The following is a presentation of FCB Faith. This is Keeping America First with Bishop Chawn Teacoats and Reverend Jeff Jamison on FCB Faith. Welcome to Keeping America First. And today we have a great guy, none other than the sheriff of the Rain County Sheriff Department, and that is none other than mister Jack Hall. Jack, glad to have you with us this morning. How are you doing on this cold, wintry day, Jeff, doing. Great is trying to handle everything, coordinate everything over the county. As you say, with the cold weather and the winter that we've experienced over the. Last couple of weeks, it's been a challenge. But we work with all of our community partners, our township trustees, our mayors, our commissioners, are road superintendent cruise trying to keep everybody safe, get everybody to work, and get commerce moving in on the roadways. And making sure that we do it in the safest manner. You've actually been sheriff now for just a little over a year, is that correct. That's over a area. Okay, I know you've been doing. You've been really busy. We've seen you on the on the news so many different things taking place. Tell us a little bit about your accomplishments. You ran as a spellar candidate and promised to do a lot of things. Tell us a little bit of what you've accomplished it thus fart well. Many of the things that we're most proud of is a lot of our programs that were intended to build trust in the community and especially with special needs communities. What we will be announcing shortly. Which is in conjunction with what we call the Stepping Up program across the state of Ohio, the Raine County is re engaging into that program to be able to have law enforcement assist greatly with special needs populations, the autism community, communities that involve mental health needs. And one of the things that we promised we would do in the campaign is that there was an organization called the Crew and that was the community Resource Unit. With that, we have a new deputy that is going to be well. Actually he's a deputy has been with the agency for three decades. Almost now, and that he is a community teacher in. Regards to response to crisis intervention training and in regards to working with our local outreach programs such as reveon Health. What was formerly known as the Dorm Center, and so therefore we're combining road patrol operations with one of our correction staff personnel too that will work very closely in the community and working with our local police departments that when there's a crisis involving somebody that could be on the spectrum or could be receiving special needs to the county or subtless abuse issues, which a lot of those issues we see in the jail on a regular basis, and that's why we have corrections involved in that too. Those will be specially trained deputy that will be able to respond to those situations and an attempt to de escalate, lower the temperature down as to what's going on, and hopefully turn those calls over to us so we can get them into the appropriate social services that with rebon and their Community Reception Center which is newly built in Lorraine, and in addition to that, make sure that they have those special needs that we are not just automatically bringing them to the jail, which we do now. And the Lorraine County Jail is one of the. Largest mental health facilities providing that care and also one of the largest substance abuse communities and care facilities in northeast Ohio. So we want to make sure that that incarceration is not always necessary. We have violent felons, fugitives, people that need to be incarcerated and under the watch of our skillful pressions officers, and right now we have an imbalance in our jail of providing more for subs, abuse and mental health services that thankfully due to Reveon and the new community reception center that was built, we can get those subjects into that. In addition, the cru is assigned to our SWAT team, and our swat. Team a lot of these times that we will get calls of. Somebody that is acting very violently and that person may have a mental health history as well too, So before we engage in any type of excessive force or unfortunately sometimes it's deadly force, we want to make sure that we provide that avenue first to be able to have a successful outcome, not only for the subject that we're dealing. With, but a lot of people don't understand there's a lot of stress on the officers the deputies when they have to engage in an. Excessive or deadly forced situation that we would like to. Minimize those as well. And speaking of the jail, we've engaged in a lot of programs in the jail. We've been making a lot of physical improvements to a very old building that we have in anticipation. At some point, very close down the road. We may start construction on the new one, but we still have to accommodate for what we have here, making us necessary security improvements, and with that, we've actually had a reduction of assaults on our corrections officers inside the jail, putting the entire appropriate, appropriate programming in and bringing in church services again to the jail, which have been very widely accepted by the inmates. And we've also created a clergy program that we initiated which includes the face of the Jewish faith, the Catholic faith, and the Protestant faith that those clergy are available to not only our staff and personnel, also our inmates in the jail, but everybody in the community. And unfortunately, we had a situation a couple of weeks ago in which one of our father Alex from Sacred Art Church and Lorraine, he's one of our clergy. He was actually writing with our deputies. We had a call that we had to respond to which the person was deceased, and so therefore the family met the deputies, had to see our clergy was there. They asked them to perform last rites, and