Answering the Call: Perry County sheriff is drawn to life as an officer

Seventeen years into his career as Perry County sheriff, Gary Schaaf still has aspirations to improve the department that patrols more than 450 square miles. In recent years, deputies in Perry County have worked to reduce the number of burglaries and Schaaf, 53, says he hopes a reduction in crime can continue. Schaaf, a native of Brewer, a small town in northern Perry County, first became interested in law enforcement in the early 1980s when he was worked as a security officer for a local business. Schaaf said he always felt drawn to life as an officer and today still enjoys the satisfaction of knowing he helped someone.

Q: What positions have you held in Perry County?

A: I got started in law enforcement in 1982 as deputy sheriff. I was there for four years, then I became chief of police for the city of Perryville, Mo. I was there for seven years, and then in 1993 I took over as sheriff. I've been here ever since.

Q: What do you think makes you a good sheriff?

A: I have experience in dealing with folks and having done so for so long I feel that gives me an edge. I've dealt with the court systems and I've got good people under me. Any sheriff nowadays, if he doesn't have good people under him he's not going to go very far, because there's just too many things to do for one guy to keep up with everything. I have things set up pretty good, so that the right people are in the right place.

Q: What are some of your duties as Perry County sheriff?

A: All sheriffs are responsible for these things -- we have responsibility for court security, and we also serve the courts by delivering notices. We have certain orders of the court we have to enforce, and, of course, we have the jail. You're here until you either bond out or go to court. If you're found guilty you may be sentenced to jail, so we securely house and feed everybody we're required to have. And finally there's law enforcement. We do enforce the laws of the state of Missouri, and we try to be reasonable with it and not go overboard. I think most people appreciate the fact that we're trying to keep them safe. We also have the criminal element and we spend a lot of time chasing them down and investigating different crimes.

Q: Tell me about what sort of crime occurs in Perry County.

A: You're going to have the same kind of things here that you would have just about anywhere else. It is going to vary in numbers because of the population, but we have murders just like they do other places, but ours are spaced a lot more widely than in some highly populated area. We have the same kind of drug problems everyone else does, thefts, burglaries, that sort of thing.

We have really done a good job of knocking burglaries down. The lowest we ever had was 13 in a year just a couple years ago, but they're starting to climb back up now, and I think that's primarily due to the fact that we've had to lay off people in the last couple years. We had to lay off two patrolmen and two jailers in the last two years -- one patrolman and two jailers just this year.

Q: What did you have to do then to make sure the department is still being effective with fewer employees?

A: You have to get the most out of the people you have. One of the things that I've done for years to help with that is technology. You need technology to assist your guys to do that job and get it over with. If you get a prowler call or someone runs off from a traffic stop or just about anything like that and if it's in the evening, you can run around all night with your flashlight and your headlights and such and if they don't want to be found they just lay down and you can't seem them. So we've invested in some thermal imaging equipment and night vision equipment to help us with that. They're like a force multiplier, almost.

Q: What have been some high points in your career?

A: Well, I started off real good. The first week in office -- I think it was six days in -- we had a call about somebody messing with their neighbor's fences and this was apparently a reoccurring problem before I took office. So I sent one of the deputies out to talk to this gentleman. When the deputy got out there -- the guy was a nut, he lived in a tent -- the man came out with a shotgun and shot at the deputy and hit him. The deputy went to return fire and his weapon didn't work, so he dropped it and ran off. We ended up being able to capture him.

Later that same year we had the flood of 1993, and that was an experience in itself. It was an eventful term.

Q: What's next for you? Do you have some future goals?

A: I like it right where I'm at. We have had good luck reducing crime in the county, and I think some of that is tied to the number of drug arrests we've made. We concentrate on property crimes and drug crimes, and I think the two are related. It seems when we make more drug arrests in a year the property crimes go down. I hope we continue reducing crime.

Q: What do you do when you're not in uniform?

A: I like to fiddle with alternative energy projects. I just enjoy that kind of stuff. I mess with solar panels, I built my own wind generator once and hoisted it up and did some experiments with that. I just had a good time with it. We've got some horses at the house and I just like to tinker. ... I have a little shop that I work in.

ehevern@semissourian.com

388-3635

Pertinent address

710 S. Kingshighway, Perryville, MO