Topic: Sneak Peek Sheriff's View

• okie the thread killer: yvw maynard...
  Yesterday at 07:24:01 PM
• Maynard: Thanks Okie I needed that......... LMAO 
  Yesterday at 07:22:53 PM
• okie the thread killer: i posted link in local news
  Yesterday at 05:23:19 PM
• Maynard: Okay Okie I forgive you     
  Yesterday at 05:19:44 PM
• okie the thread killer: i been busy all weekend, didn't know if it had been discussed or not...
  Yesterday at 05:12:42 PM
• Maynard: Why didn't you say that in the first place...... Jeeeeezzzz  
  Yesterday at 05:01:19 PM
• okie the thread killer: no, on flw...womand stabbed her husband, and apparently somehow the baby was stabbed also...friday evening or night i think.
  Yesterday at 04:54:02 PM
• Maynard: Well If you all are talking about the Brinktown Baby..... The Mother was shot not stabbed...
  Yesterday at 04:37:28 PM
• ratatattat: if so, mom and baby are both fine, physically
  Yesterday at 04:24:46 PM
• ratatattat: are you talking about the case in brinktown?
  Yesterday at 04:24:19 PM

[Maynard]

A mobile met lab in Dixon,,,who would've thunked that!

 This can't be possible because this would require multi-tasking
and i don't know to many scum bags that are into the drug scene that can drive and chew gum at the same time much less
run a meth lab in a car without blowing up thereselves 

[Rainbow]

How many crack heads does it take to operate a mobile meth lab?
impossible...cuz after they suit up and drive, they space off and forget what their original mission was and some weeks later when they get caught with the stuff in their car,,,they stand there scratching their heads going, "it ain't mine man, somebody else must've put it there."

[Valor7]

The Sheriff’s View #34, Week of August 18 to 22, 2008.
 
Welcome aboard one more time for another trip around Pulaski County with the deputies of the Pulaski County Sheriff’s Department. We had a busy week in many ways. Most of the news I can report today will be from all over the place. This column will cover a lot of ground.
 
The case number/calls for service count stands at 6,809 at 1:00pm on 8-16-08.  That is a 202 increase over last week. We continue to climb upward on calls. In other dispatch news we are running out of space to store the records that we need to back up the warrants and orders of protection that we have entered into the MULES system. This past week we obtained two very large filing cabinets for the storage of records. In order to make things fit we had to move the civil paper desk of Deputy Dumas out of dispatch and one of the new cabinets ended up in the main foyer. We need more space.
 
We have very good news today. As you may recall last week I mentioned that Commissioner Farnham was meeting with several other people to discuss the new generator for the entire courthouse. My understanding is that the Board of Directors of the Courthouse Fund have agreed to fund this project and the bids have been sent out. I am told we are asking for a 300KW generator unit that has an automatic start, automatic test and automatic maintenance run system built into the unit. This is something we have needed for many years now and I believe this is a major step forward for the county. I would like to express a very profound thank you to Commissioner Farnham and to the Courthouse Fund board members for their efforts. I cannot wait to see this unit in place and operational.
 
Next week will be a scream. We have two deputies going out of state for training. One deputy is still on light duty, one is still out on sick leave and now we find out that we will need a herd of extra bailiff’s next week. Not only will all three courtrooms in the courthouse have a trial going but we will also have one in progress at the St. Robert City Municipal Courtroom. Four courts and four judges complete with juries all in action at the same time. I remember people years ago that said we would never use the three courtrooms on third floor. They said we built the courthouse way to big and wasted money.  The simple fact is that 25 years later we are reaching the max use of the courthouse. So we built the courthouse to last and we did a good job. Maybe this means that there is hope for a new jail some day.
 
On Friday of this week we had a special detail at the Waynesville High School. The Secretary of the Army, Peter Geren, along with Rep. Ike Skelton and Missouri Lt. Gov. Peter Kinder made an appearance to take part in a special ceremony to sign the “Army Community Covenant”. For those of us in law enforcement it was a VIP protection detail. The Waynesville City Police were in charge since the school is in their city. I must say that Chief Carter and his staff put together a real good plan to deal with the situation. It was well organized and flowed smoothly as the detail took place. We had no incidents take place and very little confusion as to job assignments or what procedure to follow. Since we had officers from the Waynesville City Police, Pulaski County Sheriff’s Department, Missouri State Highway Patrol, and the Federal Protection Service on the grounds there was always a good chance for confusion to develop but we did not have any problems.
 
The Sheriff’s department supplied five deputies who were in fixed visible guard positions. We had another five deputies that were out of sight. We did not use the entire PCERT team but we did have a quick reaction force of five PCERT members on standby in a central school location as a heavy response team. Looking at the plan from an overview position I think we could have handled anything that happened.
 
We have another all-hands job assignment that is fast approaching our area and I believe I shall mention it today for the first time. We have the Tour de France, I mean the Tour de Missouri bicycle race that will pass through Pulaski County on Thursday September 11, 2008. This will be a world class, very fast moving, professional, bicycle race with national news importance. This race will be huge. The good news is that the citizens of Pulaski County will find themselves in a position to watch a world class racing event up close as they blast through our county.
 
The bad news is that area law enforcement officers are being tasked to create a “bubble” around the sections of the roads used for the race that will contain no vehicle traffic. Nor will there be any vehicles on the road shoulders. The racers will have the complete road width to use and they will have the right of way. The good news here is that the zero “traffic bubble” should only last about thirty minutes as they race through. Once they have passed your viewpoint if you are forced to follow the race path to get to your next destination you will probably be able to follow along at 25mph.
 
