Thanks to a series of retirements and a military deployment, the Park County Sheriff’s Office may look a bit different by the end of the summer.

Sheriff Scott Steward said he recently learned one of his Cody area patrol deputies will be deployed with the U.S. military from late July through May 2020. Plus, “we’re going to have at least three other employees retire out of the Cody district in the next two or three months,” Steward told Park County commissioners Tuesday.

To fill those spots, the sheriff said there are detention deputies who are interested in moving to patrol — though that will mean hiring new deputies to serve in the jail.

To cushion the short-term crunch, the sheriff plans to have the department’s investigator work regular patrol shifts, and Steward said he plans to start the hiring and training processes sooner rather than later.

“Going to be pretty thin there for awhile,” offered Park County Commission Chairman Jake Fulkerson.

“We’ll get ‘er done,” responded Steward.

Including the sheriff and undersheriff, the department has 21 deputies in the patrol division, with another 26 deputy positions in the detention center, the sheriff’s website says.

— By CJ Baker