Letter: Sheriff’s department has worked hard to help community

From: Maj. Chris Lane, Maj. John Martoccia, Capt. Dave Steinkoenig, Capt. Christopher Roberts and Capt. Brandon Slate, the Bartholomew County Sheriff’s Department command staff

Columbus

While our Bartholomew County Sheriff’s Office 2017 Annual Report highlights the outstanding accomplishments of each BCSO division, in addition to reviewing statistics, there are several items of notable accomplishment since we assumed leadership at your sheriff’s office.

1) Getting aggressive on drugs

Restored narcotics division to sheriff’s office and established the Joint Narcotics Enforcement Team (JNET) with Columbus Police Department and the Bartholomew County Prosecutor’s Office. We took drug enforcement to the next level when we assigned a deputy to the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA).

We reassigned talented deputies to JNET and, along with our road patrol, we have seized more drugs and arrested more people for drugs than at any time in our county’s history. Stopping drugs also stops thefts.

2) Meeting the opioid crisis head-on

This is a life-or-death struggle. We become more skilled in this area every day. From saving lives by using Narcan to offering treatment options for Bartholomew County Jail inmates.

This is a highly debated topic. Our decision is to stop debating and do something about it. We want to give inmates an opportunity to beat their addiction. Many support this but there is some negativity as well. If our plan isn’t good, we need to see an alternative proposal.

3) Staying in touch with the community

We have taken your sheriff’s office into neighborhoods, sponsoring 12-15 community meetings every year.

These meetings have great attendance and engagement. We listen to residents and act on that information to drive our priorities for our county. The community mandate is clear: be tough on drugs, stop thefts, make sure our tax dollars are spent efficiently and effectively.

We established a very successful Sheriff’s Youth Academy that has graduated more than 250 Bartholomew County youths.

We organized “Pack-a-Patrol Car” food drives to help our less-fortunate.

We offer numerous training sessions for the public, churches, businesses and other organizations.

4) Attracting great talent to join law enforcement

Several deputies fulfilled their service to the county and retired. We remain thankful for their service. We recruit very talented new deputies who are our investment in the future and we take great pride in our next generation of public servants.

5) Restored a positive working relationship with the city police, Indiana State Police, Indiana Department of Natural Resources and federal agencies

A key changes we made is rebuilding relationships with other agencies. This multi-agency approach makes all agencies more effective and makes our community safer.

All agencies now band together during difficult situations. There are many examples: floods, storms etc. But, the best example is when a Columbus police officer tried to apprehend a criminal and the officer was shot. All law enforcement agencies converged on the scene and within hours this very dangerous situation had been resolved.

We are on the right track and much of our success stems from citizens reporting crimes that no longer go unnoticed or unreported

We look forward to 2018 as we reduce crime and continue to encourage people to report suspicious activity.