A Look Through a Deputy's Eyes, Dubois County

By: Corbin Lingenfelter, News Director

Dubois Co.- While driving the roads of Dubois County, you may see a few Sheriff’s Deputies out on patrol.

This is a part of the proactive approach that County Sheriff Tom Kleinhelter wants for his area. Currently, three deputies work 12 hour shifts. 

“You never really know what’s going to happen,” said Deputy Case Cummings, “If we can anticipate in a night what’s going to happen, or say ‘hey something bad is going to happen tonight, we can have six guys out. But there is really no way for us to know.”

Deputy Cummings, along with Deputies Kyle Eckert and Craig Schneider work one of the night shift rotations. The three travel together to calls and work together on scenes, this way, according to them, they can go home to their families at the end of their shift. 

“To the average citizen, that may come across as militarized,” said Deputy Schneider, “If we’re the only person there and our back up is ten to fifteen minutes away, if we don’t take control of the situation and the situation takes control of us, how are we really helping the victim?”

One of the ways that the Sheriff’s Office and Sheriff Tom Kleinhelter wants to help is adding nine new deputies, which would be aided through a proposed public safety tax.

“Around Christmas time (2022), there were three deputies in three different parts of the county,” said Deputy Eckert, “It adds a lot of strain with how big this county is. Sometimes there’s just not a good straight road to get to somebody. Having a few more guys out at night or during the day would be very beneficial to hopefully cut the run times down a little bit, getting out to where we need to get out to.”

The proposed tax is .25% income based tax, and would go to help all public safety inside the county. It must be approved by the Dubois County Council at a Public Hearing in order to go into effect.