Stoddard County Sheriff’s race heats up as election nears

Incumbent

Carl Hefner

Age: 67

Family (spouse, children): I am married to my wife Rena. We have three sons together and six grandchildren.

Education: Graduated high school then went on and graduated from the Law Enforcement Academy at Southeast Missouri State University.

Current occupation: Stoddard County sheriff.

Current affiliations (clubs, churches, boards): I attend Bloomfield Assembly of God. I am on the board of directors with the SEMO Drug Task Force and Stoddard County Major Case Squad.

Law Enforcement Experience: I was first commissioned by the sheriff’s office in 1993. I went to work full-time in 1994 and served as a deputy until I was elected sheriff in 2004, and I have held the position of sheriff since then.

Number of terms served: Four.

What changes (if any) would you make?

I have worked here for over 20 years when we were horribly understaffed, under budgeted. The general public saw the need to get a law enforcement/jail tax passed a year or so ago. This opened up a lot of doors for us. There were things then we could afford. One of them was to hire more personnel, raise the wages of the people working here plus raise our starting salary. Getting the tax enabled us to hire people and retain them. Before we couldn’t get anybody to apply because the wages were so low. After the tax passed and started getting more money, I was able to get more and better applications. Since then the ones I hire, I was able to retain them because their wages now are comparable to those in the surrounding area.

We needed the jail so badly. The first part of our jail was built in 1983 and the upper addition was put on in 1993 I believe but it didn’t add many more beds. The jail was only designed to hold 29 people. Last year our average daily inmate count was 85 in a 29-bed facility. At one time we were over 100. Prior to getting this tax passed I only had enough money in my budget to have one person per shift in the jail. That means one guy was taking care of 85 people on his shift. That included seeing that they were all fed, taking a shower. About 70 percent of the inmates are on some kind of medication. One guy was in charge of security of 85 people and answering the phone. After we got the tax passed I was able to put more staff down in the jail. It didn’t alleviate overcrowding our jail at this point. When we move over to our new jail and the inmates are transferred over to there it will open a lot of doors. We will have more security. The jail will be able to be maintained with less personnel even though more staff hired to be down in the jail to oversee it. We are going to have a medical room. We will have a cell where we can segregate people. If someone gets sick, if someone gets a staph infection, for example, we can separate them from the population so no one else gets sick. We can separate the violent offenders from the less violent offenders. The sex offenders can be separated from the general population. We have no way of doing that segregation right now. We will have space where hopefully some kind of rehabilitation people can come in for the inmates, faith-based groups.

The current kitchen in 10 foot by 10 foot. By the time space is taken out by the cabinet space and things of that nature, you have about a 3 by 4 foot space to prepare meals. There will be a more modern kitchen.

Security is the main thing. It will be a pod system with a control panel out in the middle of the pod manned by a corrections officer. He will be able to see 360 degrees around him and everything will be operated automatically.

We didn’t have in our budget to buy the equipment we needed. We couldn’t get the ballistic vests we needed. We couldn’t update our vehicles the way we needed. We didn’t have the money to send the deputies to the training we needed before the tax. We have D.A.R.E. in all county schools. The officers that ran the program did so on their own time. They can now be paid. We will put on active shooter classes in schools, churches and other places in the county. Hopefully in the near future, we will be able to put more deputies on the road as well as keep these guys in dependable vehicles. The tax opened up a lot of doors. We now have a new CAD system. We can monitor all the fire departments, EMS and all municipality police officers. We can tell where all of our deputies are at all times.

Why do you feel you are the best candidate for the job of sheriff?

Experience. I have been around here for almost 30 years. I know how the sheriff’s department works. I know how it worked in the pas. I know how it works now.

What are the biggest challenges of this position and how would you address them?

The biggest challenges in this position are getting drugs off our streets and protecting our children is another. I think if we work very hard and use all of our resources to keep the drug problem down in our area or totally done away with, it will alleviate a lot of our other problems such as burglary, stealing, assaults, sexual assaults and child molestations, and property damage, things of that nature. I want to see us continue to work on the drug problem the way we have done it.

Sex offenders, we keep track of our sex offenders. Our last audit we had zero noncompliant, which means we have zero sex offenders unaccounted for. Two weeks ago we went out and checked on the registered sex offenders. I think we have 130 to 140 registered sex offenders. We went and checked on every one of them. We made sure they were living where they said they were living, they were working where they said they were working and they were driving what they said they were driving. Compliance check, we do those quite often.

Two weeks ago, we got our audit from the highway patrol and the secretary of state and it showed that right now we were at zero noncompliant, which means every sex offender in this county is accounted for. And I want to keep it that way. It takes manpower and resources to do that, which we have done good up to this point. Keep an eye on your sex offenders and you will keep your kids safe bottom line and that’s our priority. My priority is keeping the citizens of this county as safe as I can possibly keep them.

The 16 years I have been in as sheriff there have been no scandals and everything has run really smooth. If I get re-elected and I can continue doing that for the next four years, I can walk away saying we have all done a pretty dog gone good job.

I am only as good as those working with me. I have an excellent group of people working with me. I am talking about the corrections officers in the jail, the dispatchers, the office personnel and the road deputies. We have a good group of people working here. We all work real well together. We all understand each other. If I can keep that going, then you know what, in this county we are all going to be in real good shape.

What do you think is something important the public should know about this position, but may not be aware of?

