Sheriff J.B. King
Posted: Tuesday, June 2, 2009 6:12 am

Sheriff J.B. King

Welcome aboard once again for another column full of thrills and chills. Well, maybe not quite that dramatic in nature, but hopefully a column full of good information.

Today I am not sure where to start but we have to start somewhere.

One of the perils of being busy is that you do not always get the whole story. I know that on Friday several of our deputies assisted another law enforcement agency from the Texas County area with an investigation into the theft of an ATV. I also know that our deputies located the stolen ATV along with a number of suspects. I also heard one other radio transmission that they had recovered the stolen wheels. But I have not yet received the written report so I am not exactly sure what happened.

The calls for service/case number count stands at 3,807 today. One year ago this week it stood at 4,319 so our roughly 500-case decrease in case numbers continues to hold steady for this year. Hopefully this will continue to hold steady for the rest of the year.

This past week, I had a number of column readers ask questions as to what was going on at the Waynesville police station one evening last week. I would like to remind everyone that one year ago during the column for the first week in June, I announced that the Pulaski County Emergency Response Team (PCERT) was ready to go and on duty. At the time I believe I mentioned that they would continue to do realistic training events to keep in form. And this past week one of those training sessions was held at the Waynesville Police Department.

The training stressed the assault phase of an operation in that building and one critical component was the “officer down” drill that was included with the assault. I will not detail exactly how or what the deputies did during this training but since I had one other question as to why there were so many “spectators” watching the training, I will tell you that they were not spectators — they were the students in the latest paramedic training course.

After the “wounded” officer was dragged from the building, the paramedic students were to perform their medical assessment of the officer. The combined training session went very well in my view. I was quite impressed by the very short elapsed time the deputies used on the very first cold assault, start to finish, without any prior rehearsal time.

On Saturday, we teamed up with the Shop with a Cop program at the Waynesville Summer Jam celebration. We had a number of information pamphlets to give away on display along with our full-size calendars. The huge pollen count in the air drove me home early but it sure did look like a lot of people were at the Summer Jam and they were having fun.

We have lost the services of one of our senior dispatchers, Cassidy Sinden. Our local “friends” from the Missouri State Highway Patrol have lured her away to work for them at Troop I as a radio dispatcher. We wish her the best in her new career.

We did luck out this time because her replacement is one of our former dispatchers, Ben Wilson, who has returned to us. This great news means that for once we do not have to train a radio replacement. This will save us a ton of overtime cost and training effort.

Our newest rookie dispatcher, Adam Wolfe, starts on his solo time Monday morning of this next week. We cut his training time short because he was doing very well and because we desperately need the deputy who has been filling in as a dispatcher back on the road crew. Those of us on the day crew Monday will just have to remember that Adam is new to the job and we need to take it easy on him if possible.

Once again it is time to close out the column for this week. Our total inmate count is still in the low sixties so we do not need you in our jail. Please drive with care and please keep your actions legal. But if you just have to mess up our jail staff stands ready to work with you and the lights are on.

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