VIENNA — Mark Morgan, a sergeant with the Belle Police Department, is the Republican nominee for Maries County Sheriff in the Nov. 5 election.

Morgan said he expects the most difficult challenge for the next sheriff will be the transition to a new administration in the sheriff’s office. He described a “learning curve” he foresees if he were elected, which included identifying staff strengths and weaknesses and adjusting policies to those qualities. He described gaining staff’s trust with a “lead from the front” approach.

“I’m not going to be a guy that says, ‘Well, I’m the sheriff, so I can break this rule or bend this rule, but you guys have to follow the rules’” he said. “I think that’s a huge thing to the staff. They don’t want to see that. They want to see that there’s equal opportunities for everyone in the staff for advancement or promotion.”

Several sheriff’s office employees left the agency in the wake of the August primary. Morgan addressed rumors that he planned to fire everyone already employed in the office.

“I began reaching out to the deputies and letting everyone know they could reach out to me with any questions,” he said. “I have spoken to most of the current dispatch staff as well to reassure them that their jobs are not in danger. My focus is absolutely not on vengeance or retaliation but serving the county and making sure we have the best staff possible. When I spoke of having folks reapply, it was twofold; to assess their goals and backgrounds to see where they fit best on a career path with the office and secondly to determine that they in fact wanted to stay. My intention was never to fire anyone but rather to get a feel for the staff and how to put things back together, especially when looking at separating the jail and dispatch.”

Morgan said former dispatchers at the sheriff’s office had contacted him with interest in returning to the job. Other former dispatchers, including those with experience at other agencies, have contacted him about filling in if there was no staff when he took office, but he said he did not believe that would happen.

“It may take a few weeks to make adjustments, but I assure the county that dispatch services will not cease,” he said.

Although some deputies have left, the sheriff’s office has also made hires since the primary. Morgan said he would likely need to post listings and interview for some positions, but he expects the majority of the remaining deputies would stay for his administration.

“Once in office, taking care of existing employees is a priority for me,” he said.

As for a chief deputy, Morgan said he had a “promising candidate” who he has worked with in the past show interest in the position. He did not name the candidate though he said the man has “an extensive criminal justice background,” which includes serving in the Army Criminal Investigation Division as a chief warrant officer.

Staff turnover at the sheriff’s office over the last few months has caused the Maries County Jail to temporarily close.

“I look to have our jail reopened as soon as possible if the conditions are safe enough and as soon as staffing and strategic plans are in place to make sure the jail and dispatch are separated,” Morgan said. “My immediate primary focus as sheriff will be to get dispatch staff situated and stable before adding back in the jail component.”

Separating the jail and dispatch center, which both occupy the courthouse basement and shared staff while the jail was open, has been one of Morgan’s policy goals.

“We’ve asked too much for our staff down there,” he said. If you look at all of our surrounding counties, if you look at their dispatch centers, if you look at how their jails are run, nobody does that anymore. And to have one person down there, and a lot of the times during the day they have two, but to have one person down there at any given time being responsible for supervising all the inmates -- that means the male inmates on the bottom floor and the female inmates on the top floor -- plus dealing with answering phone calls, administration calls, 911 calls, dispatching fire, EMS, police deputies. And of course, while all that’s going on, all this stuff is supposed to be notated in a computer. It’s really too much for one person.”

Morgan’s plan is to move the dispatching center into the sheriff’s office conference room, which would clear the current dispatching space for jail supervision.

One challenge the next sheriff may face is overseeing upgrades to the jail. He acknowledged that physical problems with the jail have been ongoing for some time.

“I think this is an excellent time to pose the questions once again about a regional jail,” he said.

Another priority for Morgan as sheriff would be to rework how the county handles drug crimes.

“I think we need to attack the drugs a little harder than what we have,” he said. “I think the county is due for a new drug task force that works equally with all the law enforcement agencies in the county, that has the same mindset essentially as I do. That hey, we’re all on the same team. We all want to work together. And I don’t think we’re currently getting that out of our current drug task force.”