I don’t think the general public realizes how the justice system works. A lot of people think that I am in control of what happens to an offender, the time they are in jail, or while they are in jail when they get out or when they go to prison. My job is to arrest them and lock them up. I don’t set the charges on them. I don’t set the bonds on them. Once I arrest someone it is not my decision on whether they get out of jail or not. I keep them in jail until I am told not to keep them in jail anymore, and I don’t think the general public is aware of that. I don’t set bonds. When they say this person is in jail and their bond is set at $7,500 cash. I have nothing to do with that. I have no say on whether somebody goes to John 3:16 or FCC or somewhere like that. That is not up to me to make that decision. I can’t make that decision. That is not in my job description to decide whether someone goes to rehab or goes to prison. I don’t think the general public realizes that. That is up to the court system.

Tim McCoy

Age: 39

Family (spouse, children): Married to wife Ginger, two children ages 7 and 11.

Education: Graduated from Southeast Missouri State University Law Enforcement Academy in 2005, graduated the Stratego Active Shooter Response twice (once in Kansas City then hosted a course in Dexter).

Current occupation: Investigator for the Stoddard County prosecutor’s office for past six years.

Current affiliations (clubs, churches, boards): Attends First United Methodist Church (McCoy is a trustee and wife is the children’s director). Member of the Dexter Elks Lodge.

Law Enforcement Experience: 2004: worked as a corrections officer for Stoddard County sheriff’s office. 2005: graduated the Southeast Missouri State University’s Law Enforcement Academy in Cape Girardeau. 2005: worked as corrections officer and reserve deputy for the sheriff’s office. Also worked as a reserve police officer for the Bloomfield and Dexter police departments. Late 2005: accepted a full-time road deputy position with the Stoddard County Sheriff’s office. April 2006: promoted to sergeant, served as field training officer for all new deputies. 2006: became a certified active shooter response instructor through Strategos International, instructed Stoddard County teachers and school faculty members how to respond to an active shooter/intruder. 2009: assigned to the Stoddard County Major Case Squad. 2014: transferred to the Stoddard County prosecuting attorney’s office as the investigator and still serves in that position.

Number of terms served: None

What changes (if any) would you make?

One of the biggest changes that I want to make as sheriff is in Stoddard County’s history they have never had 24-hour coverage for rural Stoddard County. Dexter has officers on duty 24 hours a day. Bernie, Bloomfield all have officers on 24 hours a day. But those cities just make up a small portion of the county. There are times a deputy would go home at midnight, one, two, but the latest a deputy stays on duty is 3 a.m. The deputy that goes off duty at 3 a.m., he is off. He doesn’t have to worry about anything else. But the deputy that comes on at 8 a.m. is on call at 3 a.m. Lat’s say you live at Poe and someone is trying to break into your house. You call 911. This is going to go to the call center at the ambulance district, then it will be transferred to the sheriff’s department and you have to describe your emergency twice. The dispatcher then has to look at the schedule and see who is on call. Then they have to call that deputy. Once the deputy wakes up and has to get dressed. If he lives in Advance and you are in Poe, look too much time has passed from the time you called 911. That is entirely too much time. That is unacceptable. If we have a deputy on duty 24 hours a day patrolling Stoddard County. When that call comes in to 911 he can hear it on the radio and that cuts off a of lot time. When you are in the middle of an emergency seconds count. This can be done without raising taxes. We have at least two deputies working desk jobs that are completely unnecessary. They don’t wear a uniform, they do not patrol, they sit at a desk. The taxpayers deserve to have those two deputies, at least those two positions back out on the street back in uniform. I think that is absolutely the most important thing that I want to get done and that’s going to be done on day one.

Another big issue is right now deputies do not enforce DWI laws and that is completely absurd. If a deputy stops a drunk driver or a driver under the influence of drugs, they cannot arrest them. They must call the highway patrol or city cops if stopped in Dexter, Bloomfield, etc. to make the arrest. They don’t have the training or the certification. Now there may be some deputies coming from a city department, such as Dexter, and they may still have the certification. But (current sheriff) Carl (Hefner) doesn’t allow them to work DWIs. And I know this because I worked the road and I saw it firsthand. If you pull over a driver who is all over the road. You walk up to the car and smell alcohol and he is obviously intoxicated. You call the highway patrol because you are in the middle of nowhere and a trooper in unavailable to come to the scene. You have got two options. You take him home or let someone come get him or let him go. Both options are unacceptable. If you let him drive off and he kills somebody that is worst-case scenario, or you take him home or let someone come get him, he wakes up the next morning and says “boy I got away with that one.” We fix this by letting the deputies be cops. We don’t tie their hands. The deputy must be certified to administer the field sobriety test and use of the breathalizer or it will not hold up in court. The sheriff’s association offers a lot of training for free. If for some reason we cannot get the training for free, we will send one deputy to become a trainer and he will come back and train the rest of the deputies.

The other thing is sex offender compliance. You may have a sex offender living next to you and not know it. They may move and not tell anybody. I want my guys to make sure they are staying where they are supposed to on a routine basis.

Why do you feel you are the best candidate for the job of sheriff?

I see what needs to be done. I see what needs to be done and I know how to fix it.

What are the biggest challenges of this position and how would you address them?

I think one of the biggest issues is the budget, the overspending. We have unnecessary desk jobs. We have multiple people doing the exact same thing. We need to eliminate those unnecessary desk jobs and get those deputies back out on the street, Some desk jobs are necessary. I am talking about those that are not necessary. The sales tax that passed brought in about $1.3 million and they overspent the tax by about $1 million. We have to focus on that spending.

What do you think is something important the public should know about this position, but may not be aware of?

The biggest thing I found by talking to the community is they did not know they didn’t have a deputy on duty 24 hours a day. I have been preaching this message since day one. People don’t know they are not protected. They assume when they go to bed at night and tuck their kids into bed, there are trained deputies patrolling rural Stoddard County. That is what most people talk to me about that concerns them the most is that they don’t have anybody out there if they need them. That is why I feel so strongly that we have deputies out there 24 hours a day protecting out citizens.