The timing of the race will be in the noon to 3:00pm time frame. The route will enter Pulaski County at Richland, Missouri, and travel along Mo. 133 to Rt. T. They will then go south on Rt. T to Mo. 17 in Waynesville. From Mo. 17 they will take Ichord Avenue to Polla Road where they will enter Ft. Wood. They will exit Ft. Wood into Phelps County. I am sure that much more information will appear in our local media as the event day draws closer. It will be an interesting day to watch a race but it will also be a major headache for us to close down Mo. 133 and Rt. T.
 
I believe that once again I have succeeded in completing another column. I would again ask that all of you drive very careful and stay very legal. We still do not need your jail business, we are still broke as a county, and our poor light bulb continues to barely glow.

[matrsnot]

Need and undercover bailiff?  Just make sure those racers are off the road before I go home.  They may some right of way, but those of us living up that road have a right to travel home.  WE pay the taxes for it you realize.      I ahve a difficult time understanding what makes Ike and the rest so important they deserve "protection".  None of them are as important to me as my family.  Seems a waste of your time JB and that of your officers to protect them.

[Valor7]

The Sheriff’s View #35, Week of Aug. 25 to 29, 2008.


Welcome to the column one more time. Where has this year gone? I cannot believe that today marks column #35 for this year. We have had a busy week in many respects and I do have a number of items to report. I am not quite sure where to start.

I was gone four days this past week to the annual Missouri Sheriff’s Association training which was held this year in St. Charles, Missouri. Because I was gone I may not be completely up on local events. I know that we had a very busy time with the circuit court. As many of you know the #1 job of the Sheriff’s office is to attend to the needs of the circuit court system. Under Missouri statute law that is our priority job. This past week we were busy with the court. We had two jury trials on the third floor of the courthouse plus a heavy semi-law day for a third judge. We also had another judge in action in the municipal courtroom at the St. Robert City Hall. We had thought the St. Robert court was going to be a real problem but I was told Friday during my return to bailiff duty that the defendant did not have to appear for that hearing and it only involved the Judge and attorneys. So we caught a break there.

As a result of this heavy dose of courtroom action we concluded a number of cases that had been in the judicial holding pattern for some time. Several of our inmates who had been held for some time ended their cases and we were able to send them on to the Missouri Department of Corrections on Friday afternoon. I feel positive the local media will be on top of those cases and if not then the news releases should come from the office of the Prosecutor.

This will also be good news for the county. The final settlement of the bills in these cases will result in a fairly large payment back to this poor cash strapped county. I believe that we sent four inmates to DOC on Friday. I believe we have a few more that will conclude sometime real soon and then they can go north. For the past several weeks we have been holding in the high sixties or low seventies on the inmate roster list. As of July 31, 2008, we had only paid out $190,986.67 in inmate board bills to the other counties that hold our inmates. This figure is not a reason to cheer because several very large inmate board bills were also pending on that date. I will try to get an update soon and present a more accurate inmate board figure.

The Missouri Sheriff’s Association conference was held in St. Charles, Missouri, from Aug. 17 to 21, 2008. As many of you know Missouri law requires that each year the Sheriff of the county must attend at least twenty hours of special training under the guidance of the Missouri Sheriff’s Association. These training sessions are designed to help the Sheriff operate a better office and to stay current with the latest laws that affect the Sheriff’s Office. If a Sheriff fails to attend this training then the county clerk withholds $2,000.00 from his yearly salary. This gives the Sheriff a powerful reason to attend the training.

Our training this time covered a lot of ground and I cannot share everything with you. One of the big problems we discussed was the new deputy sheriff salary bill.  There have been threats made to file legal actions to block the bill when it becomes law on 8-28-2008. We do not know if that will actually happen but if not we still have a financial problem with the new law and it now appears that the new law cannot change the deputies salary until 1-1-2010. The good news is that this bill will not impact the already poor financial condition of Pulaski County.

I understand that while I was gone the Pulaski County Commission told several people at their meeting that the Sheriff’s Office would lose at least two positions in the next budget year. Frankly I have been expecting this news for some time. In fact I have been predicting this news for about two years. The fact that we will have to lay off employees comes at a very bad time for Pulaski County. Our exploding population base has led to large increases in the calls for service that the citizens of Pulaski County have a right to enjoy. Our calls for service/case number count this morning (8-24-08) stands at 7,054. Just for grins I looked up column #35 for 2007 and the number at this time last year was 5,528. I do not believe it will take a large amount of concentration to understand the problem. Our current situation demands increased department growth and instead we will be faced with more finance cuts and decreases in manpower. This combination will not fly with the citizens of Pulaski County.

In other news we have a number of criminal cases on the stove that are cooking right now but they are not ready to present to the PA so we will have to wait on them. Capt. Cristoffer continues to work on the recently acquired cars now that cooler weather is here. He had a problem with one of the cars we already had in service where extra equipment was added and the electric wires were messed up. So Tom had to strip all of the wiring and completely redo the vehicle to eliminate the electrical short. Other than a few fairly minor vehicle problems we are looking good on the car front right now. I hate to make that statement because it seems every time in the past I have written something like that in the column the wreckers have lined up in front of the office to haul away our patrol cars by the dozen. Maybe I can get away with the remarks this time.

Once again I seem to be over the suggested word limit and I better close out for this week. Please drive careful and please stay very legal. We do not want and cannot afford your jail business. If you must go to jail please pick another county. Our poor battered light bulb can barely illuminate a small portion of the jail.

[Valor7]

The Sheriff’s View #36, for the week of Sept. 1 to 5, 2008.


Welcome aboard for one more trip around Pulaski County with the men and women of the Pulaski County Sheriff’s Department. We managed to stay busy this past week and even better we had one or two shifts with very little action. May that trend continue for quite some time in the future. We would love to have a recession in our police business.

