Jasper County Citizens First

WOW - guess I hit a nerve and pissed some people off  with last week's blog.  Here  is a fact for you - Indiana spends more on its jails than it does on education for its children.  Maybe if they spent all that money in teaching their children right from wrong they wouldn't have big ol jails. Jail count Monday 3-26-18 - 266. Did you know that the Joplin Municipal Court has a website that you can check charges and see if you have court and what date.  Great site.  So in trying to decide what to write about this week I typed in the name of my subject in the Joplin website and found out she has 3 last names.  Alma Louise Karr Sherrick Powers - and I probably don't have them in the correct order, but on with the story. Case number 17AO-CR00985 was filed 7-20-17 and 7-28-17 for 2 counts of robbery, each one a B Felony. And the history goes like this: 8-9-17 Warrant Issued 8-14-17 Bond set ...

Jeff Hall left a comment to do an article on conditions at the jail.  I have no personal experience to draw from so can only write about things I've heard and things I seem to remember (but at this point in my life I wonder sometimes if I have dementia).   Anyway, for years we have all heard the stories about mold, and now I have been hearing about raw sewage backing up.  At one point I thought Mr. Bartosh had a firm come in and do repairs to the jail. So what did they do and how many tax dollars were spent? Now some people say, if those inmates in the jail don't like it they shouldn't do the crime, and I tend to agree with you to a certain point.  However, they are still human beings and deserve to be treated as such. RAW SEWAGE? Come on!  At some point in time an inmate is going to be smart enough to file a lawsuit against the county with some big initialed group, think ACLU, etc, and it's again us taxpayers footing the bill.  And don't say t...

Let's talk about the Jasper County Jail. And let me start by saying I did not take time to double check my counting, so be aware if I am ever called into court concerning this particular week's blog article I will be asking for enough time to go back and double check my counting. These numbers come from the Inmate Roster I printed off of the Jasper County Sheriff's web page dated March 14, 2018: Current number of inmates - 266 Total number of charges - 437 Total Felony charges - 367 Total Misdemeanor charges - 52 Now, I tried to group like charges but some of these had no other group to go into in my pea brain: Inmates on hold for U.S. Marshall's office - 4 Inmates on ICE holds 6 Inmates waiting transport to Missouri Department of Corrections - 17 Inmates being held for other counties to come get - 3 Inmates accused of Murder - 8 Inmates who have violated their Probation - 57 Inmates accused of Fin...

Had a busy week and I feel like I have hit a brick wall.  It has just been overwhelming to my brain this week, going through case.net, looking at things trying to decide what to write about. It seems like this world is just going crazy.  I'm about to reference my religious upbringing, and I don't want any haters -- When I was a kid, 17-19 years old, I remember talking to a very good friend of mine who was raised in the same church, in fact her father converted my father.  Anyway, we were discussing whether or not we felt at that time (50 years ago) if we would live long enough to see the second coming of Christ.  Even at that young age both of us felt like the world was going nuts.   And I am still reeling from my accidental education from being in the court gallery when the judge was talking to the people in jail through video.  The back and forth discussion with the prosecutor's office when bail was discussed was disgusting, not in th...

Any of you guys see this post on Ms. A's Facebook page, February 26 at 8:57 p.m. in Carthage, Missouri? If my sources are correct the young man who was acting interested in the yard ornament was Joshua Hood and the woman was Tabitha Reyes.   And talk about coincidence, I went to court this morning with a friend whose child was being arraigned via video in Jasper County Division 5 court, and I was lucky enough to get to hear Hood's and Reyes' arraignments also. When I was a kid I remember that my parents were having a difficult time making the money stretch from payday to payday but they refused to ask for any kind of government assistance.  They considered it shameful to be on a government program -- which I didn't understand at the time because I also remember my great grandmother getting what they called "commodities" and that cheese was damn good, much better than what you buy at the store now.  I say all of this as a thought to hang on to whil...