Sheriff J.B. King

I find that I must correct myself on one point from last week’s column. I had reported we arrested the next to last defendant from our last drug roundup. Oops, my count was off, I forgot one other person from the Springfield area we needed to find. We got him this past week and now we are down to one person left and he is still out of state. I guess I need to be more like Santa, you know, having a list and checking it twice. Please do not laugh at the Santa reference after all that is only eight weeks away. Which is another way of saying the year is almost over.

Our calls for service/case number count was 8,914 for last week’s column and for this week ‘s column the number is 9,142. That means we had a 228 increase this past week. Just for grins I checked last years columns and I find that on 12-30-2007 the count stood at 9,185. So yes we will set a new high record for calls this year. Business is booming and the demands for the deputy’s services are at an all time high. I will also predict that next year will be even worse.

In other news the Hallelujah Harvest at the Grace Covenant Christian Center Friday night appeared to be a squealing success. I use the word squealing because a lot of little ghouls and goblins were working up a big sweat as they squealed their way through the various games and inflated obstacle courses. There were lots of squeals, especially if they came down that final steep wall headfirst.

The food was good, the fun was good, and once again I would like to thank the Grace Covenant Christian Center for their generous charity towards the Pulaski County Sheriff’s Department. I had a person ask me this past week why I had mentioned the Center so many times in my column. The answer is simple while I do not know exactly what the final donation from this year’s event will be the Center will have donated close to or over $10,000.00 to the Pulaski County Sheriff’s Department from the past three years.

That money figure represents a lot of extra equipment that we will use for the common good of the citizens of Pulaski County. That represents equipment that the Pulaski County budget could not purchase for our use. That represents equipment we needed but were going to do without because the budget failed us. So in the end it is not just the Sheriff’s deputies that benefit from this donation it is as I said, every citizen in Pulaski County has benefited. Besides if your group or church does the same thing I will mention your group or church several times in future columns.

We have one patrol car down with a blown engine at this time. Major Cristoffer is in the process of switching the equipment from this car over to another vehicle that is in slightly better shape. Hopefully we can find a good engine somewhere and return the blown vehicle to service. But then again placing a “new” used engine in a car with 200,000 plus miles is kind of a waste of time. If we had money to replace the car we should junk this heap but we do not have money in the budget for cars so we need to try and keep the car in service.

Our jail inmate count was down in the mid 40’s two weeks ago. This past week it slowly climbed back to the low 50’s and by next week we probably will be back to the mid 60’s count. It would be nice it we could get the count down and keep it down.

I believe that I have written my way through another column. So once again I would ask you to please drive careful and please stay legal. We do not want or need your jail business. Please go to jail in another county. But if you must visit us we will leave the light on for you.