 I got a broken microphone. OK, good evening, everyone. To echo what everybody said, I think all of us candidates are thankful for getting an opportunity to sit up here and have the opportunity to interact and talk to you guys. So a little bit about myself. To start off, I talked to Chief Hamilton at the beginning. He said, we have a few minutes to tell people who we are, give a little bit of history and why we're running for office and how we interact with the first responder world, which we have several interactions. OK, a little bit about myself. Life long resident of Franklin County. Matter of fact, there's five generations of my family in this community. Married my high school sweetheart, Harlow. We've been married for 28 years. Hard to give away to everybody. She's sitting there right there. I have three children. I have two grandchildren. My wife's a business owner in the community. So we have a lot of history in this county. And quite frankly, we have a huge future in this county also. I've been at the Sheriff's Office for 25 years. I absolutely love my job. I'm blessed to be able to work there. And I am no different from the rest of you guys in this room. I want what's best. I want what's better than what we have for the next generation coming up. Obviously, we have grandkids. So we have a huge future pertaining to this county also. A little bit about my work history. As I told you, I've been at the Sheriff's Office for 25 years. Started in 1991. I was taking college classes with Major Mike Copeland at the East Central College. He asked me to stay after class one night. And I thought, what the heck did I do wrong? Because I was raised if I did something wrong. My dad would let you know about it. So stayed at the class. He told me how to open at the Sheriff's Office and talked to him a little bit further and went to work or went to the police academy. I stayed in Missouri. I got to be 21 years old. Be a police officer. I joined the police academy at 20 years old. I guess I'm told my phone is following down. With that being said, when I graduated the police academy, I was 21, got hired at the Sheriff's Office. Started off an detention facility. Worked there a couple years. Learned about the judicial system and the criminal justice system in regards to the courts and stuff and how that worked. Transferred out to the road patrol division. Worked streets of Franklin County for a couple years. And that was back when there was three deputies on the squad. It wasn't uncommon for one person to be off. And I've worked this entire county by myself before. Now, population was a lot lower. And I will tell you that I've worked this entire county before. And I've got one call in those two good old days. That doesn't happen anymore. Worked there for a little bit. I got the assignment of being a field training officer. Trained several people. A lot of people are still at the Sheriff's Office now. Some of them in supervisory positions. Promoted to the rank of corporal. Worked my way up to rank the sergeant, running a squad, transferring the traffic safety unit, taking care of some grant operations and enforcement in relation to that. Public relations events, education enforcement. And currently I serve as the Sheriff's Command Staff as a lieutenant in charge of public relations. Our deer program, our SWAT team, and the patrol division. With that being said, my heart is with the Sheriff's Office. We've been there a long time. And Franklin County's been blessed. We've been blessed for 28 years with ethical, stable law enforcement experience with Sheriff Tolkien. However, it's time for him to retire. He's definitely earned it. We've been blessed. All of us have been blessed at work therapy at a work farm, but he has earned retirement. So this upcoming election has never been more important. The person you choose needs to continue that legacy that the Sheriff and Major Copeland has built and quite frankly, look forward to the future because we've got a never changing county. I believe in leading with humility. When it comes to me, you're not gonna hear a lot of eyes. You're gonna hear a lot of wheeze because all of us makes the same sacrifices to make that office successful. Same way in the first responder world, we have worked together to make Franklin County successful. What we, for the firemen and EMS in the room, I've been coming to your guys' station for 25 years, not just because you guys cooked the best dinner on quiet night in churches. Place to catch up, but I think camaraderie's important. There's been a lot of friendships built in crisis situation, and we should have the opportunity to interact on positive situations. We've worked a lot of positive things together in the first responder world and I'm proud to be a part of. We've had the batched operas events. We've had the charity run events. I've worked with several fire departments and EMS, folks in the room making training videos that we put out on our page. I know we've made one with Pacific Fire that had over 25,000 views and we did that, what do you do in the event of an accident? So education is key and education's important and working together and collaborating helps us all run more efficient and quite frankly, it gives us an opportunity to build in friendships on a positive. And when you have them positive friendships, we can move forward when there is issues because there's gonna be issues we work together. But if we have them open lines of communication and we have them friendships built, a lot more positives can come out of it. We got the election coming up in August and you guys got flyers that sit here in front of you that tells you a little bit about me. I'm hoping we end them out. There's three things I think important when it comes to subcommittee election, integrity, commitment and experience. Integrity, I promise to maintain the ethical standards that set forward. We're gonna move forward. We're gonna provide transparency to share this office. We're gonna maintain professionalism, we'll defend the constitution and we're gonna lead with Christian values. In regards to our commitment, we are committed to the citizens of Franklin County. That's what we owe them to make a safer community. We're committed to protect the citizens. We're committed to lowering the crime rate. And I said