Department has a new app for public to utilize
By Barb Pert Templeton
The St. Clair County Sheriff provides police protection for City of Algonac residents and enforces all state laws and city, criminal, civil and traffic ordinances in the city.
The current law enforcement contract dates to 2021when a three-year contract began and will expire on Sept. 30, 2024.
Sheriff King attended a July 16 meeting of the Algonac City Council to update officials on service to the city over the last year.
King began by noting his department responded to 2,999 calls for service over the last six months.
“It shows they are proactive and interacting with the public, hopefully in positive ways for the most part and in educational ways,” King said.
Councilwoman Dawn Davey said she wanted to ask about how the officers are dealing with local teenagers because there seems to be a little bit more tension with them lately.
“Would those calls fall under assist the public?” Davey asked.
Members of the Algonac City Council listen as St. Clair County Sheriff Mat King gives a report on police services provided to the city over the last year.
King said yes and the goal is to get ahead of that energy, before it turns into something negative between the teens, adults and property owners, so officers are working with the kids. They want to try and prevent the teens from making bad decisions and going down the path of having a record already.
“I know a lot of the deputies have been doing what they can and I want to let you know that I appreciate it,” Davey said.
“I will pass that on, I think early interaction and intervention can help everybody,” King said.
Councilman Michael Bembas then asked King about the listing in his report under fraud.
The sheriff said it could be identity theft or credit card fraud and they even had a rash of people falling victim to the romantic interaction on the internet where they sent out money to scammers.
“We’re talking about people trying to trick other people into giving them money or taking credit cards, so fraud is a pretty broad (category),” King said.
Bembas, who’s the postmaster in Algonac, said they’ve had people trying to send money through the mail and he has to tell people to be careful about all that stuff. He also wants the public to know the post office will never send text messages to anyone about a package or for any reason really.
The Algonac City Council meets on the first and third Tuesdays of the month at 6 p.m.
A wide variety of calls
The numbers for animal complaints also seemed high to Bembas, three a week, and he asked if that was about loose dogs or what?
King said it could be about a loose dog but it also could be someone calling because their neighbor has 25 cats. It’s really any calls for service that animal control can’t handle. It could be an injured deer on the side of the road or in more rural areas something about a horse or farm animal.
As for domestic assault calls, King said that’s broader than just between a husband and wife it could be a father and a son or even between roommates so the topic is bigger than people realize.
King said for the annual report the sheriff’s office has created a new document that’s available on line that shows everything from statistics, to employee of the year honors, to other awards the department has earned. He said it’s way too expensive to print and send a copy to every household but it’s online for interested residents.
“It’s highlighting a lot of things that go on at the sheriff’s office… and it’s beyond the road patrols it’s what we call two sides of the shop,” King said. “We have the marine and dive division…detective bureau, drug task force, special response team, accident investigation team, negotiation hostage team, traffic enforcement team… and on and on.”
He went on to point out the annual report notes a total of 54,000 calls for service across the county. For Algonac the number was 7,647 calls for service and the report has the calls broken down by type.
“This is a great document to show not only the work they do but also the community outreach,” King said. “In the back you can see some of the events we do, some fundraising we do to try to be a positive influence in a community.”
As for the corrections officers’ division, King said they don’t get much attention because they are in the jail all day but they work very hard as well keeping the facilities safe.
“The programs they run and the jobs they do is a thankless job and it’s a very difficult job,” King said, noting that road patrol deputies’ main job is dealing with people face to face and about 20 percent are difficult but the people the corrections officer’s deal with are all difficult. “If you land yourself in our jail right now you’ve made some serious decisions that are really bad.”
“So, I like to highlight them (corrections officers) because they are forgotten often and work very hard to keep our community safe,” he added.
New app for more transparency
They also have a new app for the St. Clair County Sheriff’s Department that was activated on July 19. Users just go to the app store and type in St. Clair County Sheriff and load it to find out all kinds of information from the sex offenders registry, to jail inmate lists and information about court hearings to name a few.
“This app really makes it quick to find out information and it shows what we’re doing and makes us more transparent,” King said.
Davey said she wanted to point out that people don’t realize the amount of people deputies have to interact with that have emotional or behavioral disabilities and that there aren’t enough in- patient facilities in the county or even the state so the police have to deal with it.
“Yes, and it’s such important work and it wasn’t like that when I started 28 years ago in law enforcement,” King said. “Our deputies are highly trained …. people talk to you in a certain way… but then when we get on a scene and we’re dealing with someone with emotional distress we have to try and calm them but we also may interact with somebody with cognitive disabilities and we have to recognize it’s not the same thing.”
He said the deputies get more and more training every year as they are called upon to do more and more challenging things.
“I know that you guys make a difference for the community and it’s hard because the number of in-patient facilities now are slim to none,” Davey said.
“That is one of the biggest crisis’s we have in our community which becomes law enforcements’ crisis,” King said.
Overall, King said the annual report is just a snapshot of some of the great work his department does and also provides some accolades that our due to the deputies.
Bembas asked King if the sheriff was satisfied with the support he gets from the city and the council.
“I’ve got to say I’ve got zero complaints, with the board, Ms. Gerstenberger (City Manager Denice Gerstenberg) communication is key and we do a great job of communicating,” King said.
To see the annul report go to stclaircounty.org.