But that probably will not happen. Our calls for service/case number count for today stands at 7,267. Once again just for grins I went back to column number thirty-six for the year 2007 and we had 5,885 calls at this same time last year. Thus you know why I wrote paragraph number one of this column. This does bring home a minor problem for me. Every time I go to a Waynesville-St. Robert Chamber of Commerce meeting I know I am the only businessperson in the room who wants to see a recession in business. The other chamber members just do not understand my position.

We have one funny story today. It seems that our dispatcher Cassidy was riding with a local Trooper last week. After a period of time they decided to stop at a local food establishment and the next thing you know our efficient dispatcher spots one of our well-known locals with an active felony warrant at a table nearby. You get three guesses what happened next. I understand they got their order “to go”.

While I was at Crocker Railroad Days on Saturday Chief Ishmael gave me a tour of their new incident command post. The 28-foot travel trailer was fully equipped with a lot of neat features. The Chief gave me the outline of the work they intend to do on the unit to make it a complete command post. My official position is that I am jealous. They have a very good working tool for their department and they achieved it at a very low cost. My congratulations on a job well done to the Crocker Police Department and to the Crocker City Council for their forward thinking and support for the police department.

Capt. Cristoffer has completed the wiring work on one car with a problem and it is back in service. He has two more to go but the heat continues to hold him back. I think I need to mention that as a department we save a ton of money every year because Capt. Cristoffer installs all the equipment and wires up all of our cars for operation. The only thing he does not fix are the radios. So today a congratulations message for a job well done goes to Capt. Tom Cristoffer our Chief Deputy for the extra work he does and the money he saves the department each year.

On Thursday of this past week Capt. Cristoffer and I went to Springfield, Missouri, for a meeting with officials from the Traffic Safety Division of the Missouri Department of Transportation. The topic was money, free money. And we won the lotto Thursday. We received a grant for $12,985.65. The money will be divided into two payments. One payment of about $7,000.00 will be for equipment that we do not have. The other payment of about $5,000.00 will be for overtime salary for deputies to work on special traffic enforcement operations.

The immediate question is why do I want to get in on special traffic operations. There are a number of reasons. First, the money is indeed free. We get back every cent we spend. This will help us acquire equipment that will help us do our job. Second, the overtime pay will give a small money boost to the deputies. When you consider the number of deputies we lose each year due to low pay any increase in their take home money helps us to retain deputies.

The issue of working on traffic enforcement is somewhat complex. As LE officers we are charged with the enforcement of all state laws, which does include traffic offenses. It is a rare day when our dispatch unit does not record citizen complaints about careless driving on our local roads. At this time our local Missouri State Highway Patrol zones are down to only seven Troopers so they need the help. Since the MSHP troops back us up all the time with our work I think we should do the same for them. According to the MODOT officials Pulaski County has recorded 95 fatalities in the past ten years. We clearly have a major problem on our hands that demands more work.

The last point is that once we have the equipment in our cars it will enable us to work traffic for years to come. And that is important to us because when you do work traffic you find all kinds of law violations that are well beyond the traffic issue. You find people who are wanted, people who are transporting large amounts of narcotics, or even narcotic related money in transport. You find stolen property, missing juveniles, and about anything else you can think of so in the end traffic enforcement can be a major tool for local law enforcement. And hopefully it will help save some of our citizens from traffic related fatal accidents.

I just thought of an example to share on the issue of traffic enforcement. I believe it was last week in Webster County on I-44 an officer made traffic stop on a vehicle for a rare offense. The stop was for driving below the minimum speed limit. On I-44 that is indeed a rare traffic stop and usually turns out to be the physically impaired older person or the drunk driver. This time it was the guy from the Springfield area who was wanted by the FBI for robbing twenty some banks in a multi state region. I never did learn why he was below the 40mph minimum speed limit on I-44 but what a catch for a simple traffic stop!


Once again I must close. I would again ask that all of you drive safe and please keep your actions legal. We do not want you in our jail. But if you just have to go to jail we will leave the light on for you.

[cowboy]

KY3 said the transmission was broken.

[Valor7]

Oh that's funny, robs 20 some banks and is driving a junk car!
What a way to get caught!
JB

[cowboy]

he did not want to be noticed in a new car?

[okie the thread killer]

But he could have bought transmission fluid? Sorry, couldn't help that one.

[Valor7]

The Sheriff’s View #37 for the week of Sept. 8 to 12, 2008.


Welcome to the column and welcome to another trip around Pulaski County with the members of the Pulaski County Sheriff’s Office. We actually had a quiet week and I hope printing these words does not put the jinx on us. It seems like every time in the past that I have reported a quiet week the next week exploded.

I would like to start off with the calls for service numbers for the week. As of the morning of Sept. 7, 2008 we stood at 7,472 calls. On Sept. 8, 2007 we stood at 6,076 calls for service. I will repeat what I said last week we are ready for the recession.

I also have the complete numbers for the end of August 2008 dispatch totals. We had 5,472 phone calls and 1,400 people at the front window. We had 100 animal calls, 32 domestics and 11 warrant arrests. This put us at 57,028 calls for the year and 19,015 people at the front window. Just for grins I pulled up the 2007 stats for the end of August and we stood at 44,437 telephone calls for the year. Since we only had 20,000 people at the front window for all of last year, the current number of 19,015 means we will establish another new record. I repeat bring on the recession.

In other news we have a car with a transmission problem this week. I thought I would include this news because it has actually been some time now since I did mention anything along these lines. Our maintenance program seems to be working well. I realize that as the cars get older we will have more problems but so far so good.

