WASHINGTON COUNTY — The Washington County Board Sheriff’s Committee on July 30 approved forwarding the intergovernmental agreement for the drug interdiction unit between Washington County Sheriff’s Office and Monroe County Sheriff’s Department to the full county board.
The Washington County Board meets Aug. 12. The agreement would come before the Monroe County Board also, which meets on Aug. 18.
The drug interdiction unit had operated from late 2023 through February 2025, with an agreement signed by the sheriffs of the counties. It has been a six month process for an intergovernmental agreement to come before the Washington County Board.
The Policy Board of the drug task force is planned to consist of the sheriffs of the two counties. At the sheriff’s committee’s July 30 meeting, Washington County Board Chairman Dave Meyer said, “We the board have nothing to say about it. Once it’s voted in, it doesn’t say anything about contacting the committee or anything.”
Sheriff Ross Schultze responded by saying that there’s a person that lives out of state who works for seven different agencies in Illinois to do drug interdiction. He said it is a simple mutual agreement just like Washington County Sheriff’s Office had when they started the drug interdiction unit with Monroe County Sheriff’s Department where both of the sheriffs signed off on the agreement. He said the person who lives out of state that works for seven different agencies in Illinois to do drug interdiction never heard of anything like what they’re doing now with the intergovernmental agreement and every sheriff he has talked to says the same thing.
“Madison County deputizes them and they come in and work his county. I just feel like the County Board is trying to control the Sheriff’s Department. I’m an elected official. I don’t see you really trying to rule the State’s Attorney. I’ll do what it has to do to get passed. We’re not doing anything that a lot of agencies aren’t already doing out there. It’s nothing new at all,” Schultze said.
Board member Rodney Small said they’re bringing another county in and when you’re involving another entity like that, they’ve got to make sure everything is right for both counties.
Chief Deputy Chaz Carroll said that’s why he did the insurance and indemnification for the intergovernmental agreement and ran it through IPMG to make sure it was worded correctly.
Carroll also said there are checks and balances to make sure everything is above board and nothing is out of line.
“With the seizures, it’s a state website that seizures are done through. The state’s attorney office has access to it, so they can see everything that comes in and goes out. Her office can look at it the same (as) we can and everything is done by the judge’s order. The orders and money are entered there on the seizure side,” Carroll said.
Small referred to a sentence from the initial article on the drug interdiction unit ending earlier this year in the May 22 edition of the newspaper. Monroe County Sheriff Neal Rohlfing said in that article that the Monroe County State’s Attorney offered to handle all the cases earlier this year before the drug interdiction unit ended, but it went to the wayside.
Small said he does not want to throw a whole lot more on the State’s Attorney and she’s kind of on her own. He said if they get into some really big stops, it could be very involved with the legal stuff and he doesn’t want to see Washington County having to put out all the effort in the trial and paperwork.
Schultze said he wouldn’t think that’d be an issue for Monroe County State’s Attorney Ryan Webb to do cases because he likes doing these types of cases and he knows Webb will do them.
Washington County State’s Attorney Crystal May said she is not going to automatically give away her ability to make decisions as to what gets prosecuted and what doesn’t. She said she is not going to give authority to somebody else to bring all the cases and make all the decisions in the name of the Washington County State’s Attorney’s Office. However, she said she understands wanting to share the burden of that, but they’ll need to figure out the process by which the Monroe County State’s Attorney would provide assistance.
“Part of what has not been addressed is what’s the ability to do that between state’s attorney offices, especially on the criminal side of things. It’s not a special or conflict prosecutor, so we’ll have to figure that out. I don’t know if anyone has gone down that road yet. It might be possible, but (we) need to make sure of that. There was one that Monroe County was in on right after I came into office because there was no time for everybody else to get up to speed on that. That worked fine and there were no issues,” May said.
As far as how the process goes, Carroll said the traffic stop is initiated by Monroe County Sheriff’s Deputy Kyle Waddington and a Washington County Sheriff’s Deputy goes there to assist. Carroll said suspects are brought to Washington County Jail to get booked and fingerprinted, the charges are forwarded to the State’s Attorney Office and the seizure paperwork is forwarded to the State’s Attorney Office.
“The way the SAFE-T Act is written now for drugs you’re not staying in jail, so the housing isn’t a problem. They’ll be out of jail in two days. Once that part is done, they have to be served the civil paperwork while they’re in jail. We’ll go over and get a court date for the civil case. They’ll have their initial civil case. The civil case is really short and fast. It can be 30-60 days from start and finish,” Carroll said.
Schultze said in addition to drug interdiction, Waddington can look for any type of speeding or moving violations. Schultze said Waddington would also be looking for Illinois State Police broadcasts of a reckless driver or whatever ISP would put out.
Schultze said drug interdiction is all Waddington has ever done. Schultze said Waddington worked the road for six months and he’s been doing nothing but drug interdiction his whole career. Schultze added that Waddington has gone on several calls: one was a burglary call and any hot call like that he’ll go and assist.
Carroll said when Waddington is in Washington County, not only does he do drug interdiction, but just him being on the interstate slows people down. He said they’ve had three fatals in the last two months on Interstate 64 and they get people to slow down because they know there’s police there.
“The deputy that’s out there assisting him also handles calls until he gets called out to help Kyle. He’s not just sitting there. We’re not taking anybody off the road. If Kyle is on the west side of the county, the guy with the dog would be working on the west end and the other guy would work the east side. During the day I and the sheriff and our detective can handle calls. We’re using our personnel in the smartest way possible to get the most done,” Carroll said.
Schultze said usually items seized in Washington County are kept in Washington County. He said if they seize vehicles they go back and forth. He said Monroe County would get one and then the next time they seize another vehicle Washington County gets one.
Carroll said as far as storage of evidence goes, it’ll probably cost the sheriff’s office a little bit of money out of its budget, but they’re probably going to get a shipping container to put in the shed, it’ll be secure in there and have video on it.
“They’re not that much money and you’ve got 20 feet by 160 square feet of floor space to put some shelves in there,” Carroll said.
Carroll said if it’s a vehicle that they have no use for and the county would have no use for, they would be awarded to the state and the state would come take that vehicle. He said the state would sell the vehicle and then it would still be divided by whatever money they made off it and it would come back to Washington County.
“As soon as it’s awarded to us, there’s a 30-day period where it can be challenged. Once that 30-day period is done, I bring the money and we get a cashier check and we send it to the State Police. They divide it 32.5% with us and Monroe County. Twelve percent goes to the state’s attorney office, part of it goes to the Appellate Prosecutor Office and the rest of it goes to State Police,” Carroll said.
Schultze added that they spent $200,000 on four squad cars using drug task force money, so that’s four squad cars the county didn’t have to buy.
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