The Inter-Mountain photo by Edgar Kelley Randolph County Sheriff Rob Elbon, at right, attends a recent Randolph County Commission meeting with Senior Deputy Aaron Channell and K-9 officer Nikki.

ELKINS — Randolph County Sheriff Rob Elbon provided the county commissioners with a six-month review and report on his department.

During the reports section of the most recent commission meeting, Elbon presented Commissioners Cris Siler, David Kelsing and Chris See with up-to-date numbers from the Sheriff’s Office.

“I’m providing the commission with an update of our activity during the first six months of 2024,” said Elbon. “As of June 30th we had answered 3,171 calls for service in the county and that’s up seven percent from last year.”

The Randolph County Commission voted during its second meeting in June to move one of the Sheriff’s Office;s deputies from part-time to full-time. At that meeting, Siler requested that Elbon come back and present the commision with some numbers to justify the move.

Elbon told commissioners at the most recent meeting that his deputies have made 1,088 traffic stops since Jan. 1, noting that number was up 79% from a year ago. 

“Warnings issued during traffic stops was 510, and that number is up 152% from last year at this time,” he said. “Citations issued is 305 for 356 offenses and that is up 109% from a year ago.”

Elbon said that the Sheriff’s Office has initiated 213 criminal cases with 285 offenses so far in 2024.

“That went down a little bit, about 12 percent from last year,” said Elbon. “We had 57 arrests for 100 offenses this year so far and we’ve had 111 traffic collision crashes for the first six months and that’s up 48%, three of those were fatalities over the last 30 days that we’ve investigated. We have made 25 transports that are generally out of county to another facility somewhere for juveniles, mental hygiene situations and things like that. 

Elbon said the final activity number for traffic stops and calls for service through the first six months came to 4,259, which is up 19% for 2023.

“I also did some checking with the Magistrate Court for the first six months of the year to see what they scheduled in court for us,” said Elbon. “Now a hearing is just a hearing and you could have 15 charges for that hearing date. But for the different cases, the DNR had 25, the City had 75, the State had 217 hearings, and the county officers had 213.”

Siler, who is a retired West Virginia state trooper, told Elbon that the numbers were looking better.

“There’s some stuff that you can’t control and that’s criminal activity and traffic crashes, which you don’t want to go up anyway,” said Siler.

Elbon said Chief Deputy Brad Sharp has been with the RCSO for a long time and that he continuously tracks numbers for the office. 

“He did tell me that generally when your traffic stops are high, your cases go down,” said Elbon. “And that’s exactly what happened. Our traffic stops doubled but our caseload was down.”

Siler responded, “A lot of times when you push traffic and bring that up, your crime tends to drop more because people realize you are out there. They see you, they know you’re out there, they know you’re stopping cars, and they kind of slow down on the criminal activity. So it makes it a lot better, it works out for everybody.”

Elbon closed his report by praising his deputies and their accomplishments through the first six months of the year.

“Those are the numbers we have and the guys are working and hustling,” he said. “And I think those numbers reflect that.”

The next Randolph County Commision meeting will be July 18 at 1:30 p.m.