that was a service that you always don't have clergy with deputies when they respond the calls. But we made sure that we put that program back into place and we were able to comfort that family in one of the greatest kinds of needs. So a lot of. Things that we've been able to do that we promised we would do when. We ran for office. The biggest thing right now is the biggest disappointment that we haven't been able to do is the fact is. That I wanted to put our budget actually. Online so people could go to the Sheriff's office website be able to click on our budget and see every single transaction which runs through the Sheriff's office and doe to the software which is being utilized by the Auditor's office right now, and some backlogs with that, the communication between the Commissioner's office. It's technologically right now, just something that we're not going to be able to do for probably maybe next. Year before we get to the budget. Could you spoke to the issue of officers having a lot of. Pressures on them. Could you kind of talk about that a little bit, because oftentimes we see, you know, everyone wants the police, every won't want law enforcement to protect them. But can you speak to some of the emotional stresses that the officers experience. Well, especially here at Larrain County Sheriff's Office, even though that we're finally back up the full staff, you know, in both corrections in the Roe Drill Division, I believe since the first time since two thousand and six, the less deputies that you have working puts a lot more pressure of those deputies to constantly handle the calls you know, that are coming in. Before I took office, there'd be a lot of times we would have three or four deputies covering four hundred and ninety five square miles of Larin County. We've got that up now to eight or nine deputies plus two supervisors that are now covering that. And with that though, going from call to call to call. And those being intense calls, Jeff, we see many people, unfortunately at their worst times when we come into their lives. A lot of times people don't want law enforcement involved in their life at that particular time. But a neighbor called somebody called nine one one, there's an assault that's taking place, domestic situation, mental health situations, and the deputies have to deal with that on a regular basis, And so with that, we also put on staff a contracted psychologists that we have on staff as well. Too. We have created a peer counseling program within the law enforcement community that comes to Lorraine County Sheriff's Office that works with the deputies. And again going back to the clergy members that we have put on there, those clergy are riding with our deputies and they. Are talking about the calls and talking about things that have happened on those calls. And even though it's the responsibility of the deputy to take control of that situation and de escalate it, we need a little assistance. At times too, and making sure that we have the appropriate mental. Health outlook and being able to handle with a lot of the perils that we see on a daily basis. Tell me a little bit about the peer counseling that sounds good. Is that something that's pretty common amongst all of the departments across the state or national Is that A. Yeah, we'll have groups that are assembled right now we actually have latched onto the Cayahoga team because Lorraine County has not had their own peer to peer counselant team for the first responders in the county, so we're using the cai Hogan model. We've actually latched onto the Cayhoga team and anytime that we have a significant situation, even just the other week, we had a chase that took place which started with a aggravated robbery and the kidnapping and aliria of a Prins truck driver that led our department to the Ring Police Department, the Ellyria Police Department and others in a high speed chase which ended in North Hostead and unfortunately in the death of the suspect in that case. Although the Illyria officers who were engaged in that went to a great effort quickly to make a very quick decision and they took the life of that subject because he the subject was placing the lives of the mother and her children. He took hostage in North Homestead. Well, Jeff, that's not something we take lately. So we have the peer support the Kyhuga team that was called out. Matter of fact, everybody was involved in that situation. The peer counseling, the clergy were involved, our departmental psychologists was involved in that. We offered those services to all the agencies that were involved in that pursuit due to the fact is is that you know, no one wakes up, no police officer wakes up every day and says, hey, I want to go out and use my firearm and shoot somebody. It's a last resort that we go to, especially in an intense excessive course situation, and we want to make sure. That those deputies and those officers are dealing with the. Mental health aspect of that appropriately and to make sure that we retain great qualified people and heroes to the community to do their job appropriately. Thank you, Thank you. Sheriff All. We're going to take a quick break and we're going to be right back. We're back with Sheriff Jack Hall. Jack, could you tell us a little bit about the community outreach that you're doing and what can we do to help as well. Well with that. For the first time, we created our own silo within the Sheriff's office, which was community Outreach because before I took office, many things were happening and they still are across the country. In which there's negative views of law enforcement interactions with the communities. We see that right now, especially the timeliness of this podcast of what's going on in Minneapolis with order patrol and immigration and customer enforcements and deaths have now occurred at