Sheriff J.B. King
Posted: Monday, February 15, 2010 2:32 am

Sheriff J.B. King

Welcome aboard one more time for another visit with the employees of the Pulaski County Sheriff’s Office. Here we are on another gloomy and overcast day in the Ozarks with the weatherman making all kinds of nasty statements. Are you ready for some springtime? I know my deputies are tired of driving on ice in rear wheel patrol cars. They are ready for sunshine.

We had a bang up week last week. The problem was the “banging noise” was caused by our patrol cars hitting things. I believe it was last Monday we sent two cars to a rush call on Red Oak Road. Both nailed the ditch and one got a fence. Red Oak Road had a lot of left-over ice looking for wayward patrol cars. The week before, we nailed one tree on ice and Bambi, or I should say Bambi’s mom, bagged another patrol car. Then we had the big chase on Friday, Feb. 12, and another car ended up with damage during the final crash stop. I missed a ditch on Highway 17 by such a narrow margin that I cannot say skill was involved. The miss was just pure luck on my part. Yup, we are all ready for sunshine, lots of sunshine.

We have been involved in a bunch of criminal cases of late but the pace has been fast and I have had no time to put together news releases. I believe that the chase which started in Maries County on Friday night got some press. The chase went through Phelps County and ended up here in Pulaski County with the final stop due to a double spike strip tap to the vehicle tires and a foot pursuit that ended tangled in a barbed wire fence. I know that Maries and Phelps Counties hauled away the people in the vehicle. We had the Lake Area Narcotics Enforcement Group troops in to check the vehicle for a possible mobile meth lab. But right now, which county will file what charge is still up in the air.

We had another series of incidents on the Friday two weeks ago when it was snowing so hard. We had two suspects commit a total of two car thefts and four burglaries in three counties. Through a teamwork investigation effort between the St. Robert City Police and the sheriff’s offices of Texas, Laclede, and Pulaski County we managed to get them into custody and again the information on who is filing what charge in which county is something I have just not had time to put together.

We also had a possible meth lab incident on Highway NN in the Laquey area that involved a search warrant and again I have not had the time to put together the news release on that case. We had a domestic assault and burglary case where charges were filed two weeks ago and another one last week with the same two charges. Like I said we have been swamped of late with criminals.

This is also the time of the year when we must file a number of required reports with different agencies. I believe that last week I mentioned the racial profile report to the Missouri Attorney General which has been completed. I might add that the numbers I quoted from memory last week were correct. We had a total of 993 traffic stops with 161 citations and 755 warnings during 2009.

Then there is the special census report on deaths in jail custody, along with several required counts of inmates for the year of 2009. I finished that report this week. We also had some paperwork action required on several of our current grants and this was also payroll week for the county, so the paper push has been in full stride of late.

On the patrol car front the wrecked car we bought some time ago was to receive the last piece of equipment, the inmate cage, before it was turned over to the deputy. That car should be on the street after this weekend. On Wednesday, Feb. 10, Maj. Tom Cristoffer and Deputy Jimmy Bench went to the Kansas City area to pick up our newest vehicle, a gold-colored 2005 Ford with 94,500 miles. I would like to thank the Board of Directors of the Pulaski County Law Enforcement Restitution Fund (CLERF) for their help with this last purchase.

It will soon be time to apply for the 2010-2011 Missouri Department of Transportation traffic safety grants. I will be required to attend a meeting in Springfield soon to discuss the grant application with MoDOT officials, then the paperwork for that grant will need several hours to prepare. The good news here is that these grants all have a 100 percent payback of the funds spent by us.

The case number/calls for service count this week stands at 968 at 9:30 a.m. on Sunday, Feb. 14. Last year on Feb. 15, 2009, the count stood at 980. We seem to be more or less on pace with last year.

I believe that does it for this week. Please drive with care and please keep your actions legal. We do not want you in our jail, but remember, the jail lights are bright!

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