Lauderdale County Sheriff’s Department

Residents needing copies of incident reports, finger printing and background checks may soon have another way to pay as the Lauderdale County Sheriff’s Office looks to begin accepting credit and debit cards.

Sheriff Billy Sollie told the Lauderdale County Board of Supervisors last week his office currently could only accept cash.

“When come in to pick up a crash report, instead of utilizing cash we’d like to start utilizing a debit, credit card system,” he said.

Prior to moving to its new location on 22nd Avenue, LCSO was conveniently located near multiple banks, as well as an ATM inside the adjoining Lauderdale County Jail. Since moving, Sollie said being further from easy cash sources placed an additional hurdle residents must clear to get what they need.

Sollie said adding the ability to process credit and debit card payments would help immensely and come at no cost the county. A 3% convenience fee that would be passed along to the customers would foot the bill for processing the credit and debit payments, he said.

“It will not in any way be costing us money,” he said.

The majority of transactions LCSO sees are small, about $10, for thinks like incident reports, background checks and finger prints, Sollie said, so the convince fee wouldn’t place an unreasonable burden on residents.

The sheriff’s office will need to acquire a card reader and work with the bank to set everything up before beginning to accept payments, Sollie said, but it was moving in the right direction.

“We’d like to move forward with installing a debit, credit card reader at the Lauderdale County Sheriff’s Department to accept payments for items at the sheriff’s department,” he said.