the hand of those protests and the enforcement efforts that have the community has endured up there, and one of the things that we wanted to make sure that we did when we came on boards, we community created our community outreach unit. That outject reach union is led by Major aging for us from our office, and he also has two direct assistants that helped him with that. By engaging in community outreach that we have been out there regularly, the community, the community gets to see us, the community gets to talk with us. The sheriff is actually out there doing that. We joke around the chief deputy. She handles everything inside the sheriff's office. I handle everything outside the sheriff's office. But what that does and engaging in that community outreach, the coffee with the cops and constantly being out there creates a sense of that we're human beings. People can come up to us, they can talk to us. Our social media presence with the Lorraine County Sheriff's Office. And this is actually one of the most amazing things that we've done in our regards to our community outreach is directly relating back to if we're not at a community event, how do they communicate with us and how do they get in touch with us. Before I took office, the Loraine County Sheriff's Office with average twenty three thousand views a month on Facebook, and there wasn't a lot of interaction between the community and direct messaging and responding back to comments on Facebook. If we do good or bad, Jeff, we allow all the comments, and there's very few parameters of threats against somebody, certain squear words and things like that. If it's a negative comment, it still goes, you know, out there because you know somebody feels a certain way because of that. But this last weekend during the storm, we had a major interaction with the community. A matter of fact, the Central State Weather Facebook notification linked to our page because we were talking about the potential of the Level three snow emergency. What we're considered essentral workers, not essential workers that would be allowed to be out during that snow emergency. So, Jeff, we went from twenty three thousand viewers a month before taking office to last week six point three million now a month that we have on our viewers of that so and actually as we ran the metrics, so this past week we were. The second most viewed Facebook page. Of sheriff offices in the entire country, behind the Lee County Sheriff's Office in Florida. So we're very proud of that outreach. We're very proud of the fact that when we can put these programs together. We had one for the holiday gift card program that we would see signs of positive you know, driving positive community interaction. We had a situation in Lorraine that we had seen a dad who was loading his two small little girls into the car, and we turned around and hit the lights and pulled up behind him. And the natural reaction was like, all right, what did I do? You know? What's going on? Why is there a sheriff's car behind me? So I had got out and my wife was actually with me because she's also a deputy in another county, and so we got out and you just saw the look on the residence face like here it is, I'm being harassed. Introduced myself as the sheriff, and we told him that you know, saw that he was putting his girls in the back seat. They were all buckled inappropriately. So we had a big generosity of the business community in Lorraine County. We had a lot of twenty five dollars gas cards that we were allowed to give out, so we gave him the gas card and his wife was standing at the front door of the house and she's like, what's going on. She goes your son terrified, and. So he's like, well, hold on. So the wife comes out, the two little girls come out of the backseat of the car. They want to see us, and Jeff, there's a little six year old boy. He's at the top of the stairs in the front door and he's crying because he's like, I'm in trouble or my daddy's getting arrested. And so we brought him down and his dad was like, no, no, no, this is good. The sheriff gave us a gift, and so. We coaxed them down the stairs. He came out, and you know, fortunately then the whole family right in front of the sheriff's vehicle. Mark Sheriff's huge and we took a picture of the whole family and all that. It's just things that when people are being pulled over by law enforcement, they automatically think it's a negative experience of what I did. We want to make sure that a lot of times they walk away with the fact that it could also be a good experience of why we I think? Do you share these type things on your Facebook page and your social media? That's that's awesome. Do you think what advice could you give to our listeners that are hearing these things that want to see improved relate and good relationships with law enforcement in their communities, Because oftentimes people are complaining and that's what you hear most of the time. You don't hear these positive stories. So what would you tell the people that are sitting there complaining, saying, oh, we can't stand our police, they're our enemy and that type thing. Well, right now, you know, we have a pretty full calendar going through to your own community outreas events. But those are the people now that do want us out there. We have our own ice cream truck now called the Frosty five zero, which we have taken the many community events and our deputies and our corrections officers are taking that to the vehicle out there. The first time we ever took it out, we took it to one of the housing projects here in Lorraine County. We gave out over three hundred items of ice cream that we're given out that initial day, making the kids believe, Okay, it's our right to approach you know, law enforcement on. That have us come to your community meetings. We serve you. You know, even