I was asked a question this past week that requires a deep answer. It was a question I probably should avoid but I have not passed on hard questions so far. The question was what do you do when the deputy makes a mistake? The answer is that we investigate the situation and try to understand what happened. We have a good bunch of employees and it is rare for them to make an out and out mistake. When this happens the corrective action can range from a simple verbal communication, to additional training, or a written warning, to a paid or unpaid suspension. The last step of course would be job termination. It all depends on the totality of the circumstances in the case at hand.

We usually find out about the full blown mistake because the deputy will contact us and confess long before the offended party contacts us. These cases are easy to resolve. The problem cases are those where the offended person demands action and the deputy has a different interpretation of the event and the law that applies. Some are resolved in favor of the deputy and some for the offended person. Again this depends on the circumstances of the case.

Another big area of concern are the cases were the offended party wants action but the law is not exactly on their side and the deputy should not act. I understand that this statement probably did not make sense so I will use some examples. A good first example would be the landlord-tenant dispute. The current Missouri law is slanted to the favor of the tenant. As a personal note I would not rent property to my own family with the laws currently in place. I have been told that many years ago the legal slant was to the landlord but I was not in the Sheriff business at that time so I cannot speak as to the past. Most of the complaints we get here are that the deputy refused to evict the tenant. There is a chain of progression you must follow in circuit court before you get the signed court order that allows us to evict the tenant. If you are a landlord I would strongly suggest that you have a very good understanding of the current Missouri law.

Another block of complaints come up when the offended person wants us to arrest Joe because Joe stole his motorcycle, car, horse, TV, or whatever. This usually turns out to be a case where Joe and Pete had an agreement as to the sale, loan, or gift of said stolen item and Joe suddenly stops payments or Joe refuses to give it back as requested. Pete wants him arrested. This is a civil dispute and needs to be resolved in court. The deputy who refused to arrest Joe was correct in his action. Pete however usually tells all who will listen that the Sheriff’s office did not help him.

But the worst cases are the child custody disputes. These have been so involved in legal fine print in the past that we have resorted to calling the Pulaski County Prosecutor for a legal ruling before we did or did not act on the offended persons demands. I had bailiff duty recently and I had the chance to listen to a circuit judge lecture a couple in a child custody dispute as to his judicial displeasure at watching adults use kids as pawns to gain an advantage in a legal proceeding. That seemed to sum up a lot of the bickering we see between adults when the child custody issues arise.

The bottom line is that if the deputy is wrong we will take corrective action. If the deputy is not wrong we will pat him on the back. Those calls that fall in the middle that are open to interpretation are the ones that drive us nuts. We frequently find ourselves in a position where our command staff is equally divided on the issue of right or wrong in many of these cases. My stand is that in these cases we will do our best to resolve these disputes in such a way as to improve the department for the future.

At this point I should close for the week. Please drive careful and please stay legal. We flat out do not want your jail business so stay away from us. Please, please find another jail to visit. But remember our light bulb continues to burn if you must visit.

[Yankee Trader]

Gee........  that looks familiar

I would estimate that we deal with 8-10 calls a week pertaining to this.....perhaps more.  We don't track that statistic.

[Valor7]

The Sheriff’s View #38 for the week of Sept.15 to 19, 2008.


Welcome aboard one more time for another trip around Pulaski County with the deputies of the Pulaski County Sheriff’s Department. We have been busy part of the time this past week and thankfully part of the time things slowed down for some much needed quiet time. What we do not need at this point would be another five or so inches of rain this weekend from hurricane Ike. If that happens, talk about us being up the creek without a boat and paddle, we would be in trouble. We do not have a boat. But I think I can also say that the Pulaski County Road and Bridge Department would be up the same creek as all of their roads are flood damaged one more time this year.

Our calls for service/case number count stands at 7,632 on Saturday the 13^th. They continue to rise higher each year. I had a question about the types of calls that go in these numbers and the answer would be everything we are called about by Pulaski County citizens. But, if you are interested in these types of calls you can visit the Pulaski County web where there is a topic that tracks these calls. We try to post the calls every week and you can see exactly what we are dealing with for each week. The topic can be found under, “weekly sheriff’s reports”.

I just came back from the Roby parade that was held this Saturday morning. While I was down there I had the chance to talk to Texas County Sheriff Carl Watson. We traded information on a number of topics and I commented on the fine 4WD vehicle he was driving. Carl told me the Texas County Commissioners gave him $100,000.00 in the 2008 budget to purchase vehicles and that he was going with a fleet of 4WD vehicles due to the nature of the roads in Texas County. I thought that was a fine idea because we (the PCSD) are very short on 4WD vehicles in our fleet. One of these winters we are going to get bit by the snow and ice due to our lack of 4WD cars.

I also thought the idea of $100,000.00 in the budget for a single year for the purchase of vehicles was a splendid idea. I can only pray that the idea is contagious. As you all know in the past four budget years the Pulaski County Commission has spent a total of $0.00 to purchase cars for us. We have done well with that amount. We were able to post a picture on the bulletin board to let the deputies know what a modern police car looks like.

One other item Carl and I discussed was the fact that the Texas County voters had passed a ½ cent sales tax to construct a Texas County Justice Center and they also passed a second ½ cent sales tax issue to equip and staff the new justice center, which includes a new jail. Their new jail will house 72 inmates. If we had a new 72-inmate jail Pulaski County would save at least $400,000.00 each year. Maybe some day we can follow the Texas County example.

In last weeks column I mentioned the car with the transmission problem and hoped I had not put the jinx on us because I wrote those words. Well, add a car with an engine problem to the mix this week. We do not yet know for sure what we will have to do on the engine but at this point it sounds like we will get to buy another used replacement engine.

