By Sheriff Jarrod Peters
CHESTER, Ill. – As your Sheriff, I feel one of the most important aspects of running a Sheriff’s Office is keeping everyone within Randolph County informed. It is extremely important to stay transparent regarding what is happening within the office, along with providing the public with any information that is generated within all areas of the county. Another instrumental element in running an office is managing employees. I want to publicly thank all of my staff. They have done a tremendous job making the Sheriff’s Office what it is today. It takes a full team effort to run an efficient office, and I could not ask for a better group of individuals to help me navigate our office in a positive direction.
Below, you will find our detailed annual report for 2024. I have broken down the information into associated divisions within the Sheriff’s Office. This report is to give a clearer understanding of both the scope of the office, and those individual divisions.
Patrol Deputies
· Responded to 5926 calls for service.
· Handled 408 traffic crashes.
· Served 1248 civil process orders such as summons, subpoenas, orders of protections, and take notice orders.
· Made 456 arrests. 25 felony arrests, 79 misdemeanors, and 351 traffic arrests.
· Responded to 497 medical calls, 228 motorists assist calls, and conducted 895 traffic stops with 18 DUI arrests.
· Dispatched to 17 burglary calls, 30 domestic battery calls, 62 theft calls, and 2 weapon offense calls.
· Completed 248 school patrols and 77 sporting events patrols throughout the county.
Investigations
· Assigned 43 cases in 2024, with 5 cases carrying over from 2023, for a total of 48 cases worked in 2024.
· 44 of the 48 cases were cleared equaling to a 92% clearance rate.
· 7 individuals were sentenced to the Illinois Department of Corrections for a cumulative 44 years of sentencing.
Corrections
· Booked and processed 734 inmates in 2024, down from 844 in 2023. The fewer bookings are a direct correlation to the new SAFE-T act.
· Fingerprinted Randolph County conceal carry holders and residents who required printing for employment.
Tele-communications
· Logged 12,914 CAD/case numbers to agencies within Randolph County.
· Received 36,469 non-emergency phone calls.
· Received 6,270 emergency 911 calls.
· Entered 277 arrest warrants and 148 orders of protection into the state database.
Civil process
· Created 1248 entries for subpoenas, summons, orders of protection, and take notices.
· Processed a total of 277 warrants.
· Registered 87 sex offenders.
Administration
· Established a committee comprised of area law enforcement representatives known as the Critical Incident Committee. This group is charged with the responsibility of identifying and recommending equipment needs, resources, analysis of procedures, and training needs specific to large-scale critical incidents. Additional responsibilities include developing individual response plans for each Randolph County area school campus for active shooter or any other large-scale incident. The Committee’s overall goal is to improve our response to large-scale critical incidents. Members of the committee include representatives from the Randolph County Sheriff’s Office, Chester Police Department, Steeleville Police Department, Red Bud Police Department, Coulterville Police Department, Randolph County Emergency Management, and we recently added a liaison from Med Star Ambulance.
· Served as the host agency for Active Shooter Rescue Task Force Training. This course brought together area law enforcement, fire departments, and EMS to train in the specialized skill sets necessary to perform the active threat rescue mission.
· Trained or retrained 6 area schools, 2 area businesses, and 1 area church on the topic of Active Shooter Response. This year we’ve added active shooter response training for all Randolph County Courthouse staff.
· Applied for and received federal funding through the Byrne Discretionary Community Grant in the amount of $4.3 million. The funds will be used for renovation within the Randolph County Jail and Sheriff’s Office. Construction begins February, 2025.
· Continued housing and transporting federal inmates for the United States Marshall service, that generated $484,880 for the county general fund.
Conclusion to 2024 annual report
The Randolph County Sheriff’s Office has continued to advocate for public safety for all residents in Randolph County, as well as helping protect your personal property. We continue to build relationships with our youth in all of our Randolph County schools. We increased our school details by almost 60 percent in 2024. This is an instrumental service that I feel needs to be provided to schools throughout the county, as most schools in the county do not provide School Resource Officers for their districts. Tasking our deputies to do these random school patrols has not only helped build relationships with the staff and students, but it has also helped provide a safer and secure atmosphere for everyone.
For the second year in a row, property crimes have decreased. I still attribute this to our aggressive approach to patrolling rural areas in the county. We have also continued to work together with other agencies within the county to help combat our growing drug problem.
Last year, I reported the addition of two new patrol deputies. Those additions have allowed our office the ability to make more contacts on patrol, work more efficiently in our investigations division, and allowed us to be able to patrol the rural areas of the county more frequently.
I would like to say that I have thoroughly enjoyed serving as your Sheriff for yet another year. I have continued to be visible in the public eye. I have also set goals to take and return phone calls in a timely manner, both during office hours and outside of office hours.
Last, but not least, I will continue being a strong voice in protecting everyone’s God-given, constitutional rights within Randolph County.