{"id":3902,"date":"2019-01-21T14:14:26","date_gmt":"2019-01-21T19:14:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/morgancountyusa.org\/?p=3902"},"modified":"2019-01-21T15:49:51","modified_gmt":"2019-01-21T20:49:51","slug":"sheriff-kc-bohrer-on-crime-and-punishment-in-morgan-county","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/morgancountyusa.org\/?p=3902","title":{"rendered":"Sheriff KC Bohrer on Crime and Punishment in Morgan County"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">In 2016, when KC Bohrer was running for Sheriff in Morgan County, West Virginia, he <a href=\"https:\/\/morgancountyusa.org\/?p=2228\">promised to bring accountability and transparency to the office.<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/_0XiU0UNcrQ\" width=\"560\" height=\"315\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">To that end, as Sheriff, he puts out a weekly report, documenting the work of his office \u2013 everything from car crashes with deer to overdoses and suicides.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Sheriff Bohrer says that on the overdose front, things are getting better. Even though his office responds to ten to twelve overdose calls a month, things aren\u2019t as bad as they were in 2017, he says.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u201cIn my first year in office we took an aggressive stance and arrested several major dealers in the county,\u201d Sheriff Bohrer told Russell Mokhiber, host of <em>This Week in Morgan County.<\/em> \u201cWe put them out of business. We are not having the reports, we are not having the issues we had in 2017. There has been a reduction.\u201d <\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Sheriff Bohrer says that in part because of the public attention to the opioid addiction problem, there are resources now available that weren\u2019t available a couple of years ago.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Earlier this month, West Virginia Governor Jim Justice appointed Sheriff Bohrer to serve as the law enforcement representative on the Governor\u2019s Council on Substance Abuse and Prevention.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Bohrer agrees that generally speaking, Morgan County is a peaceful, law abiding community. <\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Before coming to Morgan County, Bohrer worked in law enforcement for more than 30 years in Berkeley County. <\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Coming back to Morgan County, did anything surprise him?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u201cNot at all,\u201d Bohrer says. \u201cI\u2019m from Morgan County. Born and raised here.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u201cMy worst day in Morgan County is not nearly as bad as any day I ever had in Berkeley County,\u201d Bohrer says. \u201cThe sheer volume of criminality and population and traffic over there is just overwhelming. When I started in Berkeley County in 1979, the population was only 45,000. We had 16 officers when I started. When I left, we had 58 officers and a population of over 100,000.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">We reviewed with Sheriff Borher some of the highlights from his weekly report.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">There have been many reports in recent weeks of car collisions with deer.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Bohrer says \u201cwe have a lot of deer strikes.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u201cWe are a rural county. We have a large deer population \u2013 probably a larger deer population than people. \u00a0We have several deer crashes a year involving motor vehicles. Typically, they begin in September or October, because of the breeding season where they become more inclined to run into the highway and it generally lasts until about this time of year. We might have anywhere from five to ten deer crashes a week.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">There was a report recently of a \u201csuspicious person at Sheetz.\u201d What is a suspicious person?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u201cThat\u2019s sometimes in the mind of the beholder,\u201d Bohrer said. \u201cI\u2019ve had people call in a suspicious person because they see somebody standing and maybe they don\u2019t really like the look of them. Maybe they are disheveled. Maybe they are mentally ill. Maybe there are intoxicated. Maybe they are on the verge of an overdose. Maybe they are just in an area where people don\u2019t typically see someone. That can be the gamut of the callers.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">What percentage of suspicious person calls end up in some kind of arrest?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u201cProbably less than ten percent,\u201d Bohrer said. \u201cSometimes it\u2019s retaliatory \u2013 they are calling to retaliate against someone they don\u2019t like or they have had a problem with. So they denote them to be suspicious and law enforcement comes and checks them out.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Recently there was a report of a suicide on Pious Ridge Road. How often do you get reports of suicides?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u201cI would estimate we probably have a dozen a year,\u201d Bohrer said. \u201cA lot of times they are mental health issues or emotional issues.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Is crime a function of economics?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u201cYes,\u201d Bohrer says. \u201cIf people don\u2019t have a good economic status and they have to survive, it fuels crime. You see the pawn shops flourishing. You see the burglaries and larcenies rise when you have economic issues in your community.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In 2016, when KC Bohrer was running for Sheriff in Morgan County, West Virginia, he promised to bring accountability and transparency to the office. To that end, as Sheriff, he puts out a weekly report, documenting the work of his &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/morgancountyusa.org\/?p=3902\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3902","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/morgancountyusa.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3902","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/morgancountyusa.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/morgancountyusa.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/morgancountyusa.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/morgancountyusa.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3902"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/morgancountyusa.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3902\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3910,"href":"https:\/\/morgancountyusa.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3902\/revisions\/3910"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/morgancountyusa.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3902"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/morgancountyusa.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3902"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/morgancountyusa.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3902"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}