be welcome to another edition of the richmond police beat spent about six weeks since we've last talked and like to ask the public today law enforcement role seems to have changed in thirty eight years but one thing that's always required for us to help do our job is public's input and the public's eyes we solve a lot of our cases believe it or not based on what the public can tells us the biggest help we can have if somebody sees something suspicious out there get that vehicle description write it down write the plate number down and that's how we solve a lot of crimes yes unfortunately if we we do take that to a criminal case you're probably going to get subpoenaed in to testify or at least get into a deposition where you'll testify just the between the lawyers who most cases that are really strong do not end up going to a jury trial just a really really serious so you're likelihood of having to go that to a jury trial would be or a trial in front of a judge would be not very likely but we ask that you call you know recently we've perfection motor sports down in jonesville which is off of right upper east main street since august he's had four brain new trailer stolen from is property he shouldn't to go through the expense but he's now put in a tire fence up around what a gate video surveillance systems which cost a lot of money and there are houses around there but at no time do we ever get to seem to get about twenty two thousand dollars right now in these four trailers which are probably many of the scrapped out for metal or they've been shipped out to another state where some states believe it or not don't require registrations on small trailer so they never check the bin numbers even though we have the vin numbers listed in n c i c which is a national crime information center so if anybody actually a police officer anywhere in the country ran those vans it would show that it's stolen and we could hopefully recover it or at least the insurance company would get it back to do what they would do with them after their recovery so we really appreciate it when the public gets involved we can't do this job alone the job is changed a lot in my thirty eight years of used to be just you know police officers were to deter the tact and solve crimes but we do more than that now we're we're social workers sometimes where marriage counselors sometimes mental health evaluation sometimes which we're really not trained in we get small amounts of training that stuff but we're not the experts in that and we rely on the experts in the field and we did run in those type of things but here again it's you know asking that the public keep their eyes and and ears open and when they see something suspicious write it down give us a call even if they don't you know call us right then at least if they have that information and they hear something you know like perfection motor sports having trailers all of that you know what i saw this vehicle there and it's this type of vehicle and this was the plate number that's very helpful for us other thing i'd like to talk about is the four corners this morning main street bridge treat jericho road believe it or not we've had over thirty in the last year we've had over thirty accidents of that in about that intersection and most of these are during commuter hours and most of them are because people are trying to beat that red light when you see that light and we see it all the time and we do write traffic tickets there for what we call traffic control signals but when that light goes yellow that doesn't mean you step on the gas and try to get through it and what that means is it's time for you stop we see so many of them you know one car goes to the yellow and then the next two or a on its tail going through the red light and we write the two hundred twenty eight hour traffic ticket for that we've had like i said in the last year we've had over thirty accidents there a most americans by people running a red light and you just you know it's not worth it you know when you because most of these times the reportable accidents and you're sure it's rates are going to go up your car's going to be damaged you're going to have to lose the car to go to the body shop it's just not worth the time and effort to try to beat that re like we've been somewhat active it's been a little slower lately but since the last time we talked you know we've we've written one hundred seventy six traffic tickets in town we still get a lot of six warnings there in that time period we saw it was basically one on one we do a lot of traffic stops about fifty percent of the time they get a written warning we're having a really big influx first small town  old school several of these abend dui drugs in the drug of choice has been marijuana and i'm not convinced and like i said you can call me old school that marijuana doesn't lead to the other things they ha we go through the same procedures that we do if we stop you for dui alcohol the difference is we take it to hospital get a blood test the one of the problems we have with that is now becoming a cost factor every time that we stop somebody for dui drugs and we can't get india arie which is a drug recognition expert there's only about thirty five i'm in a state we take that operated to the hospital get the blood they have to have that blood sample sent to the state police lab in waterbury and then shipped lab in pennsylvania and it cost me about three hundred one thousand dollars every time we have that done or i should say cost you the taxpayers but we're seeing more and more of that you know it's not just alcohol out there we're getting dui drugs we just had one case and it was actually on october twentieth that about about ten thirty eight an evening one of my offers officers stopped a car suspected a dui was driving all over a leftist center and and this is where the overtime comes in the operator was obviously under the influence of alcohol and we think drugs but the officer could also smell a strong odor of marijuana coming out of the vehicle known or napper of the vehicle or actually operate the vehicle it was of somebody else's car wouldn't give consent so we actually seized the car and took it to a secure facility we actually took it wilston p d where they could put it in their garage and applied for a search warrant the result of that search warrant led to about three quarters of a pound of high grade processed marijuana and evidence of cultivation which now led into us applying for a second search warrant for the property so this turned out to be a two day event we hit the property which had been cultivated yet that he'd been cultivating about up in the trees they had very sophisticated operation everything was camouflage is like being in vietnam he had walls made of  small saplings and stuff in her twenty gather so you couldn't see anything which also led into what appeared to be illegal still operation moonshine operation so liquor control was called in for that but you know this this whole ordeal took about two days and a lot of manpower the person has been charged with not only the dui and he was criminally suspended it was for theo i charge in the second a month is