Boone County Sheriff's Department (Missouri)

Boone County consists of 684 square miles. Uniformed Deputies are assigned to a district; there are six districts in Boone County, 3 north of I -70 and 3 south of I-70. Uniformed Deputies enforce and investigate Missouri State Criminal and Traffic laws, answer calls for service and patrol Boone County roads. Deputies serve arrest and search warrants, orders of protection, probate orders, subpoenas and civil summonses.[5]

Deputies are armed with Glock 22 .40 caliber sidearms.

The department began the K9 program in March 1993 with the selection of the first handler. The Boone County K9 Unit currently consists of two handler/dog teams. Both of dogs are German Shepherds, originally from the Czech Republic. The handlers trained their K9 partners as dual purpose dogs in a strenuous 8 week K9 handler course. Dual purpose K9s are trained in both drug detection and patrol, which consists of tracking, building search, area search, physical apprehension, and handler protection. Each dog team is annually certified through the Missouri Police Canine Association. Additionally, each team trains weekly to maintain proficiency.

The dogs live with their handlers at their homes and work each shift with their handler in a specially equipped police car. The K9 cars and S.U.V's contain a custom dog kennel, water bowl, fan, temperature monitor and a remote door opener. The K9 teams have tracked (and located) missing persons, apprehended dangerous suspects, and been responsible for the removal of a significant amount of illegal drugs and weapons from the community. The K9 Unit routinely assists other law enforcement agencies in Mid-Missouri.[5]

The primary responsibility of the Boone County Special Weapons and Tactics Team (SWAT) is to successfully resolve difficult police situations, which are beyond the ordinary capabilities of enforcement personnel, through the use of specialized tactics, skills, and equipment. The Boone County Sheriff's Department formally created the Boone County Emergency Response Team (BCERT) in the early spring of 1996. The team was created to address the need for personnel with training in the tactics and with the special equipment necessary to resolve situations that are beyond the normal capacity of enforcement deputies.

The first activation of the team occurred less than a week later to search for a suspect who fled Detectives in the Easley area. Narcotics Detectives were on a three-day surveillance of a marijuana patch when the suspect arrived, and then fled when an arrest was attempted.

In 2007, in keeping with a national trend to distinguish between community response teams utilizing acronyms such as CERT, the Boone County Emergency Response Team was renamed to the Boone County Special Weapons and Tactics (SWAT) Team. Boone County SWAT is closely associated with other tactical teams in the Central Missouri area and has strong ties to both the Central Missouri Tactical Officer's Association and the Kansas City Metro Tactical Officer's Association.[5]

The Boone County Sheriff's Department Investigative Unit is divided into two separate units with each being supervised by a Detective Sergeant. Unit one consists of a sergeant and 6 detectives.

The detectives investigate crimes against persons such as homicide and death investigations, robbery, sexual assaults – adult & juvenile, incidents of domestic violence, and child abuse. The Investigative Unit is also responsible for working property crimes such as burglary, stealing, auto theft, arson, fraud, forgery, and identity theft. Although there are no specialty positions within this Unit, cases are distributed to the Detectives based on specialized training and experience. All sex offender registrations, warrants, and violations are the responsibility of the Investigative Unit. Detectives are on-call 24 hours a day and are expected to respond to all major incidents. Detectives are also trained as crime scene investigators.

Unit two consists of a sergeant and 6 detectives investigating drug crimes, internet crimes against children and a uniformed pro active patrol unit. The Mid-Missouri Internet Crimes Task Force is a task force facilitated and managed by the Boone County Sheriff's Department.

The Mid-Missouri Internet Crimes Task Force is a joint cooperative effort formalizing relationships between and among the participating agencies in order to foster an efficient and cohesive unit capable of addressing the problem of crimes committed through the use of computers and the Internet within the Mid-Missouri area. These investigations include but are not limited to Internet enticement of children, child pornography, trafficking of children, trafficking of illegal narcotics to children, harassment, cyber bullying, terrorist threats, and other crimes facilitated through the use of computers, the Internet, or other electronic media and the forensic examination of computers and other electronic media used to facilitate criminal activity. It is the desire of the participating agencies to achieve maximum inter-agency cooperation in a combined law enforcement effort aimed at reducing criminal activity perpetrated though the use of computers, the Internet, and other electronic media within the communities it serves.[6]

The Traffic Unit was started in the early 1990s. At that time the unit consisted of one deputy. In October 2005 the Traffic Unit was expanded to 3 deputies due to grant funding from the Missouri Department of Transportation Division of Highway Safety. Today the traffic unit consists of 3 deputies and a sergeant.

The Traffic Unit is responsible for investigating crashes on county maintained roadways, traffic enforcement, providing educational programs for the public, providing traffic related training to the department on various traffic related topics, and planning and implementation of various special traffic enforcement events.[7]