Girish Mahajan (Editor)

Boone County Sheriff's Department (Missouri)

Updated on
Edit
Like
Comment
Share on FacebookTweet on TwitterShare on LinkedInShare on Reddit
Abbreviation
  
BCSD

Formed
  
1821

Common name
  
Boone County Sheriff's Dept.

Legal personality
  
Governmental: Government agency

Operations jurisdiction*
  
County of Boone County (Missouri) in the state of Missouri, United States

General nature
  
Law enforcement Civilian agency

The Boone County Sheriff's Department is the agency responsible for general law enforcement, court services, and corrections services in Boone County, Missouri. It is responsible for law enforcement in unincorporated Boone County, as well as in several municipalities. Several cities including Columbia, as well as the University of Missouri, have their own police departments; however, all departments house prisoners in the Boone County Jail, operated by the BCSD. The current sheriff of Boone County is Dwayne Carey, who has held the position since 2005, and ran unopposed in 2008 and 2012. The BCSD is headquartered in Columbia, which is the county seat and the largest city in Boone County.

Contents

Sheriff Carey is the 41st sheriff of Boone County. One sheriff, Roger I. Wilson, has been killed in the line of duty after confronting robbery suspects (Sheriff Wilson was killed in the same incident that claimed the life of Missouri State Highway Patrol sergeant Ben Booth).

Sheriff Carey is opposed to a current initiative to ban Tasers in Columbia. The initiative was formed after a number of incidents in which Columbia officers and BCSD deputies deployed Tasers. The BCSD issues tasers to its officers. Sheriff Carey's issues relate to the fact that his deputies respond to calls in Columbia frequently as well as serving civil paperwork, and that the BCSD headquarters is in Columbia.

Sheriff Carey is currently engaged in a difference in opinion with Columbia, Missouri police leaders in how to battle the current spike in crime. According to sheriff Carey, due to the Columbia Police Departments passive response to rising crime, the crime as started to spill into the county. Sheriff Carey has stated in local radio talk shows that his deputies are performing more search warrants in the city of Columbia. Sheriff Carey blames the city leaders, but adds that the beat officers are doing a great job with what resources they are given. Sheriff Carey has stated that proactive patrol and search warrants by his deputies inside the city of Columbia has helped curve the growing crime rates in the city.

Enforcement Division

The Enforcement Division has both uniformed patrol deputies and plain clothes deputies working in the following assigned units: Patrol, Investigation, Traffic, Civil Process, D.A.R.E./SRO, Explorers, and D.O.V.E. The South and North District Commanders oversee the day to day operation of Patrol, Investigations, School Resource Officers, Civil Process and the Traffic Unit. In order to better manage operations the South and North District Commanders split supervision duties based on geographic location. The dividing line for this is Interstate 70. Deputies have jurisdiction for the entire county of Boone. This includes any town within Boone County that does not have a police department. Deputies have powers of arrest in all municipalities and townships within Boone County.

Patrol

Boone County consists of 684 square miles. Uniformed Deputies are assigned to a district; there are six districts in Boone County, 3 north of I -70 and 3 south of I-70. Uniformed Deputies enforce and investigate Missouri State Criminal and Traffic laws, answer calls for service and patrol Boone County roads. Deputies serve arrest and search warrants, orders of protection, probate orders, subpoenas and civil summonses.

K9

The department began the K9 program in March 1993 with the selection of the first handler. The Boone County K9 Unit currently consists of two handler/dog teams. Both of dogs are German Shepherds, originally from the Czech Republic. The handlers trained their K9 partners as dual purpose dogs in a strenuous 8 week K9 handler course. Dual purpose K9s are trained in both drug detection and patrol, which consists of tracking, building search, area search, physical apprehension, and handler protection. Each dog team is annually certified through the Missouri Police Canine Association. Additionally, each team trains weekly to maintain proficiency.

The dogs live with their handlers at their homes and work each shift with their handler in a specially equipped police car. The K9 cars and S.U.V's contain a custom dog kennel, water bowl, fan, temperature monitor and a remote door opener. The K9 teams have tracked (and located) missing persons, apprehended dangerous suspects, and been responsible for the removal of a significant amount of illegal drugs and weapons from the community. The K9 Unit routinely assists other law enforcement agencies in Mid-Missouri.

Swat

The primary responsibility of the Boone County Special Weapons and Tactics Team (SWAT) is to successfully resolve difficult police situations, which are beyond the ordinary capabilities of enforcement personnel, through the use of specialized tactics, skills, and equipment. The Boone County Sheriff's Department formally created the Boone County Emergency Response Team (BCERT) in the early spring of 1996. The team was created to address the need for personnel with training in the tactics and with the special equipment necessary to resolve situations that are beyond the normal capacity of enforcement deputies.

The first activation of the team occurred less than a week later to search for a suspect who fled Detectives in the Easley area. Narcotics Detectives were on a three-day surveillance of a marijuana patch when the suspect arrived, and then fled when an arrest was attempted.

In 2007, in keeping with a national trend to distinguish between community response teams utilizing acronyms such as CERT, the Boone County Emergency Response Team was renamed to the Boone County Special Weapons and Tactics (SWAT) Team. Boone County SWAT is closely associated with other tactical teams in the Central Missouri area and has strong ties to both the Central Missouri Tactical Officer's Association and the Kansas City Metro Tactical Officer's Association.

Investigative Unit

The Boone County Sheriff's Department Investigative Unit is divided into two separate units with each being supervised by a Detective Sergeant. Unit one consists of a sergeant and 6 detectives.

