Calls for Scott Co. deputies quadruple

The increase is largely due to changes that were implemented when Sheriff Rick Walter took office.

BENTON, Mo. -- Deputies with the Scott County Sheriff's Department have been busy through the first half of 2005. So far, the department has doubled the number of calls for service it had during all of 2004, setting the office on pace to quadruple last year's total.

As of June 14, the sheriff's department registered 2,021 calls for service since the beginning of the year, compared to 972 throughout 2004.

The increase in calls is largely due to changes that were implemented when Sheriff Rick Walter took office after the 2004 election. One of his first moves was to make the sheriff's department a 24-hour policing force.

Walter said he did so by shifting some of the deputies who usually work days to night shifts, and giving them all 12-hour shifts while working fewer days in a week.

"We're now able to answer a lot of calls that may have went unanswered at night while the deputies were at home," Walter said.

One example is a traffic stop late one May night that led to the arrest of Keith Chapman, of Oran, Mo., who is suspected of committing 18 robberies in the Oran and Morley, Mo., area starting in 2004.

New strategy

Part of the department's new strategy is increasing stops for traffic violations, since those stops often lead to arrests like that of Chapman.

"If we're going to be out here and trying to interdict some of these problems we'll have to try to find ways to do it, and the radar gun is one way to do it," Walter said. He said he thinks drug trafficking may increase in the area soon due to new legislation restricting the sale of products that contain pseudoephedrine.

Where methamphetamine used to be produced in local labs, said Walter, the restrictions may force the drug's manufacture out of the area, meaning the traffic stop will once again be a valuable tool in keeping some of the supply out of Scott County.

Traffic stops are part of a broad umbrella covered by the phrase "calls for service."

"Calls for service covers just about everything we do. If we get a call or if we generate the call, it generates a case for us," Walter said. "If we're out here and we make a case without somebody calling it in, that's also a call for service."

Walter doesn't have a breakdown of numbers on the types of calls, but they run from 911 hang-ups to motorist assists to serving papers to transporting prisoners. The increase doesn't mean there's more crime, just that deputies are doing more.

Most of the feedback from county residents has been positive, said Walter, with many people showing surprise that the department wasn't always a 24-hour service.

And the new approach isn't just about stopping crime, but preventing it. One of the newest services Walter's department is now offering is called Vacation Watch, where county residents can sign up to have their homes watched while they're on vacation.

msanders@semissourian.com

335-6611, extension 182