At the August 22 Commissioner’s Court meeting, County Sheriff Dan Butts and EMS Director Shannon Griffin presented their department reports for July.
Sheriff Butts reported that the Sheriff’s Office responded to 521 calls for service, covering 23,670 miles.
The average response time for priority calls was 14 minutes and 21 seconds.
Over the month, deputies made two felony arrests and five misdemeanor arrests, while assisting other agencies 35 times and providing 18 public assists.
The department investigated 37 property crimes and 52 crimes against persons and handled 31 animal-related calls. Additionally, they were the primary responders within Bandera City limits on 11 occasions.
The department’s communication center was busy, handling 8,574 total incoming and outgoing calls, including 981 incoming 911 calls.
The Sheriff’s Office also reported 14 Grand Jury indictments, three felony cases filed, 33 warrants served, and nine civil documents executed.
The department conducted five school programs. The county jail booked 40 individuals, with an average inmate population of 49, including five contract inmates.
There were 14 out-ofcounty transports during the month.
“Calls in the city are up,” noted Judge Richard Evans during the meeting.
Sheriff Butts responded, “They go up and down,” explaining that his department would be covering an additional 30-40 hours in the coming weeks due to the Bandera City Marshal’s rotation schedule.
Judge Evans inquired about the status of firearms for the department.
Sheriff Butts provided an update: “Firearms are ordered. The surplus firearms that we had have been turned in. We’re still maintaining the ones that the officers are carrying. Those will be turned in once the new guns are received. They gave us a 3-6 month time frame on when the guns will be here. We’ve already received all the holsters, magazine pouches, the optics for the guns. Everything else has already been received so we’re just waiting on the guns now. We have made some calls to Glock representatives seeing if we can move this along but my understanding is that Glock is making 5,000 guns a day and it takes 6 months to get 35 guns. So 35 out of 5000 a day don’t seem like many but I guess they’re selling lots of guns.”
EMS Director Shannon Griffin reported that the EMS department responded to 258 calls for service in July, covering 13,978 miles.
The department’s average tone-to-en-route time was 1.16 minutes, with an average tone-to-on-scene time of 14.52 minutes.
The department generated $104,808.67 in billing revenue, along with $400 in CPR revenue and $1,531.25 for Pro Rodeo ambulance standby services.
Judge Evans asked about the locations of the calls. Griffin confirmed that Bandera remains the top location, followed by Pipe Creek and Lakehills.
“We had 25 calls out of Lakehills this last month,” she noted.
Griffin also updated the Court on the status of improvements at the County EMS station, confirming that new doors had been installed and that they were now waiting for the locks and trim to be completed.
