Nevada County Picayune and Gurdon Times Newspaper Archive

Sheriff Hesitant About CID Raise From Prescott

County JPs found out the city of Prescott gave CID Jim Westmoreland a raise at the beginning of the year, but the money was not appropriated until Monday night's quorum court meeting.

Prescott does pay for half the salary of the county's CID officer and gave the raise because Westmoreland does about 60% of his investigations in the town.

While the county is not to match the raise, Nevada County Sheriff Harold Vines says he might decide not to give the raise depending on the morale of city and county police officers.

The $2,000 was put into county general and appropriated at the meeting, but Vines still has a say whether the raise will be given since the CID is his employee.

Nevada County Judge John William Barham found out about the raise after the first of the year and notified Vines. Neither official knew the raise was coming nor that the city had even given the raise until the money appeared in county general.

An isolated abuse of telephones in prisoner cells at the Nevada County Jail had county resident Johnny Childres before the JPs at the meeting.

Childres told the group he had received several attempted collect calls from someone he did not know - some coming late at night and in the early morning.

He told the JPs he accepted one call on a mornings after refusing one earlier at 4:30 a.m.

He said the man identified himself and told he was a prisoner at the Nevada County Jail and "just wanted to talk" about his problems.

Childres complained to the Sheriff's office and an attempt to block Childres number from the phone system was begun.

Unfortunately, Ameri-Tel, the company which placed the phones in the cells, was in the process of switching over computer systems and it took several weeks to block the number from the system.

Vines told the JPs the phones were installed under the previous administration of Sheriff Abb Morman and a five-year contract was signed.

Vines said the phones were know turned off at 10:00 p.m. to 7:00 a.m.

He said prisoners had the right to the phones under law and in other instances where people had requested to have their numbers blocked from the system it had been done by Ameri-Tel without any problem..

Deputy Prosecuting Attorney Danny Rodgers told JPs prisoners had to have the right to reasonable access to phones in contacting their attorneys and/or family.

The phones placed by Ameri-Tel can only be used in collect calls, even to 887 prefix telephone numbers in Prescott.

JPs voted to set the hours of phone use from 6:00 a.m. to 8:00 p.m. with Vines and Rodgers agreeing that was a reasonable time of access to the lines.

Vines told JPS that an Ameri-Tel representative by the name of Mark had contacted him as well as Childres apologizing about the problems in getting the number blocked. Ameri-Tel's phone number is 1-800-779-2122.

A committee discussing computers will meet will John Boubelik of Computer Support Group this Thursday night.

The group will meet with courthouse officials in an attempt to get more of the county on-line.

Several county offices went with Boubelik's proposal earlier this year instead of purchasing other materials since tax statements came in improperly tagged and other problems existed.

JPs heard a report from Sheriff Vines on the condition of his motor patrol.

Vines told JPs three of his units had over 170,000 miles on them while one has over 240,000 miles.

Vines said the county was going to need to think about either purchasing a new vehicle or finding anther source for purchasing used police vehicles.

Last year the sheriff's office did purchase one vehicle from the Missouri State Police which had between 48,000 and 50,000 miles. These vehicles sell for under $12,000 and two can be purchased about the same price as a new vehicle.

Vines also told JPs the county was going to have to reimburse the Mena Police Department for training of an officer.

Vines said he hired a new deputy from Mena who had only been working for them for four months after completing his law enforcement training.

A new state law says officers must work six months to offset the cost of the training.

Vines said Mena had requested over $6,000 in reimbursements, but had agreed to settle for $4,075.

He said if he had hired an officer and then sent him to the academy, the county would have been out $4,400 in salary during the training.

In addition, Vines said, the county would have had other expenses including overtime of other officers during the training period and the travel expenses.

The matter was tabled until next month so JPs could determine if they full share could not be pro-rated from the amount requested.