The detectives investigate crimes against persons such as homicide and death investigations, robbery, sexual assaults – adult & juvenile, incidents of domestic violence, and child abuse. The Investigative Unit is also responsible for working property crimes such as burglary, stealing, auto theft, arson, fraud, forgery, and identity theft. Although there are no specialty positions within this Unit, cases are distributed to the Detectives based on specialized training and experience. All sex offender registrations, warrants, and violations are the responsibility of the Investigative Unit. Detectives are on-call 24 hours a day and are expected to respond to all major incidents. Detectives are also trained as crime scene investigators.

Unit two consists of a sergeant and 6 detectives investigating drug crimes, internet crimes against children and a uniformed pro active patrol unit. The Mid-Missouri Internet Crimes Task Force is a task force facilitated and managed by the Boone County Sheriff's Department.

The Mid-Missouri Internet Crimes Task Force is a joint cooperative effort formalizing relationships between and among the participating agencies in order to foster an efficient and cohesive unit capable of addressing the problem of crimes committed through the use of computers and the Internet within the Mid-Missouri area. These investigations include but are not limited to Internet enticement of children, child pornography, trafficking of children, trafficking of illegal narcotics to children, harassment, cyber bullying, terrorist threats, and other crimes facilitated through the use of computers, the Internet, or other electronic media and the forensic examination of computers and other electronic media used to facilitate criminal activity. It is the desire of the participating agencies to achieve maximum inter-agency cooperation in a combined law enforcement effort aimed at reducing criminal activity perpetrated though the use of computers, the Internet, and other electronic media within the communities it serves.

Traffic Unit

The Traffic Unit was started in the early 1990s. At that time the unit consisted of one deputy. In October 2005 the Traffic Unit was expanded to 3 deputies due to grant funding from the Missouri Department of Transportation Division of Highway Safety. Today the traffic unit consists of 3 deputies and a sergeant.

The Traffic Unit is responsible for investigating crashes on county maintained roadways, traffic enforcement, providing educational programs for the public, providing traffic related training to the department on various traffic related topics, and planning and implementation of various special traffic enforcement events.

Corrections

The Boone County Jail was opened on February 28, 1991. The original jail/Sheriff's Operations Building complex, existed of four buildings with a Vehicular Sally Port. The entire project comprised approximately 54,000 square feet at an initial cost of about 6.8 million dollars. The jail occupies three and one half buildings and approximately 35,000 square feet of space. The remaining 19,000 square feet of program space is devoted to joint mechanical space and the Sheriff’s Operations.

This new jail is an "indirect supervision" model which allows for viewing into the cell blocks by way of windows and camera monitoring by control room officers as well as roving officers that enter in the cell blocks and housing units on a frequent basis. Each of the three offender housing structures includes a central control room surrounded by 5 to 7 housing cell blocks. Each cell block holds from six to twenty four inmates of various gender and offense classification.

The original jail had 134 beds for custodial inmates and a 50-bed Work Release center split with 35 beds for men and 15 beds for women offenders. In 1999, the sheriff's department divested the Work Release program and contracted with Reality House Incorporated to manage that function. The sheriff's department conducted a major renovation of the work release facility and created a five unit classification custody area primarily for female offenders. With the addition of add-on bunk space and absorption of program space it added 26 additional beds in the original custody buildings and increased the total inmate capacity from 134 to 210 inmates. All this was done within the existing hardened environment of the original 1991 construction. As a result of the total use of existing hardened space the sheriff's department was forced to add a small storage building accessible to the admin building. Although the total maximum capacity is 210, due to classification and gender needs, it operates in the 182-185 capacity as a daily operational capacity.

Inmates that exceed the operating capacity are housed frequently at Reality House Inc., Cooper County, Chariton County, Howard County, Callaway County, and Randolph County.

List of Sheriffs of Boone County

DWAYNE CAREY

2005–Present

THEODORE P. BOEHM

1985 - 2004

CHARLES E. FOSTER

1977 - 1984

JACK R. MEYER

1974 - 1976

FRANK L. (BUD) ELKIN

1965 - 1972

GLEN POWELL

1949 - 1964

DUKE MOYNIHAN

1941 - 1948

PLEAS WRIGHT

6/14/1933 - 1940

ROGER I. WILSON

1/1/1933 - 6/14/1933

KILLED IN THE LINE OF DUTY

CLYDE BALLEW

1929 - 1932

ROY CREED

1925 - 1928

FRED C. BROWN

1921 - 1924

T. FRED WHITESIDES

1917 - 1920

G. BERT SAPP

1913 – 1916

WILSON HALL

1909 - 1912

FOUNTAIN ROTHWELL

1905 - 1908

FRANK C. BRADFORD

1901 - 1904

WILLIAM R. BALDWIN

1899 - 1900

JAMES T. STOCKTON

1895 - 1898

W. I. ROBERTS

1891 - 1894

J. G. EVANS

1887 - 1890

W. A. GOODING

1883 - 1886

JOSIAH W. STONE

1876 - 1882

JAMES C. GILLASPY

1872 - 1876

J. C. ORR

1870 - 1872

F. D. EVANS

1868 - 1870

J. C. ORR

1866 - 1868

J. F. BAKER

1864 - 1866

JAMES H. WAUGH

1862 - 1864

JOHN M. SAMUEL

1858 - 1862

JERE OREAR

1854 - 1858

J. B. DOUGLASS

1850 - 1854

W. T. HICKMAN

1848 - 1850

T. C. MAUPIN

1844 - 1848

F. A. HAMILTON

1840 - 1844

JOHN S. MARTIN

1836 - 1840

WILLIAM S. BURCH

1832 - 1836

THOMAS C. MAUPIN

1830 - 1832

H. JAMISON

1826 - 1830

JAMES BARNES

1822 - 1826

OVERTON HARRIS

1821 - 1822

References

Boone County Sheriff's Department (Missouri) Wikipedia