So take those Sheriffs assets and give them to MSP or the local town, or better yet take 3 towns and regionalize under MGL ch. 41, s. 99B.
I just think Sheriffs in MA are an antiquated, inefficient relic of times gone by.
I live in times gone by. In that sense, the Hampshire county lockup the Sheriff runs makes sense to me.
Of the towns in Hampshire county, I can ID at least 7 of them as having no full time officers; and 2 more as having one full timer, if you count one person being police and fire chief full time and the other a full time officer for 2 towns splitting their salary. The biggest town of those 9 has 2500 residents, the smallest 550. IIRC, our salary budget for my town's (pop. ~1200) PD this year was $15k, which is fairly typical of the others.
Getting 3 towns to agree on regionalized facilities would be extremely difficult, getting 9 in agreement would be impossible. And, they still couldn't afford it. I'm happy the Sheriffs COs are there to take our prisoners - if I have to watch them at the MSP barracks when I should be at my real job, I lose $21/hour doing it. MSP can't spare manpower - since they aren't tied to a county, they are the only full time police for even more towns than the 9 in Hampshire Cty.
Sure, our license plates say Massachusetts, but we don't really have a hell of a lot in common with the more populated areas of the Commonwealth. Never mind getting a DD in town, it's 22 miles to the first place that sells coffee 24/7.
I suppose that's why I don't get into these discussions much - not much common ground to talk about. Why, next you'll be telling me they've put computers
inside cruisers!