Haymarket's Police Force Is Dwindling

Six Departures Reduce Agency by Two-Thirds

And then there were three.

After a turbulent year of police disciplinary actions -- officers accused of making sexually explicit comments, standing guard at an illegal poker game and trying to break down an estranged wife's door with a hatchet-- the Haymarket police force has been whittled down by two-thirds.

In the past few months, the department dropped from nine officers to three.

One was fired, one quit and four fell under the ax of a Town Council decision to suspend the auxiliary police program.

"The citizens in that town pay extra taxes to have their own private police department, to have police coverage 24 hours a day, and they are not getting it," said Charlie Proffitt, a former auxiliary officer who worked with the department 2 1/2 years. "I don't think anyone in that town currently knows that they are down to three police officers."

He and the three other auxiliary officers who worked for the department as volunteers without pay received a letter dated Jan. 27 saying that the Town Council was suspending the program. Council members said they are reevaluating the program's efficiency, but at least a few of the dismissed officers said it felt like a retaliatory slap in the face.

Auxiliary officers undergo the same training as full-time officers. They have uniforms, badges and guns. Some, such as Proffitt, who had been a sheriff's deputy in two counties, had other police experience.

"They run that place like it's their own little business," Proffitt said. "They don't do what's good for the town; they do what's good for themselves."

"You're getting people that were free, that were actually generating revenue for the town," said former auxiliary officer Tim Benjamin. He estimates that he generated $3,000 to $4,000 a month in fines.

Haymarket Mayor Pamela Stutz said the issue in the small town of about 1,000 residents has become inflated by past conflicts and has "just gotten blown out of perspective." In an election year -- where Benjamin is running for mayor and his wife, Vicki, and a recently fired officer, Robert A. Hoffman Jr., are running for council seats -- the issue will only become bigger.

"You can try to convince people of certain things, and if they have made up their minds, they've made up their minds," Stutz said, adding that the program was not halted in retaliation. "I'm sorry that anyone is feeling that, but I don't think it's true.

"It was never intended that the program was going away," she said.