Friday, March 19, 2010

Police Chief Chat

With all the activity centered around the Missouri S&T’s St. Patrick’s Day celebration, we were somewhat busy this week. Here are our call totals: 931 calls for service (an increase of 287 calls over last week’s totals). Of these calls there were: 24 accidents, 14 alarms, 44 9-1-1 hang up calls, 27 disturbance calls (domestic or other), 50 traffic complaints, 26 assists of other agencies, 7 intoxicated person calls, 218 traffic stops, 12 check well beings, 27 arrests, 23 suspicious nature calls. Ask you can see, our traffic stops, intoxicated person calls and arrest totals were up from the norm. The additional actions may be a reflection of the St. Pat’s celebration or activities associated with that event.

The Patrol, Traffic and Communications Divisions are hit the hardest during almost any kind of special event such as St. Pat’s, Summerfest, severe weather and just about any other major incident. They are the folks that are receiving, responding and investigating the calls and complaints associated with such events. These folks are what I like to refer to as the backbone or meat and potatoes of our police organization in that of all the divisions, important as they are, the telecommunicators and first responders are usually the first group in and the last group out. I want to take just a moment and thank each and every one of you for your professionalism, courage, dedication to duty, compassion and drive to endure rotating shifts, inclement weather, meals on the go, missed family time and events and the ability to continue to provide this great service day after day and still maintain a warm smile and warm heart. All of you are truly the Rolla Police Department! Thank you for all you do!

I would also like to thank our Volunteers in Police Services, our Police Reserve Unit, the Police Explorer Post and Behind the Badge (BTB) for their endless devotion to public safety and for bolstering our ranks in an effort to ensure the Rolla Police Department’s mission to keeping our community safe is completed! These volunteers, prepared meals, patrolled neighborhoods, manned intersections during the parade and performed many other tasks to make our St. Patrick’s Day operation a success. Thank you again to all our volunteers of whom without, we would be unable to accomplish our goals and perform our mission!

Along those lines, this week’s Volunteers in Police Services spotlight is on none other than Janessa Brown Martin! Janessa is a VIPS volunteer and also a Rolla Police Explorer adviser and liaison between the two entities. Janessa was born and raised in the Rolla area. She was educated at home then accepted a position as a telecommunicator in Central Dispatch, where she served 2 years. Janessa served in the Rolla Police Explorer Program for four years attaining the rank of Captain. Janessa is married and the proud mother of a one year old daughter. She enjoys singing and acting in her spare time and will be playing “Kitty” in the upcoming production of Pride and Prejudice playing this month at the Ozark Actor’s Theatre. Janessa joined the VIPS program in January 2010, and enjoys school and neighborhood patrols!


This week, we took delivery on 3 new Chevrolet Impala patrol cars to replace aging fleet cars that were being phased out of service. The 2010 Impala’s were ordered on state bid through Don Brown Chevrolet in St. Louis. Don Brown ordered the cars in white then painted them to match our black & white paint scheme. The cars were then delivered to Ed Roehr Safety Products where they were outfitted with emergency lights and siren, prisoner cages, rifle racks, video cameras and scanners. Upon delivery to Rolla, Rayfield Communications out of Springfield, Mo. installed the 2 – way police radios. This weekend the cars will be striped and numbered by Steve Harshbarger to match the rest of the fleet. The new cars will be assigned to Sgt. John Frey, Spo. Brad Gibbs and Spo. Tommy Davis.

In closing, S/Sgt. Rick Williams announced that we have exceeded our goal in the sale of Law Enforcement Torch Run t-shirts to benefit Special Olympics. We set out to sell $1,000.00 in shirts to continue our membership in the prestigious Torch Club, which is comprised of Law Enforcement agencies who meet or exceed $1000.00 in fund raising within a given year. The Rolla Police Department has been a Torch Club member since 1993. This year the t-shirt sales are already over $1500.00, and there are more orders coming in. This is great news in that all monies raised supports our local Special Olympic athletes. If you have not yet received your shirt, or need to place another order, contact S/Sgt. Rick Williams at 308-1213. Thank you for helping us help the athletes!

Have a great week!

Chief Mark Kearse

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