By Sheriff Mark Buchanan
Guest Writer
In keeping with the fantastic article in last week’s edition of the Clay County Progress about the hard work of Clay County Fire and Rescue, I thought it appropriate to also let our citizens know what their Sheriff’s Office has done this last fiscal year.
Of course, the following statistics reflect the accomplishments of the staff originally under the leadership of our prior sheriff, Bobby Deese. When I came into office, I kept the entire hardworking staff Sheriff Deese already had in place.
During this year, the Clay County Sheriff’s Office addressed or responded to a total of 8,080 incidents as tracked by the Clay County 911 Dispatch Center. It would be far too lengthy to list the 150 or so individual categories of incidents that were handled by our office.
The following, however, are some notable highlights our office dealt with or responded to this past physical year and are as follows:
• 251 traffic accidents.
• 162 responses to 911 hang up calls.
• 272 animal related calls.
• 138 assistance to other agencies.
• 127 commercial/business alarm responses.
• 162 residential alarm responses.
• 133 careless/reckless vehicle calls.
• 49 communicating threat calls.
• 274 domestic physical/verbal disturbance calls.
• 61 fraud/scam related calls.
• 32 funeral escorts.
• 57 harassment/stalking calls.
• 726 calls seeking general information.
• 127 larceny calls.
• 38 noise/disturbance calls.
• 45 prowler calls.
• 39 psychiatric/abnormal behavior calls.
• 496 field service of civil papers.
• 95 stranded motorist calls.
• 87 suspicious activity calls.
• 164 suspicious person calls.
• 173 suspicious vehicle calls.
• 1,468 vehicle stops.
• 100 trespassing calls.
• 55 vandalism calls.
• 243 walk-in calls for service.
• 213 field service of warrants for arrest.
• 251 citizen welfare check responses.
It should be noted that during most of this past physical year, the Sheriff’s Office operated with deficit of three patrol officers and one investigator position. Not reflected in the above numbers were the many hundreds of hours that Investigators spent following up on the more complex cases first dispatched by 911 and responded to by patrol officers. Not reflected by the above numbers were the many drug related investigations developed by Iinvestigators that were not processed through the Clay County 911 Dispatch Center.
With such vacancies in an agency as small as ours, handling this many calls for service is a true testament to the hard working and dedicated officers of the Clay County Sheriff’s Office.