Yes, the meth pipe in the middle of the road was a clue!

We train regularly for all types of situations in law enforcement; some are fun and interesting, and some are tedious and downright boring. But they say the next best thing to training is doing the job itself with your own two hands. Over the past few months our hard working customers (criminals) have been providing us with lots of hands on training. This is very beneficial to our deputies because it gives them real world experience and helps provide something you cannot get from training in a classroom.

We were recently involved in a pursuit where several items were thrown from the vehicle just before the pursuit ended. One of these items was a device used to smoke an illegal drug, and it was lying right in the middle of the road. Although this assistance from our customer with placing real live evidence in the middle of the road so we could find it was appreciated, I think the deputies could have solved it on their own.

The arrestee insisted they do not do drugs and that there were no drugs to find. I am not sure if this was to throw us off the trail or if they thought we would take their word for it; but we rolled up our sleeves, took the time to examine it, and in the end our highly trained investigative minds decided the medium sized smoking device was something that forensic investigative experts would call a "clue." The rest was downhill from there.

Now some of the clues we get can be hard to follow, but we try our best. A couple of weeks ago we were searching for a wanted fugitive and after checking at their house and other known locations, we had come up short; the wanted person was nowhere to be found.

That is until dispatch received a phone call from the wanted fugitive demanding that I call them so they could file a complaint about us "harassing" them. I returned the phone call and listened to the entire complaint over the phone from the fugitive. It was when I told this fugitive that I only answer complaints in written form that I was given their address so I could send a "complaint form" to them. After much investigative work and consultations from other seasoned investigators we decided we could just send a deputy to the address and arrest the fugitive instead of sending out the complaint form. We had found a clue!

If I had to give an award to the customer who helped provide the most valuable training out of those two events, I would say the second event would take the gold star (or handcuffs). I also would not feel right if I did not recognize all of our customers in the past who have helped contribute to our valuable real life training program. It has helped each one of our deputies become who they are today and they would not have made it in this career without them!

I also want to thank all of our customers for their continued training support after they are in our jail. Our jail staff enjoy the same training and assistance with "clues" as the deputies and investigators do on the road. We will always take all the help we can get from our citizens, other agencies, and of course our very own customers!