We do have one major piece of good news at this point. As many of you know I have been pushing for a new generator that would be capable to supplying emergency power to the entire courthouse. At the Thursday meeting of the Pulaski County Commission this past week, the Commissioners approved a contract with the Cummins Company for a 300KW unit with all the automatic bells and whistles that were needed. They approved the winning bid, plus the cost of installation and a five-year extended warranty for the unit. Talk about a win/win situation for Pulaski County! This should have been done years ago.

I know that I have pushed for a new generator for the past two years and I have done this because the old generator simply cannot power the basic electric load that we need to keep our sheriff’s department running. Our miracle AFIS fingerprint machine goes down, the lights do not work, the heat and A/C do not work and our radios barely work. Besides putting the PCSD out of business we also face the fact that our inmates suffer during these time periods. As I have said before we have a duty to the inmates that we must fill. We do not have a choice here.

But the generator picture is also much larger. Our old generator does nothing for the rest of the courthouse. When the power goes out the intense daily business of the county comes to a halt. All of the county employees are put in a delay mode. So much of the county business is now completed by computer and without power the PC units do not work. The daily business of the county grinds to a halt and so do the financial fee’s that would have been collected by Pulaski County on completion of the work. The business of the circuit court demands that trials be recorded for review by the appeals court. If the inmates cannot be processed through the circuit court they do not go to the Missouri Department of Corrections (DOC) in a timely fashion and again Pulaski County does not collect, or there is a serious delay, in the collection of the inmate reimbursement fees from the state of Missouri. These amounts can be huge and we cannot afford any delay in the proper processing of the criminal case.

A final reason for the need of the generator is that the Pulaski County Courthouse also functions as an emergency shelter during a weather crisis. Without power our fellow Pulaski County citizens are literally in the dark basement and they are up the creek. So all things considered this is a major step forward for Pulaski County. I would like to thank Commissioner Bill Farnham for picking up this challenge and seeing it through to completion. I would also like to thank the members of the special courthouse utility board that oversee the funds that were used to add this enhancement to the courthouse. Thanks to these fine citizens we are moving toward the future for once.

I think I have written my way through another column. Once again I must ask you to please drive careful and stay legal. We do not want your jail business; any thoughts of a new inmate jail are only dreams at this point. But, our light bulb does continue to glow at this time.

[Valor7]

Well my column was right on the mark this week. We need the boat and a paddle. We have a number of county roads flooded over and closed. The old generator cannot power the office and keep us running. Even worse when the emergency power came on the magnet on the jail door locked us out of the jail and refuses to open. We are trying to break into the jail at this time. There are two water leaks into the jail from the roof. There is one leak into the radio room, right over the keyboard that seems to be slowing down the dispatch division.  But since we are on the “emergency power” the main radio does not work anyway worth a hoot. Ya! The boys and girls on duty are having a great time.

[mark]

Does that mean I can't go to jail today?

[Valor7]

OK, crisis is more or less over and I am back home. We got into the jail. Speaker in window is out. Main phone is out. Modem for e-mail and I-net should be up shortly. Door locks, several are shut will not open. Several are open will not shut. Sunday visitation for the inmates has been cancelled for today. All kinds of service techs are running around the office. The 96-hour mental commit has finally left going to Joplin. We were turned down by our assigned mental health hospital in St. Louis. (They are full) All in all we had a busy week this morning. City power is back on.
JB

[Valor7]

Does that mean I can't go to jail today?

   As of now you can.
JB

[m65014]

That what happens when you only have a single track mind. There should be at least two back up plans so that you don't have to be down. As for as the leaks I believe there is 1.4 million or so in courthouse improvement fund use it.     

[Eeyore]

If it were up to him - I believe he would.  Who has control of these funds?

That what happens when you only have a single track mind. There should be at least two back up plans so that you don't have to be down. As for as the leaks I believe there is 1.4 million or so in courthouse improvement fund use it.     

[Lepard LLC]

You missed the point, the leak is not in the Commissioners office.. Had the leak been in the Commissioners office, it would be fixed immediately.

That what happens when you only have a single track mind. There should be at least two back up plans so that you don't have to be down. As for as the leaks I believe there is 1.4 million or so in courthouse improvement fund use it.     

[mark]

   As of now you can.
JB

Think I'll try not to arrested anyway! LOL

[Eeyore]

Thanks all the same, but I sleep better with my own pillow.
I'm glad you got the power sorted out for now!  Good job.

[Valor7]

The Sheriff’s View #39 for the week of Sept. 22 to 26, 2008

Welcome aboard one more time. We shall try to make another trip around the county with the members of the Pulaski County Sheriff’s Department. Hopefully the trip will be full of good information. Our case number/calls for service count stands at 7,881 as of 2:45pm on 9-21-08.

We had a busy week with a number of events. The biggest time investment for this past week was a heavy dose of SWAT training. A group of fourteen SWAT teams from the central part of Missouri got together for some very realistic training. The organized training events ran for three days. On Sept. 16^th, the Pulaski County Sheriff’s Department hosted a sniper course at our range. The snipers were put through exercises designed to test their stamina, shooting skills, and stealth approach to an objective. Some of the exercises were hard to do and some were tricky. As an example one session required the sniper to take ten precision shots at a target about 150 yards away. The officers in this event were working against a moving clock with a time limit and were scored for accuracy. Did I mention that they had to sprint 150 yards between each of the shots in the mid day sun?

While the sniper training was going on here the Camden County Sheriff’s Department had the entry team members at their range. The entry teams were also put through a series of live fire exercises with a few tricks thrown at them. I could not make it to their range so no first hand example from there.