this two years ago when I announced my candidacy for sheriff, a safer community is a prosperous community and we absolutely play a vital role. Technology is at everyone's fingertips right now. So when they look at the UCR reporting and they look at the crime rates, that hurts economic growth in the county. That hurts every one of us, especially in the first responder world because we know we're tax funded, right? So everything's based on valuation. If I get off track here, Mr. Copeland help me out and I know everything's based on valuation. So by increasing and making Franklin County marketable, that's gonna be good for all of us. There's a lot of fire districts out there that run tax initiatives, there's a lot of school districts that run tax initiatives out there. It's not because they're wasting money. It's not because they're spending more money. They're having to do more with less. And law enforcement plays an absolute vital role in that. I remember when Carl and I bought our first house a long time ago. You know, you drove through the neighborhood and you asked your dad, hey, is this a good neighborhood? And that's how you found out if it was a good place to live. Not now, everybody in this room's got a smart phone and you can bring up that UCR report and you can pull the crime rates. Missouri ran an article in the paper four or five months ago. Last five years, our population increased by 934. Folks, that's less than 200 people a year. In case we would push a block just to get rid of it. And because of the crime rate and Jason's right, we've gotten rid of a lot of the meth problems we have. However, we haven't lost that stereotype yet and that stigmata that we have. We have to mark it Franklin County. You know, one of the things I'm proud of is we've worked with the Deer Kids for Vets program. We raised 25,000 items or homeless veterans. What a great positive story. But yet people want to hang on to that stuff and we have to break their mindsets. We break the mindsets on people, how they view Franklin County. It's gonna open doors of opportunity because when the growth comes in, people are buying houses, people are building houses, people are gonna invest in the community and visitors are gonna invest in the community. And what does that do? That creates jobs. That's good for every one of us. That increases valuation. That's gonna help Franklin County. It's gonna help all of our first responders in this room. So we're committed to lower the crime rate and that's the reason why. We're committed to protecting the defendant constitution, especially the Second Amendment, right? And then you guys are gonna see on the back of my cards, we're gonna ensure working relationships with all first responders. Part of my plan to cut crime and take into the war on crime to the criminal's doorstep is involving you guys. There shouldn't be any secrets. You guys are invaluable resource. And if we're having a theft on the southern end of the county with stolen ATVs, get that out to your firemen and your EMS personnel. Why? Because you guys are always traveling the roads. You guys work in Mary. You guys know what we don't know. Extra patrol is great, but if a person don't know that neighborhood, I could go out and patrol that neighborhood if I'm not familiar with it. I couldn't tell you if there's a bad guy or a burglary suspect's truck in the driveway and the back doors kept in, I would drive right by it unless something was obvious. But you guys embedded in that community will be in a valuable resource and we'll welcome them calls. We're gonna lower that crime rate by involving neighborhood watch programs. That's one of the things I supervise into Sheriff's Office. We need to do some work on that. We have to get neighbors back to taking care of neighbors. And for the obvious reasons I just said, if we've got 20 watch commanders, 20 watch captains, whatever you want to call them, we can beam that email out because it shouldn't be a secret. Let them know if there's a problem. And then they can boom that out to 10 people on their list. Now we've got 200 sets of eyes and ears out there. We need a partnership with our mail route carriers or trash deliverers. There's not a bus driver out there that don't know what vehicle belongs in the driveway before they let a kid off that bus. So it's 100% important. And I've talked to bus drivers. Part of my responsibility to Sheriff's Office was to conduct the Senate Bill 75 compliance training, which involves armed intruder active shooter training for the schools. When that came about, we started a program. We had the stakeholders involved with it, putting the program together that was gonna be moving the county forward. And knowing that the emergency management agency was gonna try and create a school safety position, we involved them in that conversation, putting that program together. We involved the two potential candidates that we knew would be interested in the school safety coordinators position. Why? Because when I got them teaching initial onset of it, we didn't want it to be one step forward and two steps back. We wanted it to be a seamless transition. So we're committed to making schools safer and that's how we're doing that. Currently, I think everybody in this room knows Kevin Anderson has resigned, retired, I guess, moved out to the state of Arizona. And currently, I've assumed them responsibilities and roles for the interns also is that coordinating that training and safety for the schools. The uses are future, we absolutely have to protect them. So when we talk about experience, the last thing I told you about, I've got 25 years with the Sheriff's Office. I worked a diverse array of investigations throughout the office, worked in area aspects of the office, spent 21 of them years on the SWAP team. I've served in every position on that team from a crisis negotiator, perimeter team member to an entry team member who's currently running the SWAP team. I got 20 years of supervisory administration experience under Sheriff's Office. So when we talk about the vision and things I can do for the county, quite frankly, everything gears around changing the mindset of building doors of opportunities. So we're now getting back to Chief Hamilton where he said that where our paths crossed that. I'm not new to you