New goals set after busy year for Carter County Sheriff Dept.

As the New Year is upon us, it is difficult to imagine that another year has drawn to a conclusion so rapidly.

As we strive to envision this New Year and all of the possibilities, I am reminded of so many things, which have occurred throughout our communities and region this past year.

So many things which brought forth joy, triumph, and excitement, as well as some which bore with it the unfortunate by product of pain and disdain.

Richard Stephens, Carter County Sheriff

This past year included things and events which brought us together and some which seemingly tore us apart.

As I consider all this, my mind wonders to a quote I once heard from Benjamin Franklin who stated, “Be at war with your vices, at peace with your neighbors, and let every New Year find you a better man.”

In 2018, your Carter County Sheriff’s Office continued our mission of providing our community with professional, proactive community involvement and policing.

As your elected leader of the sheriff’s office, I cannot express strongly enough how proud I am of each and every member of your sheriff’s office.

As we look back at last year’s accomplishments, there were several notable occurrences, which make me proud including our communications division receiving and handling over 16,082 calls for assistance and service. That number can be broken down to an average of 309.26 calls weekly and 1,340.16 calls monthly.

Your staff attempted to serve over 725 court-related documents and served 401 throughout the year. The staff at the sheriff’s office provided security for over 105 court-related events and either attended, conducted, or assisted with over 71 community-related events or trainings.

Our patrol division, throughout the year, responded to or initiated 12,426 calls, with a weekly average of 238.96 service/case calls and a monthly average of 1,035.5 calls responded to.

The Carter County Sheriff’s Office conducted 488 case investigations over the year, averaging 40.6 new case investigations each month and 9.38 per week.

A general demographic breakdown of the case investigations included 111 theft or burglary investigations, 51 drug-related investigations, 33 domestic assault, 17 sexual assaults, 14 property damage investigations and 15 weapons-related investigations.

Cases included 41 traffic investigations, eight fraud, 11 child abuse, 11 death investigations and 33 arrests off warrants.

Our patrol deputies conducted over 2,818 area checks and 537 business and building checks throughout the year.

The Carter County Sheriff’s Office booked 342 men and women into our custody, averaging 28.5 per month and 6.5 bookings per week. Those bookings included the Carter County Sheriff’s Office arresting 175, the Missouri State Highway patrol arresting 52, the Van Buren Police Dept. arresting 43, the Ellsinore Police Department arresting 30 and other entities arresting the remaining persons brought for processing.

The Carter County Sheriff’s Office statistics for 2018 include the average daily jail population of 10 persons in custody per day with 252 males and 90 females being incarcerated.

Although your sheriff’s office has remained busy throughout the year, we look forward to striving to better ourselves this year.

There are several exciting goals, which have been set including collaborating with local departments to develop and implement community-based training/informational events for our community.

Additionally, implementing new strategies for combating our regional drug problem and helping our citizens create more effective means of protecting their property from theft are high on our priority list.

We look forward to our continued service to our community and are thankful that we can work towards providing you the most affective law enforcement services.

As outlined above, we look forward to following through and being ever mindful of what Mr. Franklin stated.

We strive to consistently provide a hand up to our neighbors, and with each new day, allow others to view our betterment as peace officers, neighbors and fellow citizens.