These numbers were achieved by 10 p.m. Thursday night. The official round-up ended at 11 p.m.
Sheriff Terry Langley said the exercise is a “good, concentrated effort” that has gone smoothly so far.
“The reason we do this is because, over the past few years, the demand for court service and patrol has increased, but there’s to be no increase in manpower because of the economic conditions,” he said.
Capt. Jeff Richards said officers went out to serve a “multitude” of arrest warrants since Tuesday morning.
“We bring the arrested individuals in to the command center, where they wait to be processed,” he said. “The jail immediately receives them.”
One woman entered the sheriff’s office at 10 a.m. Thursday and was on her way to the jail at 10:25 a.m.
“This is a very streamlined process,” Richards said.
As of Thursday morning, about 12 hours before the operation was ended, the office had collected $150,000 in owed child support, one of the most common warrants served and made.
Involved departments, agencies and offices included the state Department of Corrections, Carroll County offices of probation and parole, West Metro Regional Drug Enforcement Office, Carroll County Sheriff’s Office, Carrollton Police Department, Villa Rica Police Department, Temple Police Department, U.S. Marshal Office, county 911 dispatchers, Carroll County EMA, Carroll County Fire Department and Immigrations and Customs Enforcement.
“These other agencies have doubled our manpower,” said Maj. Craig Dodson.
Langley ordered the first round-up like this in April 2007, and said the office has done them periodically since then because of their success.
Langley said the purposes the law enforcement bodies of Carroll County use the operation for include playing catch-up on warrants, practicing techniques and crime prevention.
“First of all, we use it to get caught up on warrants, and that has been very successful, as the numbers say,” Langley said. “But I don’t always look at numbers. One thing I look at is that there have been no major incidents during the round-up so far. It has gone off like clockwork.”
Langley also said the operation was good for practicing techniques on high-risk warrants.
“They pull the warrants and make sure they have the right information here in the command center,” he said. “And then officers go out and try to bring them in.”
The “instant command” has improved over the years, Langley said.
“Everyone is debriefed at the end of every round-up, and we always find something that could be better,” he said.
The third purpose Langley sees for executing the round-up is crime prevention.
“This provides more visibility for us,” he said. “We’ve got more officers are out, and we’re taking people off the street who may commit another crime.”
Langley cited a case the office had brought in Thursday morning, in which a 58-year-old woman was found in the closet of a woman who was being arrested.
“That woman was taken out of that unsanitary situation, and the woman who put her there was charged with neglect of a disabled adult,” Langley said.
The operation has been in the preparation stages for several months, Richards said.
“We’ve worked for the last month sorting geographical zones and setting teams so that an officer doesn’t have to go to Villa Rica and then Bowdon right after,” he said.
In another room near the command center, sheriff’s Capt. Ken Reeves, Carroll County Fire Chief Tracy Smith and Carroll County Fire Department Deputy Chief Tyler Shadix sit around a table and look at a computer screen projected on a dry erase board.
This is the room which ensures the operation is in compliance with the National Incident Management System, and serves as a “flow of resources in the background,” Richards said.
“These guys look at the weather and other conditions that we don’t usually think of immediately,” Richards said. “With this, we’re able to control situations, which you might not be able to do in an emergency.”
Richards said the group was necessary to ensure consistency and accountability.
“If we got overwhelmed for some reason, the government could come in here and pick up right where we left off,” he said. “We’ve got a whole group of people keeping up with everything.”
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