Maries County is part of the Lake Area Narcotics Enforcement Group (LANEG), one of many task forces around the state contracted by local government agencies to assist with the investigation of drug crimes. Morgan said he does not believe the county is getting its money’s worth from its contract with LANEG.

“One of the biggest areas that they’re lacking is they’re completely loyal to the sheriff’s office, whether the municipalities are contracted with them or not,” he said. “That’s a huge issue. It shouldn’t be that way. It shouldn’t be picking one agency over another.”

Another problem Morgan said he has with LANEG is the types of cases it seems to handle.

“It seems like we’re continually targeting (drug) users,” he said. “We’re continually doing search warrants and going into people’s houses, and they’re typically only coming out with user amounts of dope. I want to target the traffickers. I want to target the people selling it because you’re always going to have users if you always have people selling. You’re never going to get rid of the users if you don’t get rid of the source or the supply.”

Morgan’s proposed solution is to explore some of the other options for drug task forces in the region.

Also among Morgan’s priorities was getting the budget in order and taking accountability for high-value property.

“Standard practice any time you have a change of command, or a change of leadership, would be to do a 100 percent accountability for any kind of high-value item,” he said. “Firearms, computers. I think there is going to be a huge challenge tracking all that stuff down. I’ve seen some poor accountability of equipment or property, things that belonged to the sheriff’s office.”

Morgan noted that since the primary election, he had read in The Advocate about the county commission’s decision to include all items worth more than $100 in office inventory.

“I feel it will be a daunting task for whichever candidate is elected to find records for, locate the items and provide the information back to the commissioners and the people of the county,” he said. “Auditing the financial statements and property logs will be a huge undertaking but one that will take priority within the office. I feel I have a better handle on that as a candidate because of my recent familiarity with many of the items, how we handled inventory when I was there, and steps I’ve taken as a candidate to try to assess the budget as published in the newspaper and other articles relating to sheriff’s office spending since I left.”

The current sheriff’s administration was crucial in establishing the Maries County Sheriff’s Posse, a nonprofit organization that operates independently of the sheriff’s office. Morgan said that though he disagrees with the posse’s branding because of “negative connotations” and possible cases of mistaken identity that could come from people who are not sheriff’s office employees wearing clothing associated with the sheriff’s office, he supports volunteers wanting to serve the community.

“People that just want to go out and help out with, say, searching for a lost child or something along those lines, I’m all for that,” he said. “But I’m highly opposed to this whole posse mindset and a lot of the negative stuff that comes along with that. I’m a big fan of volunteers (and) people wanting to give back. But if you look at that person, I want you to know that person is a volunteer.”

Another priority that Morgan discussed for the sheriff’s office was improving relationships among local law enforcement agencies.

“I keep preaching ‘One team, one fight,’ and that’s really the kind of mindset we have to have going forward with the Vienna Police Department and the Belle Police Department and the sheriff’s office,” he said. “We all need to be one team instead of having all these problems between each other.”

Morgan said that since he won the Republican nomination, he has already been working toward mending the connections among agencies.

“I felt there was no time to waste and aim to hit the ground running,” he said. “The interactions and working with the deputies and Belle have already vastly improved.  We are talking and got to work together during the recent rodeo in Belle. It’s been great mending those fences and working toward a common goal of taking care of the county.”

Morgan leaned on his efforts to understand the needs of the county, its people and its law enforcement agencies in his final pitch to voters. He highlighted his work as a full-time law enforcement officer and experience in law enforcement, security, state and federal corrections and continuing education as reasons he believes he is the best candidate for sheriff.

“I have put over a year and a half into this campaign and throughout that time I feel I invested in the county each and every time I could,” he said. “I have gotten to know the county much better by listening and will apply that to my leadership of the office. I had a plan for the changes that needed to be made before I began campaigning. Since the primary, I have already started taking steps so I can hit the ground running as soon as I am sworn in. There are many actions and conversations I have already taken on how to implement change now to better the county. I have jumped at the chance to start moving forward because we have no time to waste when it comes to the safety and security of our county.”