By Pat Culverhouse
“This is the greatest job in the world and I love it. I wouldn’t want to be doing anything else and I hope to be doing it for a while,” Webster Parish Sheriff Jason Parker told members of the Minden Lions Club.
Parker is heading into his sixth year as the parish’s top law enforcement officer.
One of his priorities during his term in office has been establishing lines of communication and cooperation with other law enforcement agencies, the Sheriff said. One such cooperative agreement is with Louisiana Attorney General Liz Murrell’s Internet Crimes Against Children task force which targets sexual predators.
“Sexual predators on the Internet and other social media are targeting youth, and sometimes successfully,” Parker said. “Children are our most precious resource. My commitment goes beyond paperwork (with the Attorney General’s task force) and I’ve assigned a deputy full time to the task force.”
In a roundup last year, 67 sex offenders were arrested by the task force, Parker said.
“Working with all agencies, in municipalities, state-wide or federal, we work better together than alone,” he said.
Parker said his office came through what he called “a winter apocalypse” in good shape, thanks to the vigilance of deputies and cooperation from the public.
“We came out of this weather without any injuries to our deputies and no major accidents,” he said. “Our residents used good judgement during bad conditions and it kept our deputies free to answer calls for service.”
Parker said the Sheriff’s Office is building a state-wide reputation for excellence, and part of that comes from the performance of two deputies.
“Capt. Joel Thomas and Sgt. Jeremy Haas travel across the state, at the request of various agencies, to train instructors who will be training others for POST certifications and such,” he said. “There are only a handful of people who are certified to do this, and we have two of them.”
Thomas and Haas are also certified firearms instructors and that comes in handy in another area Parker said is important to his office and to other law enforcement agencies.
“Our firearms range and training facility at the old penal farm is important for a lot of reasons,” he said. “Now, we can train without having to travel to other parishes, and we can share that opportunity. We’re drawing other law enforcement agencies to Webster Parish to get great training.”
Firearm safety programs will also be offered to citizens of the parish, and especially to young persons, the Sheriff told Lions Club members.
Parker said one important project is nearing completion, and he is proud to be a part of helping that come true.
“The female prison facility at the old penal farm is coming together and could be completed by the end of summer,” he said. “We’ve been talking about this this for years. It’s a police jury operation, but I pledged to help financially. It’s time get those ladies off the fourth floor of the courthouse.”
When the police jury first began exploring the possibility of a female prison, Parker agreed to help with between $2 million and $2.4 million dollars for construction of the proposed $5.1 million project.
Parker also told Lions Club members of the Sheriff’s Office participation in D.A.R.E. programs designed to teach parish fifth-graders about the dangers of substance abuse. Deputies now serve as School Resource Officers in 12 schools and many are also D.A.R.E. instructors.
He pointed to programs within the parish’s penal system (Bayou Dorcheat Correctional Center and the parish jail) designed to help inmates, including work release programs to help small communities and to create job opportunities for inmates post-release.
“Last year, we had 11 females volunteer for a heavy equipment operators instruction program at the technical college here,” he said. “They now have the certification to find a job, and there are opportunities out there.”