Calls for Service 375
Reports Generated 40
Cases Filed with DA 11
Juvenile cases 1
Transports 15
Transport Mileage 3,569
Citations 13
Warnings 21
Arrests 21
Civil Process 35
Livestock calls 23
Business Checks 45
Mental Health Services 16
Mental Health Transports 3
Jail Average daily Holding 65
We dealt with an outbreak of covid in the jail. At one point we got up to 22 inmates and most of the jailers. But we were able to implement our protocols (without shutting down) and we are back to zero cases. We were able to do this without shutting off services and let the different organizations make up their mind for themselves whether or not to come in.
I had a productive meeting with Gorman City Council to discuss possibly supplementing the Gorman Police Department with deputies. Although we assist them all the time, they are wanting to try and supplement from time to time with a deputy dedicated to Gorman for a few shifts. We discussed several different options to be able to help and are still weighing out options.
As everyone knows, we had our first bout of ice and snow. Although there were several accidents, we didn’t have any major injuries. We were able to assist with multiple wrecks and traffic control. Rising Star lost power for several hours which also affected cell service. The Sheriff’s Office assisted with going door to door and making sure people were ok. The Rising Star Fire Department and Police Department were really impressive at knowing their community and who needed to be checked on the most. Everyone was ok and power was restored after about 8 hours.
I had a couple of meetings with another company that does records management. As I’ve talked about previously, my goal is to get all the emergency services linked together on their reporting systems for real time information sharing between us all and to stop a lot of the redundant data entry happening between everyone. The company I met with will also incorporate all of the courthouse and municipal courts, which would give the county a complete solution and would be able to track the information across the board. This project is taking longer than expected, but great things normally do. This will completely change the way the county communicates and manages data and bring us up to current. It will also streamline and stop a lot of redundancies.
I took the opportunity the other night at the debate to meet with the Texas Representative and the other State rep candidates. Even though we were all there for the debate, we each had a great conversation about the mental health crisis that is affecting the state, jails, and law enforcement. Texas is number 50 out of 50 states in mental health services but we are number 2 in population. People that have severe mental health issues don’t have a place to get help because there are no facilities that have an empty bed. Although we didn’t solve the crisis during that conversation, I feel that it should be a priority for whichever candidate gets office. I’ve previously met with other senators and representatives about this matter and I know I’m not the only one. This is a state wide issue that affects many jails and Sheriff’s offices and was a main topic of discussion at the Sheriff’s conference.
We were in the testing phase with the dispatch tower project and found that there was significant interference on the Gorman tower which forced us to have to apply for another frequency. So hopefully that will be sooner than later. All the equipment is there and ready to go, just waiting on the FCC at this point. The main dispatch center also had a grounding issue that was causing some major interference on the radios. We were able to open up the secondary dispatch center and take the main one off line to replace electrical. We were able to rewire the radio room and put in a new breaker box. It seems to have solved a lot of issues. We are now working on replacement of one of the encryption chips that appears to be going out.