ninth criminal d drug was license is suspended felony cultivation of marijuana felony possession of marijuana we know he's with that amount of marijuana as he's it's not personal use he's selling it that's what makes it a  felony we're still working on that case because everything has to be sent to the lab now to get it prosecuted everything has to be you know we feel tested here positive for marijuana but now it's going to be sent to the lab and be lab analyzed and officially wait even though we wait here and scale they want the lab stuff so that's the kind of stuff that's being been going on there in this time period we've investigated a hundred eighty eight incidents everything from assaults to theft complaints domestic assaults you know we've had two cases where we were arrested people for aggravated assault one particular case was a domestic assault and gentleman decided to beat up on the woman that's the mother of their child together they're not married and this is the second incident we've had with him in about four months for a domestic assault case we have put him in jail and they'd let him go  conditions of release and a week later we arrested him again because he was when the woman and driving and he's criminally suspended so he violated his conditions a really nice so back to jail he went and that's kind of what we deal with repeatedly there's no rooms in the jail so they it's a revolving door between arraignment and the time they actually go to court they're convicted and sentenced to something we've had several cases of actually we had four cases of violations of conditions a release when we actually arrest somebody or not just us but any police officer when they're arraigned they're when they're let go if they're not held in jail they're there let go the judge such conditions a release out actually got to pending a domestic assault violating his conditions or release and then several one you know were out for other types of conditions and they violated it and sometimes we get called by the public they they know these people they especially the alcohol ones you know we saw john doe over here he's drinking again and then we get a call and then we end up taking the to jail because they want to rein him in court when they're on the influence of alcohol or drugs they go to jail and they're held there until sober we've had three arrest on warrants this is where people get charge was something cited in the corridor and they've been raining court in the court says condition you'll be back in court it such such a time or in one of these cases it was a man that we've probably arrested about eight times in the last year  that was ordered by the judge to go to work crew and he had to do so many days of work rule he decided to snub his nose at the court system and and they should a warrant for this particular case he called us we got you know we were put in a pressure i he knew we were looking for him and he had recently had or knew him had a motorcycle accident on private property and was now using crutches from two days earlier and just didn't feel like running anymore but he had seen a doctor so that was pretty much about a five six hour ordeal for the officer because we can't just take him to jail we had to take him to the emergency room have  waited by the docs yep he did have a broken leg so they had to do their thing and then we after they released him and said yeah you can go to jail now we put him back in the car and off we go to the correctional center again so you know that's kind of some of the things we go we know we've made twenty arrests in that time period since we last talked which resulted in twenty six charges because sometimes people are charged with multiple violations we had one case on the domestic assault where he'd actually the woman that's the mother the child is a reformed heroin it's kind of some of the things we go through time and time now the other thing i want to talk about is most the snow this weekend we got hammered hard last year with the weather with accidents here again i want to talk you slow down and get good tires on your car a lot of these accidents you know they're running half worn all  seasons or regular tires and just because the vehicles all wheel drive or front wheel drive or four wheel drive doesn't really make a difference they don't stop any better without good tires they'll slide just as far if not further especially for bigger four wheel drive and people think this because they've got four wheel drive that they can still do the speed limit speed limits or advisory most people don't realize this you know just because a speed limits forty or forty five or fifty if the weather isn't good enough to be going that fast and you get in an accident because you maybe or maybe the speed limit is fifty but you're doing forty five really sets what you tell if you're doing forty five and you slide one hundred feet off the road hit the tree or somebody outs you're apt to get a traffic ticket for that for go when they called speed too fast for conditions which brings points minimum pointed to you could be it's two more points because there's an accident involved which then your insurance company's going to jack your rates up more than likely especially if you've had more than one violation or you're a male under twenty five and you're going to pay for that for about three years before those the insurance company points for our purposes only last two years but insurance purposes they like to hold that over your head generally for about three years and so what we ask you to do is to slow down and drive what the conditions allow you to do it's no different you know when cases that we have to go up on the interstate to help the state because i get so many accidents and we'll hear the same thing for me after i was only doing sixty five or seventy it's glare ice you know you can't go that fast here's your traffic ticket speed too fast for conditions you got two points and you're probably going to get assessed two more so that's one thing i really gotta ask you is be very careful this winter i'd also like to thank you we didn't have any issues this year would cabbage night or hell night some people call it you know we didn't have the tires burning we didn't like some towns we didn't have the pumpkin smashed all over it was pretty orderly i had two of my guys up on pleasant street and ing out candy out of the cruiser you know it well it went very well so i just got to thank the public in the citizens and some of the citizens i don't think are even from richmond that were in that area just for you know that's a job well done we we didn't have any issues at all and i thank you for that there again if you have any questions if you ever asked suggestions like i said i've been doing this a long time with there's always time there are things that maybe we can do better and some things we can't change because of the way the laws are written you know and our rules and regs you know we have to do things  certain way sometimes people are happy with us and sometimes they're not but that's you know that's just what we have to do and i thank you for visiting us again and hope you have a pleasant weekend