then, when you’re that close to the tri-state area, you’re competing with Kentucky and Ohio. You have to look at the salaries in those surrounding areas, and to see what an institution may need to offer to be able to get somebody hired in.”

Webb said most state agencies do not take advantage of requesting geographic pay differentials. She explained the challenges with the program are funding the pay hike, and concerns about how fellow employees will feel.

“Other employees are going to think, if I pay certain employees in this area, this amount, what about the employees that live over here? Will people move from over here to over here?” Webb said. “Sometimes that’s something that people have to take into consideration.”

Webb told lawmakers she has also discovered through her conversations with state agencies, it’s not always about money.

“Is it the environment in which they’re working in? There are people that want more work-life balance in this day and age,” Webb said. “Is there an opportunity that they want to have more of a say in the workforce, and they feel like they’re not having an opportunity to have meaningful work.”

Two bills to create locality pay either failed or were tabled and forgotten in the 2022 legislative general session. Eastern Panhandle lawmakers and Gov. Jim Justice are expected to push for locality pay in the upcoming 2023 general session.

Law Enforcement Connects With Growing Criminal Forensic Programs at State Universities

Universities across the state are harnessing a growing interest in forensic science often referred to as the “CSI effect,” by offering expanded programs in these fields.

The academic programs are uniquely positioned to offer strong job candidates to often-understaffed law enforcement agencies as science helps in solving crimes.

The growing popularity of these programs brought West Virginia State Troopers and a forensic instructor from the state police academy to Concord University in Athens on Tuesday.

The West Virginia State Police mobile crime scene unit was available for tours in Athens on Tuesday, Oct. 26, 2021.

Troopers offered tours of the State Police Mobile Crime Scene Unit and talked with students taking a criminology class. The state police officers explained that a good path for crime scene investigation is joining their ranks in law enforcement after graduation.

Inside, officers stood in front of a flat screen TV that displayed a crime scene as they spoke with students.

Many of the students were from Concord’s criminology program.

“He’s at this house, on the sidewalk dead, shot six times,” said Dave Castle, a forensic instructor and crime scene coordinator for the state police.

Castle is also an instructor at Marshall University’s Forensic Science program, and he said it’s important to get the next generation interested. Marshall’s program recently achieved the highest collective score in the nation on the Forensic Science Assessment Test.

“People love it mainly because of TV but when they get involved in it and they see that there’s actual science behind it, and that they can substantiate conclusions with science, a lot of people lose interest but a lot more people are like, ‘that’s for me,’” Castle said.

Castle has been investigating crime scenes, mostly murders, for more than 30 years. He takes on the work as his life’s mission.

“I don’t know what else I would do,” Castle said. “This is just my identity. It’s who I am. I can’t imagine doing anything else.

“I don’t lose sleep over the things that I have to see and do,” he added. “To me, it’s a problem that needs solved. And I might be able to help solve it, maybe not, but I’ll do my best. I really just want to help the family members that are surviving.”

Forensic instructor and crime scene coordinator for the state police Dave Castle (left) and a West Virginia State Trooper spoke with Concord students about crime scene investigations.

Castle is working with the State Police to seek Crime Scene Investigation accreditation with the American National Standards Institute ANAB.

He said the standards will create a new level of consistency, and credibility across the state, where forensic programs continue to be in high demand.

Concord University currently offers a minor in Criminology and a Sociology degree with a Criminology emphasis. Other growing forensic programs include West Virginia University where bachelor’s, master’s and doctoral degrees are offered in the field, and Fairmont State University.

While at Concord, Castle also demonstrated a system called Faro, a crime scene tool that takes millions of pieces of data to create a 3-D image. It can reveal initially unseen evidence.

“There may be bits of evidence that you didn’t notice,” Castle said, “while you were there actually at the scene that you see later in the Faro images. It’s very detailed.”

Cell Phone Tower Collapse Kills Three Including Firefighter

West Virginia State Police have released the names of two workers and a firefighter who were killed when two cellphone towers collapsed.

Lt. Michael Baylous on Sunday identified the workers as 32-year-old Kyle Kirkpatrick of Hulbert, Okla., and 27-year-old Terry Lee Richard Jr. of Bokoshe, Okla.

He identified the fallen firefighter as 28-old Michael Dale Garrett of Clarksburg, a member of the Nutter Fort Volunteer Fire Department.

Baylous said Kirkpatrick and Richard were working on a 300-foot cellphone tower Saturday when it collapsed in Clarksburg. Garrett was killed when a smaller cellphone tower weakened by the collapse also fell.

Two other workers suffered non-life threatening injuries.

The towers are owned by SBA Communications.

SBA Communications spokeswoman Lynne Hopkins said the company is saddened by the accident and is cooperating with investigators.

The West Virginia State Police are investigating the accident.