Then on Sept. 17 & 18, all fourteen teams reported to the Kemper Military Academy at Booneville, Missouri. The exercises there required building entry and hostage rescue. My understanding from the comments I have heard so far was that the planners of the exercises were devious folks. What the team was told they would find inside the building was not exactly what they found. The “exact” details were even worse than they expected. Or better said the exercises were as tricky as the real life situations SWAT teams have encountered in the past. So the training was excellent in nature. Members of the Pulaski County Emergency Response Team (PCERT) took part in all three days of the training.

While the SWAT team was away we were somewhat short on working deputies here so I pulled three days of road duty. I can now tell you from first hand experience that our roving bands of car thieves are still at work. I had to investigate the theft of items from two vehicles parked in front of the owner’s homes in a nice subdivision. So once again I will ask you all to lock your cars and if your dogs bark late at night, take a quick look out the window at your car. The car description/license plate number you see may make us very happy.

The Saturday Sept.20^th edition of the Daily Guide carried an article where the Pulaski County Commission was reviewing budget figures from the sheriff’s office. They quoted 14 employees who had quit us so far this year. These 14 employees had a vacation and comp time payout of $49,700.00 due to them at the time they quit. As many of you will recall I have mentioned time and time again the fact that we are on a training cycle/overtime cycle with our employees. We have two divisions within our department that are expected to operate 24/7/365 with only five employees. You cannot do that and not accumulate excessive overtime. When any employee takes off more than the regular two days off then some other employee is working overtime to cover the position.

When an employee takes a vacation, gets married, quits without notice, has a medical operation or whatever, then you are faced with the problem of finding a new employee. You must then train the new employee to take their place in the five-person rotation. The entire time you are finding and training the new person the rest of the unit is racking up major overtime hours. The same thing happens with the vacation time. When they cannot take time off the vacation time mounts. Then when the employee quits we have a major payout to complete.

This cycle will continue. Unless we get more employees added so that we can spread the time load around. There are those who say eliminate the work. Sorry, but the jail will not go away so we will continue to need those five people. If the jail did close we would need them even worse to help transport the inmates all over the place. We cannot eliminate the work.

I have written in my column many times now that we are no longer the nice rural community on I-44 near Ft. Wood. We are an urban city area and the big city problems are piling up on us each day. We have no real choice but to expand the department size. The good old days of two deputies per shift being considered as an adequate response cover for the entire county are over. Five people to handle the jail and five people to dispatch are also inadequate. One process server position is a joke and grossly inadequate to handle the job. We must expand.

As we moved into the month of September we have already reached our 2008 budget limit of $300,000.00 for inmate board. The next four months will move us to a solid position on top of the red budget ink. I do not have the latest budget figures at home with me as I write this column so I will take a wild guess that we will add at least $100,000.00 more to the inmate board bill this year. I will try to give you a more refined answer next week after I review the yearly figures.

I will get off my soapbox since I seem to have reached the magic number count for the column this week. Please remember to drive careful and please stay very legal. The inmate board bill is high enough right now; we do not need your business. The light bulb continues to glow.

[Law101]

It is a shame that so many from the Dept. have left.  I think part of it is because they see no change in pay, benefits, or working conditions in the near future.  Does the "ship" have to actually sink before the Commissioners set about a rescue plan??

[Yankee Trader]

It is a shame that so many from the Dept. have left.  I think part of it is because they see no change in pay, benefits, or working conditions in the near future.  Does the "ship" have to actually sink before the Commissioners set about a rescue plan??

Law you hit the nail on the head.  Very well said.  We are down to 3 dispatchers again.  We have 1 in training and a part-timer that is helping but she too is leaving because of PCS.  The OT pile is building fast for us considering we each are working 64 hrs a week. 

[Valor7]

The Sheriff’s View #40 for the week of Sept. 29 to Oct. 3, 2008.

Welcome aboard for one more trip around the county with the members of the PCSD. We have had a busy week and I shall try to cover a number of topics of interest in this column. We had a letter to the editor in the Daily Guide that questioned the service fees charged by the Sheriff’s Office for the service of civil process. We recently raised our rate from $50.00 to $100.00.

Under current Missouri law service fees are set by Missouri statute and not by the Sheriff.
The Missouri legislative body recently passed a new law which was signed by the governor. This law mandates a $10.00 increase in all service fees payable to a special fund under the control of the state treasurer. The money is paid upfront to the state treasurer. The law took effect 8-28-2008. The IRS recently released new official mileage fee figures that should be charged on the business service of paper. These figures were higher than what we had been charging. Together, many these changes totaled more than our previous service fee position of $50.00.

The Pulaski County Sheriff’s Office receives civil papers from private persons and attorneys located all over the United States. At this time we have over 200 people or law firms who have failed to pay their service fee bills in years past. We have already served the papers, they do not respond to the bill.

We modified our business position and we are now just like the gasoline stations who demand a payment prior to you pumping the gasoline. If you want your paper served; pay the service fee up front and we shall serve the paper. This position protects the citizens of Pulaski County from footing the bill for a private paper service. It costs us deputy salary time and gasoline mileage to serve the papers. As a county I doubt that many of you care if Mr. & Mrs. Smith get a divorce and I doubt that any of our taxpayers want to pay the bill so their private feud papers can be served.

Besides we also do refunds. As an example if your paper requires a service fee of $50.00 and the mileage figures added another $20.00 for a final total of $70.00 then we refund the other $30.00 back to you. The check is issued by our lead deputy/secretary and I must initial the check as a backup.

Our calls for service/case number count stands at 8,096 as of 4:41pm on 9-28-08. We also had hostile questions directed at these numbers this week in another Daily Guide article. The calls for service/case number count is simply a way to try and measure the amount of work that is requested of the deputies from our department. Any request for help or a job or a criminal case is assigned a number when we send a deputy on the call. We do not count telephone calls to the office or people who visit us at the front window unless a deputy must get involved with some kind of case. Those of you who read this column already know that we track the telephone calls and window visits on a another tally sheet.

