WALTHALL — Sheriff David Gore addressed the Board of Supervisors about the status and progress of the Webster County Sheriff’s Department on Jan. 21. He presented this overview of his plans and goals to the board:
1) Hire one full-time deputy and three part time (for full coverage).
“That’ll give us full coverage … we’ve got to have that to some degree,” he said. “We may not have eight deputies at a time on but we’ll be able to answer calls.”
2) Improve the jail building all he can without spending money (using donations) to bring it up to standards.
“It’s going kind of slow but it’s going,” he said, adding that he is going to use inmates all he can to achieve this. Examples of this include tile that has been donated for the bathroom, and razor wire and posts that have been donated for a new security fence by Mike Box and supervisors. Gore also he hopes to have a metal building donated for use as an office “to where we can have some privacy.”
3) Cut waste at every level. Gore said Deputy Sheriff/Administrative Assistant Tim Roberson is looking at the budget to ferret out waste.
“I’ve never seen anywhere there (isn’t any) waste and I’ve done seen enough down at the jail to know that there is some waste,” said Gore.
4) Get every grant possible.
“I’m checking into everything we can get … without spending any money,” Gore said. “I think we can squeeze more out of what we’ve already got.”
5) Work on the methamphetamine problem in the county. Deputies have made or assisted other law enforcement agencies in making numerous arrests for possession of meth since Gore took office.
“This problem causes other problems,” the sheriff said. “We’re working on this hard.”
Grant for Radios
Board President Pat Cummings told Gore the board was there to help him. Supervisors did approve measures regarding many of those goals during that meeting and subsequent ones.
The board voted Jan. 21 to accept from the Mississippi Office of Homeland Security a FY 2019 Security Grant Program Award of a grant for $26,380 to buy Mississippi Wireless Information Network portable radios with accessories, and enter into a cooperative agreement with OHS concerning the grant.
The radios will provide statewide coverage and the grant will cover all but about $1,600 of the cost, according to Deputy Sheriff Dillion Cates, who prepared the grant application. This is in addition to another grant for MSWIN portable radios the board accepted Jan. 6 for Webster County Emergency Management.
Grant Application
for Vehicles
On Jan. 31, the board voted to apply for a grant through USDA Rural Development to buy vehicles for the Sheriff’s Department. The grant is 75% of the purchase price of the vehicles.
A related public hearing will be held at 9:30 a.m. Feb. 18. George Crawford of the Golden Triangle Planning and Development District met with the board about the grant application.
Personnel Action
Gore presented various personnel recommendations to the county board on Monday, Feb. 3. Those recommendations were all approved in one motion, which were to:
• accept the resignation of Cates, who has accepted a position with the Choctaw County Sheriff’s Department. His resignation is effective Feb. 16 but he will remain on as a part-time deputy in Webster County.
• hire James Carl Smith as a certified full-time deputy effective Feb. 4. Smith lives in Vernon, Ala., but Gore said he has told him he will have to move and live within 30 minutes of the sheriff’s office. He will also have to take a refresher course.
• hire Larry Hughes, Josh Lomax and Blake Love as part-time deputies
• hire Mattie Webster as a part-time dispatcher.
• authorize Roberson and Deputy Sheriff Beau Powell to attend a National Incident-Based Reporting System class that day at Delta State University
• remove Tammy Bright and Crystal Chism from the part-time dispatcher list.
Visitation Stopped
Also, Gore confirmed to the Progress-Times that the Sheriff’s Department had shut down inmate visitation temporarily at the jail.
He said visitation had been shut down about four weeks as of late January because of reoccurring discipline issues with inmates “and trying to get a hold of these issues.”
The posted visitation hours are 1-1:30 p.m. every first and third Sunday. Gore said he was not sure if the jail would go back to those hours once visitation is reinstated.
