| Sheriff’s View #44 for Oct. 26 to 30, 2009 |
By: Sheriff J.B. King
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Posted: Wednesday, October 28, 2009 12:13 am
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Sheriff J.B. King
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Welcome aboard on a Sunday morning filled with rain once again. We have had a busy week, and for that matter, we have had a busy Sunday morning. As you may recall, we are once again working on a traffic enforcement overtime grant sponsored by the Highway Safety Division of the Missouri Department of Transportation. This morning, one of our deputies chose Highway 28 for a traffic enforcement area on his day off. He chose wisely. He was able to make a number of traffic cases but he kept driving up on vehicle accidents. After he found the second wreck within less than two hours of each other our local Missouri State Highway Patrol troopers asked him to disappear and stop finding wrecks for them to work. My impression was that he did choose the correct road to work.
We had a major car chase a few days ago that made the news. As our deputies drove up to the house where a domestic incident had been reported, a suspect armed with a shotgun fled the scene in a vehicle. A pursuit followed that traveled a number of gravel roads in the Buckhorn area and the chase ended with a vehicle accident. The suspect was taken into custody and five felony charges were filed on him by the Pulaski County Prosecutor.
The miracle of the day was that none of our vehicles involved in the chase broke down during the chase. In fact, we appear to be doing OK so far this week. We had three vehicles that went out of service the prior week that were returned to us this past week and at this time I think all of our cars are on the road. But just as sure as I write these positive words, I have put a jinx on one of our cars and it will fail soon.
I do not have any updates on the federal grant programs. We are still waiting for the word from the feds that we can begin to draw down the money involved in the grants. As soon as I get that word I will pass on the information.
Since the economy went south over the entire nation, we have suffered an increase in our reported crimes against property. We appear to have several groups of burglars and plain old-fashioned thieves working throughout the county. One area that has been hard-hit is the Buckhorn, Laquey, South 17 and Turkey Ridge neighborhoods. If you are a homeowner in that area and you see anything you think looks suspicious, we would ask that you give us a call. If you think you have information that might assist us in cracking some of these cases, please call 774-6196 and speak to Maj. Cristoffer, my chief deputy. I would love to say more on this topic, but I have learned the hard way that the idea of holding your cards close to the chest is the right way to go on cases like this.
Our jail roster on Sunday has 64 names listed. At this time, 30 of them are here at the Pulaski County Jail and we have 34 more housed at other locations. This is a typical day for us and it means that we are only paying out $1,190 of our taxpayer money to other agencies to house our inmates for today.
Our calls for service/case number count figures for 2009 are well down from last year at this time. We currently stand at 7,545 for the year. One of the main reasons that we are down is a reflection of the fact that many calls that are assigned a number are self-generated by our deputies. Since we were cut two deputy slots during the 2009 budget year, that would mean the self-generated numbers would drop.
On a funny note, I do not know if anyone here in the local area gave any attention to the jail feasibility study I presented to the Pulaski County Commission the prior week but I can say that every jail building company or jail architect in the multi-state region around Missouri heard about the news. It seems that all I have done this week is answer or return calls to these folks interested in building us a jail. If the Pulaski County Commission ever decides to build us a jail they will have plenty of jail building folks to choose from.
Once again I seem to be at the requested word length for the column. Once again I will ask that you all drive with care and keep your actions legal. We do not need your car wreck or your jail business. But if you just have to visit the jail, the lights are on.
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