MESEY WANTS TO TURN THINGS AROUND IN BOLLINGER COUNTY

MARBLE HILL -- At 44, Dan Mesey is concentrating on giving back what 25 years of police work has given him. And he's picked a very public way to do it.

The former investigator, police academy instructor and hostage negotiator was elected as Bollinger County's sheriff less than three weeks ago. And since then, one belief has shaped his every move.

"I want people to think this is their sheriff's department," he said. "Once they realize they have a lot of input into it and that they have a department with professional ideas, then they won't say, `This is Dan Mesey's Sheriff's Department,' they'll say, `This is our Sheriff's Department.'

"When people claim something, it means they have pride in it."

Elected May 14, Mesey took 53 percent of the vote against two other candidates. Two days later, on his wife's birthday, he took over a department whose former chief law enforcement officer had been charged with stealing county funds.

Before the election, he said his first and foremost task would be to bring professionalism back to the department. And he wasted no time.

Since Mesey took office, a six-member advisory committee of citizens has been formed to guide the department in forming policies, all but two employees of the department have been replaced, and the department's first-ever procedural manual is already 22 pages long.

He's the first to admit the changes haven't pleased everyone. But that's okay, he says, because they're for the good of the whole county.

"I'd rather have a few people mad at me than have the whole county disappointed in my ability," he said, adding that he's never been and never will be a politician.

"If we're going to be legitimate and treat everybody equally, we have to take the politics out of the department."

Mesey was 18 when he entered the law enforcement field. Born in St. Louis and raised in Granite City, Ill., he was offered football and baseball scholarships to several colleges after graduating from high school.

He turned them down and was one of only 13 cadets accepted in the St. Louis city Police Academy that year. Fifty-six others had been turned away.

After academy training, he worked the streets of St. Louis for years and eventually became an instructor in the academy. He also began working to establish the department's only hostage response unit. Mesey was instrumental in helping to form the 50-member unit, after becoming an expert hostage negotiator.

He also was a guest instructor at FBI seminars across the state. "It was a busy time for me," he said.

About four years ago, Mesey, his wife, Tracy, whom he calls "a saint," and their three children moved to Bollinger County, where many of his wife's relatives live.

"We'd been coming here for years and I just fell in love with the area," he said. And for the kids, the adjustment from urban to rural life was smooth.

"You couldn't get them back to St. Louis if you tried," he said.

Within a year, Mesey began working as an investigator for the sheriff's department. The job came first on a volunteer basis, but later was a paid position "about $370 a month," he said.

In March, he announced his candidacy for sheriff, running as a Republican.

"I had 25 years of experience and a good education given to me, I just wanted to give it back," he said.

Both before and after the election, Mesey had a good idea of what the department needed to spruce up its image. Former Sheriff Januar Peters resigned in March after a state audit revealed that more than $5,000 of county funds had been deposited in his personal bank account.

Mesey said, in addition to a new bookkeeping system, the first thing the department needed was round-the-clock professionalism.

"Police officers are never off duty," he said. "Whether we're in uniform or out of uniform, we still have to set a good example."

Replacing both deputies and two of the four dispatchers in the department was Mesey's next order of business.

Mesey speaks highly of the department's only full-time deputies, Jerry Benfield, 44, a former special deputy for the department, and James "Jamie" Humphrey, 22, a recent law enforcement graduate from Southeast Missouri State University. Humphrey is the first deputy ever in Bollinger County to hold a bachelor's degree.

Of Benfield, Mesey said: "He impressed me, he was the first one I appointed as a deputy and he really adds maturity to the department. Jamie gives that youthful energy to the department."

Another personnel change was to cut the number of reserve or volunteer deputies down to three, the number covered by the county's liability insurance policy. Volunteer deputies also called special deputies are unpaid and are appointed by the sheriff. They are given the power to make arrests and to carry a weapon.

"If we had a $100,000 liability suit brought on the county, it would break us," he said. "I would be delinquent in my responsibility if I allowed that to be a possibility."

Mesey said the practice of appointing special deputies has been widely abused in the county in the past 15 to 20 years, during which 53 such deputies had been appointed by various sheriffs.

The first-ever policy manual for the department, authored by Mesey, is about half finished. Mesey said he used the manual for the St. Louis Police Department as a guide.

But in keeping with his promise to "give the sheriff's department back to the people," Mesey said his advisory board will have to give final approval to all sheriff's department policies and procedures.

Mesey said he's compiling the manual so it can serve as a guide for both himself and future sheriffs.

"It's tough to run any kind of business without rules and regulations," he said.

For Mesey and the other paid employees in the department, rewards are few and demands are high.

Sixteen-hour days are followed by phone calls at night. And there are no frills. Mesey and his deputies have to purchase their own cars and weapons.

But Mesey said he wouldn't trade it for his days in St. Louis.

"When you're a sheriff or deputy in Bollinger County, there is a special closeness between you and the community," he said.

"I rode 25 years in St. Louis and never learned the names of the people I was protecting."

Mesey has already been appointed to the board of directors of the Major Case Squad of Cape Girardeau and Bollinger counties. But in his job as sheriff, he said he hopes to help fight some of the crimes that plague Bollinger County the most, like burglary and livestock theft.

He is also a strong advocate of fighting the sale and use of narcotics. "The use of narcotics is no longer just a criminal issue, it's a social, economic and moral issue and we'll have to fight it through law enforcement, morals and money if we ever want to control it."

Mesey said he'll continue to leave the politics out of the sheriff's department and keep trying to encourage community involvement.

"Even after I'm not sheriff anymore, I'm still going to live here and die here," he said. "And I want to leave a foundation for it."