guys, our paths crossed a long time ago because I consider all of us brothers and sisters. I've done that for 25 years. You guys have seen me come into your stations. I think it's so important. Glad to be a part of, we had some upcoming training involved with Fire and EMS in July 19, 21st or some mass casualty, classroom practical training going on in conjunction with the Union Police Department. All Fire, Police and EMS are invited. Some of the things we've been involved is applying for some Star Wars funding that we can get some command post management course taught by the NTO to bring out some of these outside structures that we talked about. It's so important to get on the same sheet of music and we talk about incident command, you folks got going on. We need some work, Sheriff, I wanna make sure that we get all of our supervisors into the men's command classes so we understand unified command and how everything works. I talked a little bit about the school safety initiative. I can't put enough importance on that. Our youth is our future and we have to build their relationships. One of the things I'm proud of is I've went into the schools for years, not just with the Senate Bill 75 compliance training, but I've went into the schools to have lunch with them kids and I do that for a reason. When you build that relationship, when it's not a crisis time, then kids will forever remember that. And when that happens, in event that one of them gets lost or they're having issues, they've built that trust. What I usually do when I go into the lunch room and I just did this at Robertsville School probably a few months back is I'll go to the line lady and say, which kid do I need to sit by because they know? And we all know who that kid is, it struggles or needs that, reinforcement. And it was really cool success story is I sat down by the kid who was sitting by himself and she told me his name so I sat down and I high-fived him and I don't wanna say his name I'm gonna call him Billy with a second story, but I high-fived him, hey Billy, how you doing? We got to talking and some people gravitated over some more people gravitated over and when he was the center of attention, I kinda slipped out. So that is so powerful to build the relationship with our youth. The youth intervention, we gotta continue that. We have to safeguard our youth and we have to build that self-confidence among them. When you talk about drugs, there's always gonna be a drug out there in choice. We can try now, as Jason said, opiates and heroin's killing our kids and our people. For that methamphetamine, we can link it all the way back to marijuana in the 60s. But we have to deal with early intervention. We have rehabilitation that's out there, we've got the drug court system that's out there. We gotta give them the opportunity when they're sitting incarcerated to be able to have some treatment and we have to target our youth. The DARE program, it is so important and with that DARE program, we have to add to it. I presented this, this was part of my platform, but I don't think we should sit on anything that can safeguard a community now. I presented to a sheriff about a year ago called the Eighth Grade Intervention Program. We piloted that streamed Japan School and Spring Bluff School. And what that is is when kids are in fifth grade at DARE program, quite frankly, they don't know what peer pressure is. But they get in the eighth grade, ninth grade, get ready to go to high school. They know what peer pressure is. And it's more than just drugs or alcohol. Right now, Franklin County Greg's fit of 114 counties for serious related injury accidents due to distracted driving. What are the kids doing? They're on their cell phones. So we want to build that self-confidence that if myself and another guy are 16 years old and I'm driving down the road, texting and driving, that someone's confident enough to say, hey Steve, put your phone down and pay attention to what you're doing. You know, you got the 16 year olds and 17 year olds heading out there in the car and they want to run 30 miles an hour over the speed limit, messing around with their friends or jacking around. We want that person confident enough to say, you know what, I don't think this is a good idea. And when I talk to you guys about the community, taking care of the community, that's what I want for the youth, the youth taking care of the youth. So we've got to get that program implemented out there. This year we've had a couple extra schools that found out about the program and they want to get on board with that. One of our guys came out and presented a message about the dangers of social media. We've talked about distracted driving. We took a course, blow up the course on the go-karts and give them some challenges. We showed the video and at the end of it, because it tends to get fun, at the end of it we end in videos we've done with, are we in the class with the videos of the powerful messages the same way you guys put on the high schools when it gets close to prom. So we absolutely need to work together and by partnership and that will do that. So I know I covered a whole lot. So I'll open up the floor for questions and see what you guys have for me. Any questions? Thank you guys very much. Hi, it's very much. I'm sorry, Chief, I'm sorry. How do you feel about the chat about the swaths? Currently we have nine deputies on the squad. Currently we have nine deputies on the squad, Chief, and it's not enough. We need to look at additional deputies in the future. But with additional deputies also comes funding. We talked about the deputy salary, stuff like that. I also served on that salary commission along with 12 other people. And I think when it first started off the deputy association went and talked to the commissioners and I give them credit, they agreed we was underpaid. We lost a lot of personnel, a lot of them came from my division and when you make a revolving door you guys got rookie police officers out there on the street instead of assets that once they're trained they're sticking around. So it's definitely been a big help and we appreciate everybody's commitment when it comes to that. I've looked at the call load immensely. You know, I can tell you I can do it right now. There needs to be some collaboration going on with