| Sheriff’s View #20 for May 11 to 15, 2009 |
By: Sheriff J.B. King
|
Posted: Monday, May 11, 2009 3:30 pm
|
Sheriff J.B. King
|
|
|
Welcome aboard one more time. It has been a busy week for us. The jail is one area that has kept us very busy. One inmate bolted for freedom this last week when he was at the local doctor’s office being treated. We had a rather intense manhunt in the local area for this inmate. We got him back fairly quickly, about 90 minutes after he ran. This escape attempt will probably result in all inmates being leg-shackled on trips to the doctor’s office in the future. I have already told the staff to order the extra leg chains. We are still reviewing some other aspects of the escape to see if we need to change other procedures.
We had two other inmates who wanted some time away from the jail and both faked serious injuries in order to be taken to the hospital. Both incidents tied up manpower and resulted in large ambulance and hospital bills. We have advised the county prosecutor of these incidents and we are planning a response that the inmates will not enjoy. I still hope some day to get an inmate health care company in our jail. One of the major benefits of such a move would be that trained medical professionals would made the decisions about sending an inmate to the hospital for emergency treatment instead of our jail staff being forced to make the decision. I see this as a win-win move in all respects.
The dispatch unit has fallen behind on validations for the MULES system and we have had to take extra steps to help cure this problem. The four people we have cannot do the 24/7/365 job requirements for dispatch. We must have help in the dispatch unit. Right now we are adding a lot of overtime hours to the county financial liability.
During the past several weeks I have written quite a bit in the column about our grant applications. As it stands now, I have already submitted three grants for a total of 10 new employees if we are lucky. At this time I have two more grants that are almost done and ready for submission. On one grant I need the signatures of the county commissioners and it is ready to submit. On the other grant, I need their signatures and one more bit of correct information and it too will be ready to submit.
We are currently working on one Missouri Department of Transportation traffic enforcement grant and I am ready to apply for the next MoDOT grant. We use the money they give us to work the deputies on their day off for extra pay. We have at least one DWI and a couple of drug felonies as a result of the traffic stops so far. I suspect there will be more such cases made as the deputies continue to work.
The current case number/calls for service county stands at 3,121. The dispatch unit has reported an increase in the number of domestic violence calls over the past few weeks. I would love to give you the dispatch unit numbers for April of 2009 but the dispatch supervisor has been busy working on MULES validations and has not had time to get the April numbers ready for release. Since the number one priority right now is the validations you will have to wait for the April numbers.
We have made additional progress on our vehicles and they are almost ready for service. This would go much faster if we could pay a mechanic to do the work but we do not have the money so we wait and wait and wait to get them in service.
I shall close early this week because I have no other information to pass along to the column readers. As usual I would ask that you drive with care and stay legal. We do not want your jail business but the light is on!
Click here to comment for local opinion |
|
Printer-friendly format
|
|
