CULLMAN, Ala. – Cullman County Sheriff Matt Gentry on Wednesday introduced the creation of a new team tasked with maintaining the peace in Cullman County: the Community Response Team (CRT). The CRT includes Lt. Matthew Bales (the team’s leader), Sgt. Terry Smith, Deputy Jesse Cummings, Deputy Cheryl Hawkins and Deputy Nick Watkins.
Gentry said the CRT is tasked with enforcing drug laws and aiding patrol deputies in reducing thefts, burglaries and other crimes.
“While narcotics will be the primary focus of the CRT, their mission will be to tackle the listed crimes above as wells as any specific criminal element in a particular community as well. Any law enforcement officer will tell you that arresting and solving drug-related crimes will also solve thefts, burglaries, etc. as they often run together. CRT began March 14 just when COVID-19 began, and the team still has been able to arrest 101 suspects in Cullman County. They have been able to seize approximately 1 pound of meth, 2 pounds of marijuana, 4 grams of heroin and 4 ounces of prescription opioids,” said a statement from the CCSO.
Gentry said the idea for creating the team was born from the increase in call volume during the summer.
“In the summertime, we had been utilizing our school resource deputies from those areas where we had high complaints and high call volumes, and it started the thought process into what we wanted to create,” he explained. “One of the things that we believe in at the sheriff’s office is that the office doesn’t belong to me, doesn’t belong to the deputies – it belongs to all of our community. So what better way to do something than by being community-oriented?”
He continued, “Today in Cullman County, your deputies are catching approximately 67,000 calls a year. With the current staff we have and not being able to add on, that’s a lot of calls. So with the CRT, when the community calls and says, ‘Hey we’ve got these problems,’ it’s their mission to go out and keep the peace and solve problems, and in doing that it helps those deputies that are out there on the road. This team allows us to have those extra resources to go out and solve those problems.”
Gentry discussed the specific duties of the CRT, saying, “Their mission every day is to go out and provide peace to the community. How we do that is if you have a drug dealer living next to you, they’ll do whatever it takes to put that dealer in jail. If you have speeders on your road, they go out and work traffic in those areas. If we’re having burglaries or thefts, this team will go out and work burglaries and thefts to help Patrol and Investigation. They’ll also handle warrants; we’ve had some people call and say, ‘Hey there’s a person living here with felony warrants who needs to go to prison,’ and they’ve been able to find that person and put them in jail. That brings peace to that community.”
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