Below are some statistics that we hope will give you an idea of the volume of work we complete each year. Keep in mind, these are all tasks we take on in addition to routine road patrols and community policing while covering the county 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. These accomplishments would not be possible without the hard work and dedication of our men and women.
Deputies with the Boone County Sheriff's Office were dispatched to approximately 5,729 emergency calls for service in 2015 by the 911 center. These call numbers were provided by the Boone County Emergency Operations Center and do not account for calls for service made directly to the Sheriff's Office or walk in complaints.
Deputies made a total of 526 arrests for criminal offenses during the 2015 calendar year. The crimes ranged in severity from simple misdemeanors such as traffic offenses to serious felonies such as Kidnapping, Sexual Assault and DUI Resulting in Death. The number represents total people taken into custody, not total charges for the year.
Deputies were able to clear a total of 386 active warrants during the calendar year of 2015. A total of 315 of those warrants were from cases originated through the Sheriff's Office.
We are tasked with serving civil process from all the courts in our county. An example of this type of paperwork may range from a subpoena to appear for court as a witness or a civil lawsuit. We also have to serve paperwork from other jurisdictions on citizens who reside in our county. A total of 1682 individual articles were cleared through service last year.
Domestic Violence Petitions are emergency protective orders issued by the Magistrate to keep people in domestic relationships away from each other until their case may be heard in the Family Court. Deputies were able to serve 166 of these petitions last year. This is a high priority matter and some petitions may have to be served more than once due to continuances of the court or other matters.
Mental Hygiene Petitions are issued when it is believed a person may be a danger to themselves or someone else or that person may be dangerously addicted to a controlled substance. These petitions order law enforcement to pick someone up against their will and take them to be evaluated by a doctor. This process can be very time consuming for deputies as well as families involved and also be very dangerous, as we are dealing with unstable individuals. In 2015 deputies served a total of 82 Mental Hygiene Petitions. Did you know? That after someone is committed to a facility, a deputy will transport them to locations such as Charleston, Huntington, Bluefield and Preston County among other places. We do not have any in county facilities to house these individuals for evaluation. We have held people in custody for as long as 12 hours before their hearings have been completed, then have to wait on placement and then have a deputy provide transportation often times eating up two entire shifts.
Deputies investigated a total of 251 traffic crashes on public roads throughout Boone County during the time frame. These crashes included minor single vehicle incidents as well as fatalities. Did you know? In addition to other paperwork and forms, a deputy has to complete an 8 page accident report for a single vehicle crash and each addition vehicle involved in the crash constitutes 4 addition pages making it 12 pages for a two vehicle crash. If any commercial vehicles are involved in the crash, additional pages are added as well. Completing a single report and submitting it to the network can take over an hour to complete just for the report itself not including travel time, waiting on a tow truck, interviews, arrests and other investigations involved in the wreck.
The Sheriff is also tasked with administering Concealed Carry Permits for handguns. In 2015, the Sheriff made changes and upgraded our equipment we use to issue these licenses. It is now an option to get a hard plastic wallet sized copy of your permit very similar that of a driving license, complete with your picture. This is an option for new permits as well as old permits. If you are a current permit holder and you are interested in this option, the pictures are taken and the IDs are issued on the second Tuesday of each month from 9-12 am and 1-4 pm. The Sheriff's Office issued a total of 412 Concealed Weapon Permits in 2015.
Our Protective Services Division is responsible for staffing our Home Confinement Program at the Boone County Sheriff's Office. They supervise offenders both pretrial and post conviction. The majority of our offenders are on Global Positioning System (GPS) Monitors. This is a state of the art system that allows the satellite monitoring of offenders enrolled in the program and helps reinforce accountability. In 2015 we supervised a total of approximately 6,282 offender days for an average of over 17 offenders a day. If you compare those numbers with the costs of housing inmates in the regional jail system which is approximately $48 per day, the numbers are impressive. The Boone County Sheriff's Office was able to help save tax payers over $300,000.00 in 2015, while successfully and safely monitoring each offender.
Our Protective Services Division is also responsible for maintaining a holding area where inmates are brought from the regional jail for Court purposes each day. The officers have to monitor the inmates and then transport them to and from the courthouse for hearings in Circuit, Magistrate and Family Court. The number of inmates kept each day varies significantly and was as high as twenty one afternoon in December. A total of 702 inmates were kept in our holding facility for court purposes during 2015. This number does not include people who are arrested, only prisoners transported from the regional jails for court. Did you know? Information kept in the holding area confirms that 75% of inmates were male and 25% were female. Also after factoring in weekends and holidays, when there is no court, the numbers average out to approximately 3 inmates every business day.
"I truly appreciate the hard work and dedication of our men and women at the Boone County Sheriff's Office. I look forward to them having another safe and productive year in 2016", said Sheriff Randall White.
