As your duly elected sheriff of Moniteau County, I just wanted to inform the great citizens of our county of what we have been doing during the COVID-19 outbreak and what we are expecting in the upcoming summer months.
When the COVID-19 outbreak came upon our county, it placed us in a unique situation. During that time, we scaled back traffic stops and limited contact with deputies. What this meant is that most of our narcotic and theft investigations were placed on a temporary hold and we pivoted to focus on community outreach and proactive rural patrols.
During these trying times, several of our neighboring counties experienced a sharp increase in burglaries and thefts. We then switched our focus to rural patrol and prevention to try and head off the crime increases seen by our neighbors. I am happy to say that our crime rates in Moniteau County held at a steady low and actually decreased a bit during this period.
As you can see by the recent news releases, we have resumed our fight against the drug problem within the county. We have had recent reports of increased drug activity in certain areas within the county and are addressing those now. We gave up a little ground during the outbreak on the drug enforcement side, which gave those who wanted to take advantage of our scaled-back presence a false sense of hope, because we are now back to full enforcement duties.
As you can also see by the recent releases and arrests, over half of the subjects that we arrest are currently on probation and parole. I know that "you" the citizens are frustrated with this and I am also. The current Missouri Probation and Parole policies are not working. This is not the fault of our local officials or even our local probation officers; this lies solely on the shoulders of the Director in Jefferson City.
The policies currently in place send these offenders straight from our jail back to the streets to offend again. This puts a tremendous strain on our county resources and budgets. I always believed that if you give someone probation, it is a chance to straighten your life out and become a productive member of society. Everyone makes mistakes, and probation is their chance to learn from their mistakes and make a better life, not to keep making mistakes which affect our local community and the safety and security of our families.
Parole is a whole different issue. A person on parole has most likely already been through the whole probation process and messed up enough times to actually get sent to prison. The state then decides how long they are actually going to stay there. I know you think that it is up to our judges, but that is not entirely true. The judge will sentence according to what is allowed by law, but the state actually decides when they can get out and go back on the streets. Most of the time on non-violent offenses such as drugs or thefts, it is a fraction of the sentenced time; on a 5-year sentence, the offender will most likely be out in a year or less.
Once released, they are back into the community on parole for local law enforcement to deal with. Don't get me wrong - not all offenders that are released go back to committing crimes, but I would venture to say from talking to other counties and sheriffs that the number is around 50-60 percent. You would think, then, that if they were on parole, if they get caught committing a new crime it would be an automatic trip back to the Department of Corrections. However, that is not the case. On occasion, that does happen, but more than likely not.
This summer, we are expecting our drug arrests to remain steady and our crime rates to remain at a low. We will continue our proactive enforcement approach to keep our crime rate low and our citizens safe. I believe we can all take pride in the fact that we live in one of the safest counties in the state and that all the citizens in the county have contributed to make that happen by helping us do our job effectively.