the division that's there. But if we get, we work 14 days a month and we work 12 hour shifts. Between the hours of 3 a.m. and 9 a.m. the call load goes a little bit less. But if we can get two deputies twice a month to work a swing shift from 9 a.m. and on the night shift work a three to three we've increased four additional deputies during our peak times. So with the understanding that might now always be able to do that because as was stated we have great vacation package and benefit package and we always got somebody on vacation. So it's not uncommon for seven deputies to be on at a time and you guys know you guys call us and we get up the seams together and sometimes response time takes us a little bit of time to get there. But when we obviously I'd like to have two more deputies per shift and we can justify that. That also takes money. But in the interim I'm telling you what we can do that will help out Franklin County right now. I hope that answered your question. Anyone else? What about communications? What about communications? Well, yes sir and I don't have a problem with that. I think right now we got a good three a great three to five year plan. Commissioner's agreeing to it. Sheriff Toke agreed to it. A lot of people in this room agreed to it. I think we're moving forward. I like the idea of the fire ops board, the law ops board and I think it's imperative that if there is any issues that we talk about that and we collaborate that. We talked about building relationships and I've been pretty fortunate because I have great relationships with people in this room or thing like to think I do. But them open lines of communication should be there. And if there's a problem whether it's with efficiency or being effective or there's a training issue identified we absolutely need to take care of that. And I'm really proud of our communications officers. We've got some hardworking people that are committed and they're part of our family too folks. They make the same sacrifices we do. They're missing Christmas dinners. They're missing their kids' birthdays the same as you guys are. They are worst dogs. They're the hub of every crisis. Absolutely. So I think we have a good system right now moving forward. And I think it's, I think that it's just gonna foster positive interaction and working relationships with these boards where we're able to communicate and identify problems as they come. Whether it be a training issue or what can we do to do better? And I think everybody needs to look at it that way. And then we'll be in good shape. What are you gonna do for funding communications? Well, we need to talk about that. You know, I listened to the other thing going on and we know there's gonna have to be a funding source for it. You know, whether it be an item in one tax whether there's an initiative going on the ballot but if initiative goes on the ballot what are we gonna do if it doesn't pass? So there needs to be some more collaboration come to that and figure out what the best way is. So I think we need to have them talks. You know, and I don't wanna repeat the same thing that was just said but it's absolutely imperative that we have them talks and figure out what the best avenue to go. We have to support our people. So we need to figure out what to do. Yes. These talks have been going on for just about my age. And we've been going on a long time. We never see and tell these two guys back here got things going again. But now we seem to be in that same not about funding, you know. And we can't operate a system without funding. I mean, you just can't do it. Can't do it, we gotta have it. But it just seems like it's just grinds on, grinds on. In the meantime, you know, we end up with equipment that's maybe not the best. You know, crowded facilities, you know, all of that goes. And is this the... Harvey, I think the talks are gonna be a little bit different now because of the structure, you know, with the fire ops board and the law ops board. It's getting everybody committed to say, yes, we need to do this. And I think with this increased collaboration and communication and identifying the problem and having the meetings, I think it's gonna prevail. Now, what is gonna be the best route? Whether we end up having to take it to the voters, I don't know what happens if it doesn't pass with the voters. You know, we talked about a 911 tax, will that go? We talked about a tax on cell phones, will that go? So, bottom line is, as you said, we have to take care of our people. We know we have to have the upgrades. We're outdated, you guys have been in that facility, you guys know that. So, we absolutely gotta figure a way and figure out a way of working together. So, I wish I had the answer for you standing around here. I think that when we get together that, you know, we can figure out a way. You know, we all know there's a need, you can't say. Everybody can agree and nod their head and say there's a need. I know the commissioners agree there's a need. You can't, everybody can't say there's a need and that's not good for us, some sort of a land. I was given the opportunity to listen to this call. I thank you guys for again coming in, sincerely from my heart. And I ask for your support and confidence. Thank you. Candidates per share have brought up, mentioned the fact of the importance of the relationship between FIRE EMS and law enforcement. And I mean, that relationship can even be expanded, but I emailed a couple of our folks here in the room just last week. We had a motor vehicle accident out on Interstate 44 in AT, there, I think it was very late on a Thursday evening. And it was a kind of unique incident where we had a rescue component that needed to be addressed. We had a FIRE component that needed to be addressed. Naturally, we had EMS because we had a patient and then we had a law enforcement component involved there as well. And all the agencies on the scene, FIRE EMS law enforcement, including mutual aid units for FIRE EMS, just all worked together very well. And my email to the various FIRE EMS agencies was exactly that, that as the incident commander, how appreciative I was of everybody working so well together. So please take that back, Jason, and you'd be up to your deputies. And that's one of the things that I think is that we would like to...