---

   Continuing our longstanding tradition, I would like to use this January edition of the Sheriff Corner article to summarize and recap the previous year’s activities of the Cass County Sheriff’s Office. As we begin the New Year and work to complete our year-end statistics and reporting, our Annual Report will be put together and presented in the coming months to the Cass County Board of Commissioners, published on our website, and shared with townships and municipalities throughout the county. 

   On Tuesday, January 3rd, 2023, we held a Swearing-In Ceremony, the first of its kind in this Office. It was a special day for licensed staff and their families to formalize their oath of office and swear to support and defend the Constitutions of the United States and the State of Minnesota. 

   In 2023, we handled 19,442 Calls for Service (CFS). This is our primary method to document and monitor activity that comes into our Dispatch Center in various formats. Our dispatch center receives a variety of calls for service that require some sort of action, whether it be from a Sheriff’s Deputy, a Local Police Department, an Ambulance, or a Fire Department. These also include self-initiated responses from officers and reports made to track activity and investigations. Every incident that is reported to us, that we respond to, or that we come across starts with a CFS number. This number is used to track its status through our tracking and case management system and can follow the event all the way through the court process if it is involved. While 19,442 is a large number, it is slightly lower than Calls for Service received in 2020, 2021, and 2022. We see data trending toward the new average number of Calls for Service post-pandemic years. 

   A much more significant number is 911 calls received to our Dispatch Center in 2023. Our 911 center received and processed 43,261 calls to 911 from cellular phones and only 1,972 calls from traditional land-line phones. 95.42% of 911 calls are now received from cellular phones. These numbers do not count for non-emergency, administrative, and toll-free calls. We estimate that the number is close to 1 million calls per year.  The number of land-line calls continues to drop each year. On average, throughout the year, our call volume of 911 calls is least on Wednesdays, with Saturdays and Sundays being close to tied in the most call volumes. Trending normally, our busiest times for 911 calls received are from 6:00 p.m. - 9:00 p.m. in the evening, with the least number of calls received from 3:00 a.m. - 6:00 a.m. daily. 

   At the Detention Center in Walker, the average daily population was 13 inmates, 10 male and three female, with an average of 30-40 inmates housed at the Crow Wing County Detention Center, where contracted beds are available. These are normal trends and are returning to pre-pandemic levels. 

   The Recreation Division held its annual Boat and Water Safety Training course with partnering school districts, training and certifying approximately 275 5th and 6th graders in Boat and Water safety. This is a significant number and the highest seen to date. Over the last several years, we have seen a significant benefit to these training and education opportunities as the number of boat and water incidents has been declining. Also concerning recreation activities, we worked very hard on county-wide ATV complaints and concerns heard from Township officials and citizens about ATV traffic and conduct. Intensive high-visibility patrols were conducted in high-traffic areas on known busy weekends and holidays. While still providing education, hundreds of contacts were made, and verbal warnings and citations were issued. We also see a correlation in education and enforcement as we study yearly activity and statistical information, learning that we did not report any fatal ATV crashes in 2023, and crashes with injury were half of what was reported and investigated in previous years. It is not for a lack of traffic and activity, as the volume is still in place, but assisting with four ATV Safety Training courses and enforcement efforts has definitely proven to be beneficial. 

   In 2023, two Investigators were assigned to the Paul Bunyan Drug Task Force and the FBI Headwaters Safe Trails Task Force. The Paul Bunyan Drug Task Force is a state-funded task force. The task force is a cooperative effort on behalf of Beltrami County, Cass County, Hubbard County, Koochiching County, Mahnomen County, White Earth Reservation, Leech Lake Reservation, the Bureau of Indian Affairs, the City of Park Rapids, and the City of Bemidji. Current drug trends that we continue to see are that the Minneapolis-St. Paul area continues to be a significant hub of large quantities of controlled substances. Individuals from Northern Minnesota will travel to this area to ascertain quantities of controlled substances to traffic back north for the purpose of sales, including methamphetamine and fentanyl. A significant number of drugs and weapons were recovered in arrests and search warrants. Ongoing drug enforcement is making our communities safe and reducing the number of burglary and theft crimes reported. 

   While this is just a glimpse into 2023 activity, we will have a full summary published in our Annual Report available on our County website at https://www.casscountymn.gov/1450/Newsroom    

   If you have specific questions that you would like answered in this column or in person, please feel free to contact me anytime using one of the following methods: 

Email:  [email protected]

Phone:  218-547-1424 or 1-800-450-2677

By Mail/In Person

Cass County Sheriff’s Office

303 Minnesota Ave W

PO Box 1119

Walker, MN 56484

---