Marshall County Sheriff Matt Hassel took time Monday morning to update the Marshall County Council members on activity since the onset of COVID-19.
Hassel commented that the jail population was at 152 on Monday morning. The majority of the inmates in the jail face felony charges while less than a handful are there on misdemeanor counts.
He noted that the call volume has been somewhat low.
“Our call volume and our self-generated activity are down 75 percent,” Hassel told the council. “Since I’ve been sheriff, our guys average 70 tickets a month. In April, we wrote six tickets.”
With bars being closed, Hassel said the number of tickets for driving under the influence is low. The travel ban also saw less traffic on the roads. Hassel reported that the calls for accidents are also at a low rate. He believes that the number may increase once the county and state continue to open.
Sheriff Hassel explained that the judge ordered no civil warrant arrests for the time being. Offenders are notified that a warrant exists and must call the court to take care of the issue. He also explained the process of extradition with warrants.
“A lot of the misdemeanor warrants – we will only extradite you from an adjoining county. With felony warrants, it’s the prosecutor’s call. He will let us know if he wants adjoining counties or everywhere in the state. If they are in another state, then he can decide to put it countrywide.”
Currently, there are 293 outstanding felony warrants, 822 misdemeanor warrants and 114 civil warrants.
The Drug Task Force is active and many cases are pending.
While the jail population continues to dwindle, Hassel believes that number may spike again as the weather improves and as more operations open in the county. He commented that he would not take the jail expansion project off the table quite yet. More on that conversation will be featured in Wednesday’s news and on Sunday’s Maximum Impact program at noon on MAX 98.3 FM.
