The Pulaski County Sheriff’s Department had a busy year in 2018. Sheriff Jeff Richwine reviewed some of the annual statistics with the county commissioners last week. “As you can see, the 911 Center, we had 3,521 911 calls, 51,810 administrative calls, for a total of 55,331 calls for the year 2018,” he said.
Richwine said that of the roughly 13,000 calls that required a service to be dispatched, 7,100 were handled by Pulaski County Sheriff’s Deputies. The trend was similar when it came to cases filed with the Prosecutor’s Office. “All the other agencies that work in this county filed 187 cases with the Prosecutor’s Office,” Richwine said. “Pulaski County Deputies filed 583. That includes the State Police, DNR – I don’t care where you’re from – that’s the State Fire Marshal, that’s Medaryville, Winamac PD. So you can see who does the majority of the work, as far as enforcement in Pulaski County.”
Sheriff Richwine said State Police have cut back local coverage significantly over the years. “You know, when I first come here – and you guys were here before I was – you would go there and there would be 10 or 15 troopers assigned to Starke and Pulaski County,” he said. “You can’t find one now. There’s maybe one. . . . I think they cut their budget and have pushed all that stuff to the county and said, ‘You want local rule; here it is.'”
Commissioner Mike McClure felt the state does relatively little for the county. “People complain about our county taxes, that they’re more than what the state taxes is,” he said. “This guy here was one of them. But our county does way more for us than our state does.”
Richwine gave a similar update to the county council this week. He said he’ll present the jail and deputies reports to the commissioners next Monday.
