| Sheriff’s View #43 for Oct. 19 to 23, 2009 |
By: Sheriff J.B. King
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Posted: Monday, October 19, 2009 2:54 pm
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Sheriff J.B. King
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Welcome aboard one more time for another visit with the deputies of the Pulaski County Sheriff’s Office. We had a busy week and we hope the weather holds on for some time to come since we have discovered that we like the sun. I hope my column today will contain news that you will find of interest.
On the car front, one of our new deputies probably felt snake-bit this week. Her assigned car went down and had to take a trip to the car hospital, so we gave her the only spare car left to finish out the day and the spare car went “boom” on her, so she sent the second car for repairs. I have worked it out that we usually have two older unassigned spare cars parked at the office for use. We never know when a reserve might show up who needs a car or one of the bailiffs might get free to serve some papers, so I thought two spares would handle this problem. However, much of the time I have found I was wrong and we actually need three spares. The on-duty vehicle breakdowns continue to eat up the spare cars.
We have good news on the car front. We picked up the “new” 2005 vehicle with 99,000 miles from Sellers-Sexton Ford. We have started to install the needed equipment into the vehicle. The only problem here was I bought a dark blue color vehicle and our standard marking design will not show up on this vehicle, so we will make it a semi-marked package. We are sending a team to Kansas City on Monday to pick up our other successful bid and that 2005 vehicle will join us shortly. The second car will be white in color. It will be fully marked.
I had a question several weeks ago about the federal grant process and the question was actually a series of questions so I will try to answer those questions today.
The grant process starts when I find a grant with a specific purpose and requirements that will cover a need that we have. It is up to me to find the grant. Then I must work up the reasons and justifications why we should be awarded the grant. The next step is the actual writing of the grant and for that I can call on the Meramec Regional Planning Commission and Kelly Sink-Blair, one of their best grant writers, for writing help. Once Kelly and I work out the format and other needs, she actually writes the grant applicatiion. Once she has written the grant, I must review the grant for accuracy. Then I must submit the grant to the feds.
If at a later time we are awarded the grant, the authority for the actual acceptance of the grant on the behalf of the county rests with the Pulaski County Commission. Once they have accepted the grant and faxed that acceptance back to the feds, they send us a message that we can begin the financial drawdown on the specific grant. At that point the reporting requirements for the grant shift to Pulaski County Clerk Diana Linnenbringer as the financial point of contact, who becomes the person responsible for the reports until the grant has been successfully concluded.
I suppose the feds designed this system to help prevent fraud or waste or maybe even to keep a rogue sheriff or police chief from inflicting a financial nightmare on their governmental unit without their knowledge. The current system does have a series of checks and balances built into the process and in the long view I suspect they are needed.
This Saturday, we took part in a special enforcement operation on I-44. Every police and sheriff’s agency in Missouri who has a part of I-44 within their jurisdiction took part in the operation. The project was called the I-44 HEAT, as in the heat is on traffic offenses. I think our best catch of the day was a wanted parole violator who made the mistake of following too closely. He is now our guest at the jail. I am sure that the folks at MoDOT who ran the operation will send out a press release on Monday to explain the results.
One of the problems we have had for some time now is a lack of space for an evidence processing area. We recently came up with an idea to move the processing location down to the basement by the evidence room. But we needed a few things to make this work. I would like to thank Rastur Development of St. Robert for the donation of a pantry type closet to hold the evidence supplies. I would also like to thank Wayne Gifford for the donation of two tables and two handcarts for this operation. Wayne also donated 1,500 two ounce specimen jars to hold small items of evidence. These fine folks have greatly assisted us in creating a new evidence processing area without additional expense to the taxpayers so we all owe them a word of thanks.
I believe that I have covered the high points of the day and have nothing else to report. I would like to ask everyone to drive with care and to keep their actions legal. We do not need any more vehicle accidents around Pulaski County nor do we need your body in our jail for business reasons. But if you must visit the jail, you will enjoy the lights.
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