An example would be if the MSHP asked us to check on a vehicle broken down on I-44. The deputy must usually drive a number of miles to arrive on scene. In the past our officers have discoved domestic assaults in progress when they arrived. They have located stolen cars this way and they have helped a bunch of stranded people. They have also found nothing, the car had moved. If the Waynesville Police request help at a domestic and we send an officer that call gets a case number. We can then account for the deputies time and effort. If something happens and the deputy must make an arrest at the scene then they already have a case number assigned for the arrest paperwork.

Why do I do this count? We must have some way to measure our work load. Some way to determine how it changes from year to year. Some way to show the public how hard we work. Unforunately I do not have a bunch of extra employees who have the time to sit around and record every little statistic like they do in baseball. So we try to keep it simple. For those who are interested you do not have to file a Sunshine Law request to see these numbers. We have been posting them online for most of this year. Type in Rick Lepard’s  Pulaski County Web Dot Com on your PC search engine, then look under the Sheriff’s Weekly Reports and click on the week you want to examine. Every case number for that week will come up for display and you can read the nature of the calls for yourself including date, time, address, and disposition. The information has not been hidden from you and it is not misleading.

This week we have done a bunch of maintenance work on our cars. We made one burglary arrest. We recovered one stolen vehicle with an arrest. We have recovered property taken from a car break in and that case is still ongoing. As I type these words our deputies are tied up with a case involving serious injury to a small child. If appropriate, I will put out a news release on this case later.

We also took approximately seven people to the Missouri Department of Corrections to begin their prison sentences this past week. We have a murder trial that will begin on Monday the 29^th in our circuit court. We shall have extra bailiff’s present. On the first day I will not be one of the bailiff’s because I have my our court subponea for Laclade County Circuit Court that day on an assault case I helped the Laclede County Sheriff with in 2006.

Once again I appear to have written my way through another column. Please do not commit a crime in Pulaski County and get arrested. We cannot pay to house you for the rest of the year. The budget line for inmate board is currently at zero. Please drive careful and again please stay legal. Our poor overworked light blub is in bad shape.

[Valor7]

The Sheriff’s View #41 for the week of Oct. 6 to 10, 2008.


Welcome aboard one more time for another trip around Pulaski County with the deputies of the Pulaski County Sheriff’s Office. We had a busy week in some ways and we had a shift or so that was very quiet. We did enjoy the quiet shifts but we also had a suspicion that we would pay later for the quiet time and that’s how it worked out in the end.

As of 9:35am on Oct. 4, 2008, our calls for service/case number count stands at 8,268. Last Sunday the count was 8,096. This means we had 172 jobs in six days that tied up a deputy for a period of time and some of those jobs involved criminal cases. It does not mean we had 172 active criminal cases suddenly appear for us to work. As I have said before, the count, under my guidelines, is only intended to be a measure of the workload that we experience. It is not intended to measure the crime rate. The only possible way to measure the crime rate would be to look at the Uniform Crime Report numbers that are reported by every police agency in the United States to the Federal Bureau of Investigation for their annual report to congress.

There have been many questions of late as to the crime rate in our county and I made the mistake of doing some research in the Uniform Crime Reports (UCR’s) that are submitted by all police agencies in the county. In order to accurately explain these numbers I will need far more space than this column allows. There are a lot of factors that must be explained to fully understand the numbers and the UCR reporting guidelines.

Having said that I will use a quick set of numbers. In the year 2001 the Pulaski County Sheriff’s Department reported a total of 332 major crimes in rural Pulaski County. All county police agencies added together (includes PCSD) reported a total of 819 major crimes within the entire county. And all police agencies reported a total of 1,656 arrests for (all felony and many but not all misdemeanors) crimes in the county.

In 2007 the numbers were all PCSD major rural crimes at 370, all agencies added together stood at 959 major crimes. The total arrests for all agencies stood at 2,218 for 2007. I believe a comparison between the numbers quoted will give you some idea of the progression of the crime rate in Pulaski County. But I will also caution you that there are many factors that play into this UCR system and before you begin to argue one viewpoint or another you will need to understand the system. In looking at the numbers I find there is an ebb and flow to the numbers up and down. My immediate question was did the crime rate ebb and flow or was the reporting of the UCR’s somewhat flawed at the time? Like I said there are many factors that can come into consideration on this topic. I will complete a full report on the UCR’s for the local media to use as soon as I can find the time.

On a related topic connected to the case numbers I must confess to a bit of an Oops! In last weeks column I told you we had been posting the entire case number list, on a weekly basis, on Rick Lepard’s Pulaski County Web Dot Com. I invited you to view the complete weekly case number assignments and make up your own mind as to the nature of the calls for service/case number count. At the time I wrote those words I did not know that when Rick’s computer server crashed several weeks ago the crash wiped out all of the weekly reports up to the date of the crash. Only the reports posted after the date of the crash were open to view. Once we found this out we sent Mr. Lepard a repeat of all the reports that had been wiped out and at this time I believe the weekly reports are open for view from January of 2008 to present. I again invite you to view the weekly reports and make up your own mind on this issue.

In other news we had a busy time this past week. As reported in last week’s column we were working a case involving serious injury to a 13-month-old child. We have a person charged with child abuse in connection with this crime. I have already sent out a news release on this case. Between the HIPPA laws and the desire not to prejudice the criminal case there is little I can say in print on this case. The child remains in very serious condition at this time.

We had one brief bit of humor this past week when we received a message from an out of state police agency as to the location of one of their wanted fugitives believed to be in our county. As our deputies headed out to Richland to find him, the suspect walked into the sheriff’s office to ask some questions. Oops!

