Solving Crime in Liberty County

LIBERTY, June 10, 2015 - The Liberty County Sheriff’s Department has a larger budget this year than ever before and approximately 2 Million dollars more than it was just six years ago. i-dineout.com took at look at what all that extra money is buying for us under the leadership of Sheriff Bobby Rader.

We studied the Uniform Crime Reporting statistics for Liberty County for 2011, 2012 and 2013 which was the first year of Bobby Rader’s term as Sheriff of Liberty County.

In the first year of Bobby Rader’s term in office the number of burglary cases cleared fell from 23% under Patterson to only 8% under Bobby Rader.

Auto theft cases cleared fell from 33% to 21% under Rader.

Larceny cases cleared fell from 25% to 15% under Rader.

Two decisions that Rader made early on was to create a drug interdiction unit whose primary job it has been to perform drug interdiction on US 59 using our tax dollars to fight the drug problem in places like Arkansas and other locations out of our state. There are five deputies currently involved in this task.

The other decision made early on which no other Sheriff in Liberty County history did was to create a SWAT team which required thousands of dollars of equipment and manpower to train deputies. Furthermore the cost of training is an ongoing expense as constant training is required in order to have a SWAT team. No other Sheriff thought that the cost of a SWAT Team in time and money could be justified in our county where it is so little used.

The reason cases are not being solved and cleared is that so much of the labor in the Sheriff’s Department is devoted to other tasks that we as taxpayers can ill afford.

The reason the burglary of your home or business is not being solved is that Bobby Rader is just busy doing other things with your tax dollars than solving crime.