VIENNA — Maries County Chief Deputy Scott John joined the June 8 county commission meeting to discuss the sheriff’s posse and the potential reorganization of some of the rooms in the sheriff’s office.

Before John joined the meeting, Western District Commissioner Ed Fagre said several people had asked him about the county’s insurance liability regarding posse activity and he would like to clarify it.

Presiding Commissioner Victor Stratman asked John about how the posse relates to the county’s insurance.

John said that he had asked about the matter, and he believed the county was covered.

“They are not going to be deputized,” John said. “They do not have deputy powers. They don’t have arrest power. These are strictly volunteers that are going to be wearing a posse uniform shirt, that are going to be given specific assignments, who will ride with deputies or ride with jailers to these specific tasks.”

Stratman asked if posse members will always have a sheriff’s office employee with them while acting as members of the posse.

“Not always,” John said. “It depends on their level of training, how long they’ve been with us (and) what their certifications are.”

“What happens if one of them brings a gun and they want to be Roy Rogers?”  Fagre asked.

John said the sheriff’s office will arrest anyone impersonating a deputy.

“We’re very aware of the risks, and we made it very clear at our first meeting,” he said. “(As a member of the posse) you will only be allowed to do what you’re tasked with, what you’re trained to do and what you’re assigned to do. Outside of being on duty with us, you are a civilian and you have no special powers and you are to be a good witness.”

John added that posse members will be allowed to carry firearms while volunteering but only if they complete the sheriff’s office’s certification course.

The posse will have three divisions when it begins: community policing, search and rescue, and school safety.

The community policing division will help to introduce the posse to the community through town hall meetings with residents and business owners. John said the groups at the meetings will discuss problems they see in the community, and the problems do not have to be law enforcement-related.

“We’re going to see where we might be able to help with (those problems),” he said. “If not, maybe we can point them in the right direction. Maybe we can get the attention of a local rep to address the problem. That’s what community policing is all about.”

The sheriff’s office will provide posse members with search and rescue training. Some of the training will be general and some will focus on the use of all-terrain vehicles or utility task vehicles. Other training will prepare posse members to help with search and rescue while mounted on horseback.

“You need to condition your animal to sirens and lights,” John said.

The training will include topics such as how to do grid searches and how to avoid damaging evidence or compromising the scene.

The school safety division will have posse members acting as an extra set of eyes at the county’s schools at drop-off and pick-up times or events. Posse activity in the school could also include walk-throughs and mentoring students.

John said he would also like to have a group of posse members trained to teach the sheriff’s office’s Junior Deputy program to students in the fifth-grade and sixth-grade age range. The program has been on a schedule of alternating districts each year, but if posse members help with the course, then the sheriff’s office could teach it at the two districts every year and possibly add Visitation Inter-Parish School.

“I like that a lot,” Stratman said. “And the search and rescue. The other thing that concerns me is that some of these people are going to have scanners and are going to be going out.”

“They’ve already been told that they cannot self-deploy,” John said.

At the time of the meeting, 21 people had applied for the posse. John said that by the time the posse is at full force, he could see it numbering between 30 and 35 members.

Reorganization Projects

At the meeting, John and the commissioners also discussed some plans he had for reorganization of some of the spaces in the sheriff’s office.

In May, the commissioners received a plan from John to redo the kitchen area of the conference room in the sheriff’s office. The commissioners wanted to talk with him before moving forward with the project.

The project would move the residential stove away from the wall it is against now. John said because of the number of inmates the jail has had recently, cooking for them requires all four burners. When the cook uses all four burners, the wall gets hot.

“I just don’t want to have an issue there, and it’s crammed in that corner,” John said.

The project would also add a partial wall that is about 6 feet long. One of the refrigerators could go against the partial wall. Moving the refrigerator will add more storage space, which the kitchen area lost when it added a basin sink.

John said the only labor cost would be an electrician who would need to wire the other side of the room and add an outlet. He and a couple of other sheriff’s office employees could do the building.

“We’re just going to set up some two-by-fours, bolt them down, put a couple of anchor bolts in the floor and slap up some paneling on it,” he said.

Eastern District Commissioner Doug Drewel asked how much money the sheriff’s office has saved since the switch last year to cooking inmate’s meals instead of buying frozen meals.

John said he was not sure of the exact figures, but the savings were enough to cover the salary of someone to cook for the inmates and still have money leftover though it is not enough money for the inmate security fund to operate “in the black.”

The original proposal also included a plan to turn the visitation room in the sheriff’s office into a solitary confinement room.

John said the jail no longer does in-person visits. After COVID-19 protocols prevented in-person visits, video-chat visits for detainees became standard practice. Now that the sheriff’s office does not use the room for visits, it is available for other purposes.

“One of the problems that we’ve had down there over the years that I’ve been here is that you get somebody high as a flipping kite or drunk as a skunk wanting to fight or run his mouth,” John said. “We need a solitary confinement room for when we get somebody in that is belligerent, combative or needs segregated.”

Other purposes for solitary confinement that John mentioned included inmates with contagious medical conditions or inmates who are suicidal.

“Right now if they’re suicidal, I have to handcuff them to a bench in the booking room or I have to put them back in our interview and interrogation room,” he said. “If we have an investigation going on and we need to interview somebody, we have to go into this room at the end of the hallway where some inmate is sleeping, pull all their stuff out, pull them out, put them on the bench in the booking room, move the desk back in there, conduct an interview and then move everything back out and then put all their stuff back in.”

Switching from a visitation room to a solitary confinement room would include the removal of the chairs, phones and dividing glass that are currently in the room. The sheriff’s office would also remove the windows and wall up the area. The room would also need padded walls to ensure inmates could not harm themselves.

“We’re willing to do the work,” John said.

Stratman asked what the sheriff’s office would do about inmates in solitary confinement needing to use the bathroom.

John said the jailers would need to check on the inmates every 30 minutes. In the evening, the jailers would move the other inmates to their cells so the solitary inmate could shower and use the phone before returning to solitary confinement.

Stratman asked about the jail’s population. At the time of the meeting, there were four women and 13 men jailed in the courthouse.

John said in 2019, the jail’s average daily population was about nine inmates. Now, the average is closer to 18 to 20 inmates.

“Our jail has changed in the last 10 years,” John said. “When I started working here, we’d go six (to) eight months without a female. Now, I can’t think of the last time we went more than two weeks without one.”

The commissioners told John that he should move forward with the plans for the kitchen but wait to do anything with the visitation room until they knew more details.

Other Business

In May, the county received a water bill that was unusually high at more than five times as much as the previous month’s bill. The commissioners discussed adding limiters to the showers in the jail to ensure water does not run when no one is using it. Stratman said he would contact a plumber to determine the source of the excess use.

At the June 8 meeting, Stratman said someone from Wegman Plumbing had told him that the showers were the source of the high bill. He requested a quote for limiters to add to the showers.

The commissioners appointed Rachel Williams to the Maries County Library Board for a term expiring on Dec. 31, 2025.

Stratman said he had noticed the two flags outside the courthouse were looking like they needed replacements, so he picked up a new United States flag and a new Missouri flag from Leo Cardetti’s Flags & Flag Pole Co. in St. James.