This past week a reporter from TV station KRCG-13 in Jefferson City interviewed our Presiding Commissioner Bill Ransdall and me on the issue of inmate board bills. Between the two of us I think we managed to give the reporter a pretty good story that explained the issue very well. Especially since Mr. Ransdall has some special experience on this topic because he used to chair the appropriations committee for the house of representative at the state level. The bottom line here is that I do know that we both share the view that the state must raise the inmate daily rate for state payments.

I see that once again I am over the magic number of words and I must close out the column. I will again ask you to drive with care and to stay legal. We do not want your jail business. Our poor overworked light bulb has been overwhelmed these past few weeks.

[Valor7]

The Sheriff’s View #42 for the week of Oct. 13 to 17, 2008


Welcome aboard for another trip around Pulaski County with the deputies of the Pulaski County Sheriff’s Department. I do not want to put the jinx on us but we actually had a half way quiet week for once. I am sure we will pay for the quiet time that we enjoyed but it did feel good at the time.

I believe that I will start with the September 2008 dispatch totals. The dispatch crew was busy with 4,586 telephone calls and 1,020 people at the front window. They logged 60 animal calls and 25 domestic calls. They also found 6 people at the window with warrants. Once again the dispatch crew had a busy month although they are down by several arrests this month.

We have a bit of a crisis in dispatch this month. One of our dispatchers decided to get married and have a honeymoon. While that is great for her it also cuts the manpower down and everyone else will get to work some extra hours. We do not need the extra hours for several reasons. The county does not need them because they cannot pay for the extra hours. The employees do not need them because they want some time off duty with their families. Efficiency goes down when employees are always tired. And after a period of time the job gets to be a whole lot less fun and people start thinking about leaving. Then we get hit one more time with the comp time payout and the start of a new training cycle for the new employee.

How do we combat this cycle? Simple, we can eliminate the job requirements or we can hire more employees to spread the workload around and reduce the forced comp time accumulation. At this time neither one will happen. We cannot eliminate the job itself, the Sheriff’s department cannot operate without our crew of dispatchers. At the same time the budget will not allow for the addition of new employees. So we are doomed to continue this vicious cycle into the uncertain future.

Had the Pulaski County Commissioners placed the ½ cent sales tax on the ballot in 2006 and stood behind the issue to help assure passage at the ballot box we would not be in the deep financial trouble that we face today. Would that sales tax pass today? I do not know but I also know that we cannot continue to reduce services as a county or as a sheriff’s department and continue to have happy citizens. At some point everyone must realize that you get what you pay for.

I have been asked the same question many times now; something along the line of do you enjoy the job of sheriff? The answer is yes. This is a complex and fascinating job. You never quite know what you will be doing next. As an example this Sunday morning I was at Grace Covenant Christian Center for the worship service and my assignment was to take part in a small skit they put on for the congregation. I am told my acting skills won an Oscar, well not exactly, but at least nobody threw anything at me. I consider that a good showing since I completely forgot to deliver one of my lines in the drama.

So why was I at the church? Many of you will remember that for the last several years now the Grace Covenant Christian Center has held a “Hallelujah Harvest” near the end of October. This year’s theme is, “Historical figures who served God and country.” You may also remember that the proceeds from this benefit in past years have gone to the Pulaski County Sheriff’s Department for the purchase of equipment.

We have purchased LED emergency light bars and laptop computers with these funds in the past. This year I believe that we shall continue with the installation of as many in car radio repeaters as we can purchase with these funds. At this time not quite half of our cars already have the repeater system installed. On those calls were several deputies are dispatched to the call it is a fair bet that at least one car will have the system installed. And we have modified all of our portable units to operate off the system. The problem comes about when we have a lone deputy responding to the call and his/her car does not have a repeater system. For the working deputy who may be the only person on the danger scene I believe that a repeater can be a lifesaver. So I believe that we shall use the proceeds this year to equip more cars with repeaters.

I would like to invite everyone to visit the Grace Covenant Christian Center at 25715 Highway 17, Waynesville, Missouri, on Friday October 31^st between the hours of 6:00 to 9:30pm. They will have good food for all and great fun for the kids. The proceeds from the evening of fun go to a worthy organization that needs a lot of help.

The members of the Pulaski County Commission asked me to meet with them last Thursday. The short story of the situation was that they do not want to borrow money to meet the current budget crisis so they asked if I could raise $137,000.00 before the end of the year. My answer was no. So they asked me to cut way back on the car washes for our vehicles and to make any other cuts that I could find. I understand their frustration with the budget but we have deep problems with that budget. As an example our inmate board funds are already used up for this year. We are already over budget and the next few months will increase the deficit. It does not help that at budget time in January of 2008 the Commissioners cut the board bill $58,000.00 below what we actually spent in 2007. Our chance of being under budget with the board bill for 2008 was zero.

I have advocated for a sales tax since 2005 and I shall continue to press for the tax for the good of the sheriff’s department in particular and the betterment of the Pulaski County financial picture as a whole. We cannot continue to cut essential services.

I believe that I am over for this column so I shall bail out of the writing process. Please drive careful and keep your actions legal. We do not want your jail business. We did pay the electric bill and our poor overworked light bulb continues to glow.

[Law101]

I sometimes wonder what type of crisis it will take to wake the Commissioners and the residents of Pulaski County up.  My mother used to say that if "you don't listen, then your just going to have to feel."  I don't mind the fact that the Commissioners have to "feel" because of their lack of foresight and action but I hate the fact a hard working department like the PCSD has to feel.  I know it won't be long before the County residents are also impacted and "feeling."  Lack of adequate LE will not attract new businesses or residents to our county.  It will attract and increase crime!

[Maynard]

plus karma lois and you to JB.