though I'm. The sheriff, I have three hundred and twenty two thousand bosses in Lorraine County and we just want to make. Sure that we are here to listen to you. We know a lot of times not everybody is going to be happy, you know, every single minute. But at least we want to make sure that. The community understands that we listen. Now, some people too, you know, they're mad because an enforcement action was taken against them, and Cheff that's something we created. That means so we always can't be the happy police. There's going to be a lot of times and a lot of interactions that we have that people break the law and we are law enforcement and that's what the primary purpose of our job is. But we want to make sure that the community asks the questions as to why we engage. So maybe those that are listening, maybe women, seniors that are at home just listening to this and they don't really get engaged. Maybe the positive thing that they could do, and just individuals, not just necessarily women, but anyone could call their shareffs department and suggest that they do some of these things that they create initiatives to go out and engage with the citizens that are somewhat skeptical, skeptical about what they're doing and just don't have that type of relationship and watch the news and all the negativity. Maybe they could turn that around by doing some of these positive things that you're doing. Like you said, ice cream, just ice cream with the cops, ice cream with the sheriffs, get get your clergy engaged with the sheriffs, and and things like that. So there's just so much more that we can do across the state, from county to county and across our nation right in. The sheriff's office too. You hit a good point there as well, is due to the fact is that unlike a police chief in a local police department who's appointed or tests that position, the sheriffs are your elected law enforcement representative. I mean they answered directly to you, and you voted that sheriff. So when we talk about taking the message of the community, especially in a law enforcements, but the community needs to understand that your sheriff is your elected law enforcement representative of the people. And so there's a lot of things that sometimes. A police department can't do because they're bound by the restrictions of their city council, their mayor things like that. But your sheriff is your directly elected law enforcement representative. So what I have to say to the audience at this time is, get to know your sheriff. Yes, right, you voted for him. Get to know your sheriff's. Lastly, Jack, I know we're sheriff all. We're running out of time. Can you talk a little bit about your budget. We've got a couple of minutes here. How are things looking on during this time of us fiscal restraints, and just talk about a little bit where we are well. Most sheriff's offices in most counties are the largest consumers of the county's general fund budget, and that's no different here in Loraine County. We consume about thirty five percent of the entire general fund of Loraine County, So we have approximately a thirty three million dollar budget. A year that we consume. Of that, some of that involves a quarter percent sales tax which goes directly to the jail to make sure that we fund those operations for the jail itself. But one of the things that we've been most proud of, even though that we've had to tighten our belt here in Lorraine County, is our administration has come in and looked at specific things, and the jail, due to its. Age, is one of the largest. Issues that we have as far as taking away from the budget and expenses that you know, we could shore things up on. And one of the things Jeff I was most impressed about was our prescription drug cost our meals for the prisoners that we do that too. The average meal cost about anywhere. From a buck something for breakfast up to a little over two dollars, so a dollar eighty seven in average current inmate that we used to feed the inmates. And on top of that, and this was the biggest reduction that we found, was the ridiculousness of the prescription drug cost. In the past administrations, they would use a private company to buy the pharmaceuticals for for all the inmates in jail jeff Lee House four hundred and twenty two inmates, sometimes it will go up to four sixty. In our jail, we're responsible for their healthcare, their medical costs, and we were spending on average anywhere between sixty and eighty thousand dollars a month just on prescription drugs alone. We were able to then do a simple program, which was buying our drugs from the state prison system, the Department. And Rehabilitation and Corrections. We have lowered that eighty thousand dollars what we used to pay down to eighteen thousand and less a month, and so that's a million rank there that we've been able to take. The budget and we look at that across our entire budget. The Sharp's Office thank you again that you're doing a phenomenal job. I'll tell you with just being in office just a little over a year. Great accomplishments. Keep doing what you're doing and keep fighting a good fight. And uh, just so great to hear your suggestions as to things that we can do and how we can be supportive and enhance the efficiency of your office in terms of making things easier. And just strengthening our communities. So again we're out of time. Unfortunately, we're going to have you back because you've got again. You've got so much going on and so many good things happen there. Again, Thank you, Sheriff jack Haw, and thank you to our audience. Let's keep fighting a good fight and informing our communities and together we'll all rise and be a stronger America, stronger community, stronger state, stronger families, stronger, stronger households. So just keep fighting a good fight. Thank you again, Sheriff Jackhaw.
