BENTON COUNTY -- On a traffic stop, training Sgt. Jon Hodoway with the Benton County Sheriff's Office Reserve Division found a bit of a dilemma when the driver had a warrant and a pair of kids in the backseat.
Ultimately, Hodoway said, the driver's sister was called to pick up these children, and he stayed with them until she arrived.
"I felt like, hey, I was able to do something for these kids," he said. "Yeah, I enforce the laws, but you're also dealing with families. It's about people and relationships."
In addition to full-time officers, the BCSO has a volunteer-manned reserve division, with 27 fully-trained and certified officers that operate in every division.
Hodoway, a member of this division, works largely in training and also serves as the resource officer for Eastside Elementary School in Rogers.
He put in approximately 1,180 hours last year, he said, which he was able to do because of his flexible schedule as a writer for several firearm-oriented publications, consultant for firms in the firearm industry and occasional firearm trainer.
"The hours I get to devote to volunteer are all scheduled by me," Hodoway said. "When I went out, it was pretty much when it worked for me."
Neff Basore, senior vice president of Cooper Communities Inc. and commander of the BSCO Reserve Division, said the division is entirely volunteer, aside from the dollar they're paid each month. This dollar, he said, makes them eligible for worker's compensation insurance.
He intends to hire a few new reserve deputies this year, he said. Anyone interested in knowing more or applying for the division should call the office at 479-271-1008 and leave a message for him.
Basore said that he's done plenty in his time with the reserve division, which started in 1981. Years ago, he said, the division had motorcycles and even horses, and was the primary source of deputies to transport prisoners, though outside of these roles it was primarily a patrol unit.
"We did mostly patrol and special events and emergency response," he said. "Now we've got deputies assigned to almost every division."
Today, he said, the unit has people working SWAT team, investigations, dive team, training, and marine and lake patrol. Additionally, he said, the entire BCSO Aviation Department is volunteer-staffed.
The majority of reserve deputies, he said, put on a uniform and go on patrol.
"You're doing exactly the same thing as everybody else in the department," Basore said.
Often the volunteers partner with full-time deputies, he said, which is incredibly advantageous. Typically, he said, the BCSO has one person to a vehicle. If something goes bad on a call, he said, a deputy might be waiting on backup from several miles away, so having a second person in the vehicle means the backup is already on-site.
Five of the volunteers in this division, he said, have take-home vehicles.
And all of these volunteers, he said, are selected with as much scrutiny as any deputy, complete with an interview board as well as physical, psychological and polygraph tests. Following all this, he said, prospective deputies are given proper training in a class that's typically given once per year.
"It's a 136-hour, 140-hour classroom before you can even go out on the street," he said.
The next class, he said, will be sometime in late spring or early summer.
Training and equipping volunteers doesn't come especially cheap, he said. Basore estimated the cost of training at about $250 to $500 per person, and then they're issued a handgun and shotgun, valued at around $1,000 together. The radio they carry, he said, is valued at another $1,000, and then the Taser, gun belt, uniforms, vests all come out around another $1,500.
And of course, he said, the risk is as real for these volunteers as it is for any deputy.
"I don't want anybody to join up, go through the class and discover that, wow, this is dangerous," Basore said. "I want you to know on the front end what all the possibilities are."
But despite that risk, he said, it's a rewarding line of work. Saving someone's life, he said, or taking a dangerous, inebriated driver off the road is a good use of time.
Additionally, it provides a good opportunity for people to use whatever skills they may have to help the community.
Moreover, he said, this might be useful for someone interested in getting into law enforcement, though they need a fairly flexible schedule to start.
"The training you get is beneficial, but it isn't academy training," he said. "But it gives you a good taste of it. It makes life a lot easier if you want to go full time."
Hodoway said that he likes what he does in the division because it gives him ways to make a positive impact with people throughout the community, whether he's training officers, working with kids or responding to an emergency call.
"Maybe there's nothing good to say about visiting a mother whose adult child has passed away," he said. "But you can be there with her."
It's not uncommon, he said, to be dealing with people on bad days, or even their worst days. But being able to help them on those days, he said, feels great.
Working in the school, he said, lets him provide a positive role model for children and, ideally, helps those kids see the police in a positive light at a young age.
Additionally, he said, he believes training people lets him make an even wider impact. By providing people with the skills to do good in their community, he said, he's indirectly helping people throughout the area.
And of course, there are a lot of fun things that one does in police work they might never even see as a private citizen, like chasing down cars or making arrests.
"I'm kind of at the point in my life where I'm like, yeah, that's fun and all, but I wanna try to make a difference," Hodoway said.
General News on 04/05/2017