Sheriff's Dispatch, Aug. 16, 2019

You need to know.

 It's been too long since I've reached out to you. I have a lot of information to pass along to you that you need to know! Did you know that your Sheriff's Office has been short staffed? We are short 2 full time deputies and soon will be short 3. (We are now officially short 3 full time deputy sheriffs! Before I could get this article submitted, the third employee I was expecting to move on, submitted his resignation. He makes number five for this year!)  With only 13 road positions allowed due to financial constraints, it does not take a mathematician to see how this affects our community when trying to service over 700 square miles of county and upwards of 1000 miles of roadway. It's nothing to rack up 36,000 miles per month on our patrol fleet. (44,146 miles for the month of July)

Benton County's starting pay is just over $26,500 per year augmented to $30,000 by the state. It takes almost half of a deputy's county paycheck to have health insurance on their family if they choose health insurance.

It cost us, the taxpayer approximately $800 to uniform a new employee and an additional $1200 for a bullet resistant vest.  Hundreds of dollars in training and hundreds of lost man hours every time we lose an experienced employee! The loss of their experience and knowledge of the county and its criminal element is immeasurable! 

Although it makes my stomach ill every time one of your quality civil servants shows up in my office with a letter of resignation, I can't blame them for becoming well trained and take that excellent experience and training somewhere else to instantly increase their income by thousands just by walking through the door. Benton County is considered one of the best resources for other agencies to recruit from, not only law enforcement, but dispatchers as well! Yes, Benton County is short on our all-important 911 operators too!  

You need to be informed! I need you to be aware that our response times in some cases, will be lengthy as we must take life threatening situations first and minor property crimes in the order in which they are received. 

For those of you who do not watch the news, it's a bad time to be in law enforcement and less and less people want to be a law enforcement officer.

Please know before you start calling your County Commissioners, they are doing all within their power to be excellent stewards of our tax dollars. There just isn't enough of our tax base to go around. Most of our revenue is generated from sales tax and our seasonal income. What you need to know is our 1st and second quarter sales tax dollars are down by 25% respectively due to the flooding and lack of summertime visitors. Folks, this is nearing a crisis as we're looking toward our next budget cycle! 

With all that being said, I want to drive home the fact that law enforcement may not be there in your time of need! You will need to be vigilant, watchful and alert. Be aware of your surroundings. Get involved with your neighbors to help combat the thefts and burglaries, arm yourself with the tools to help protect you, your loved ones, and your property. A good high-quality camera system is relatively cheap nowadays compared to the damage and loss of your property. I stress high quality! Anything less will anger you as you watch a crime play out and your poor-quality cameras capture it all and we can't make out any details other than it's a human! It happens all the time! Quality motion lights all around work great!  Panic alarms and security systems are affordable in today's market, and as a last resort and only if your life or the life of a loved one is in danger, a quality firearm. Please seek training and educate yourself on the laws. I highly recommend, at the very least, a CCW. The training and education it provides is a good start.

Did you know that a Supreme Court decision regarding the rules on bail took effect on July 1st of this year that basically takes away our ability to hold almost every suspect after committing a crime? Yes, you are reading this correctly!  Drug offenders, users, dealers, manufacturers, thieves, burglars and most NON-VIOLENT offenders will be out of jail before the staff can even get back on the road! 

Your next question is, "why are we building a jail then!?"  The answer is, most of these same repeat offenders will not show up to their court date and then will be issued a no bond bench warrant for their re-arrest! Which means that all your law enforcement will be even more overburdened, trying to track down these individuals for arrest, and every other traffic stop will require a warrant arrest which takes an already thin force out of service during that process. 

Did you know that if we finally get a suspect to court and we get through the multiple repeat offenses, the dirty drug tests, violations of every type, the repeated assessments of probation and more probation on top of probation? When the perpetrators are finally sentenced to the MO Dept of Corrections, that same perpetrator will only do 30% or less of their sentence per state statutes. Out of a 9-year sentence, that same person will only do a year and a half or less with good behavior and even less with time served in the Benton County Jail!  Look it up folks Missouri Revised Statute 558.011.

I need all of you to be as frustrated as your law enforcement! I urge you to step up and get involved! I need you to be worried about where our justice system is now and where its headed. I need you to be concerned about the rule of law and the ever-building lack of it! I need you to contact your State and Federal representatives for your district and hold them accountable! Your elected officials should be working for you and reflect your wishes! Warren Love State Representative (573)751-4065 warren.love@house.mo.gov

Roger Reedy State Representative (573)751-3971 rodger.reedy@house.mo.gov

US House of Representative Vicky Hartzler (202)224-3121

US Senator Roy Blunt (573)442-8151 (you may also google your representative's name for additional means of contact.)

Oh, did I mention our prisons are going to let out thousands of people who are going to return to our communities? Most jobless, many homeless and those without any support system, back to a life of crime. What you don't know is more than a few of those thousands were charged with a violent crime. Ranging from weapons charges to violent assaults but plead down to "just a drug charge". I need you to contact your Governor's Office for this one. Governor's Office (573)751-3222

My deputies and I are here for you, but we need your support, now more than ever! I am the highest-ranking law enforcement in your county and wield a massive amount of power, but I am nothing without the power of the people! There is strength in numbers! If enough of you get involved and tell your representatives you demand change, it will happen! Thank you for your support.