2019 Year End Review

I had the opportunity to visit with the Board of Cherokee County Commissioners earlier this morning and present them with the 2019 Cherokee County Sheriff's Office Year End Review Report.  Some of you may not find statistics interesting, but I wanted to share them anyway, for those of you who do, and to shed some light on the overall numbers for last year.

During the 2019 calendar year, Sheriff's Deputies responded to 10,490 calls for service.  Of those calls, there was a 16.34% decrease in burglaries when compared to those reported in 2018 and in 2018, we saw a 5.3% decrease from 2017.  While this trend is encouraging, it's important for residents to remain vigilant, report suspicious activity in their neighborhoods and take photographs of valuables and important property to aid in the recovery by law enforcement, should those items become stolen.

One of the major focuses for our agency is the safety of motorists traveling on our highways and county roads.  In 2019, our deputies responded to and investigated 335 traffic crashes.  Of those crashes, 10% of them involved some type of injury.  This was a significant decrease from the injury crashes we responded to in 2018.

Our Communications Officers kept busy answering and processing 62,047 calls to our non-emergency phone lines in addition to 7,861 emergency 911 calls and 154 emergency text to 911 calls. In addition, they handled 150,560 radio transmissions to area law enforcement, fire departments and emergency medical services.

And as we have done for a number of years, we continue to house inmates for other jurisdictions.  Our partnerships have resulted in the generation of $339,070.00 in revenue to the county general fund in 2019.  The 1,559 inmates booked into our facility during the course of the year comprised of 77% male inmates and 23% female.  A majority (39%) of the inmates were from the Cherokee County Sheriff's Office with 34% from the Sedgwick County Sheriff's Office and Kansas Department of Corrections and the remaining 27% from local police departments.

The numbers may be of interest and tell a story, but they don't tell how much we appreciate the continuous support and encouragement received from citizens all across the county.  We greatly value your support and hope to continue our partnership in order to make this an even better and safer county!

God Bless,

Sheriff David Groves