Additional Help Coming To JCAP Participants As Result Of Documentary
By Leah Sander
InkFreeNews
WARSAW — People are stepping up to help Kosciusko County’s Jail Chemical Addiction Program participants due to viewing a documentary on the program.
JCAP Coordinator Courtney Jenkins provided an update on the program at the Kosciusko County Sheriff’s Merit Board Wednesday, Feb. 9.
She said various people had stepped up to help following viewing the documentary done by local DreamOn Studios. Episodes of the second season of the documentary are currently airing on Sundays on the Kosciusko County Sheriff’s Office Facebook page.
“One of the most note-worthy I would say would be the CFO of Network Partners has reached out to us,” she said. “He’s actually located in Miami, Fla., but has offered to fly up once a month to meet with our people to share his story, to talk with them about his recovery and where life has brought him and so we’re actually going to have a little Zoom meeting to kind of work through those things.”
She also said a woman plans to teach a household management class to JCAP participants on “just kind of those basic things that we kind of all figure out as we go or you’ve learned from your parents or whatever but they may not know those things.”
She also said three men should receive their high school equivalency diplomas soon.
Of the current JCAP class, she said participants were younger or seemed “more immature” than others more recently.
“But they are really working hard and it has been really encouraging,” Jenkins said.
She also said she met with leaders of Lake City Bank.
“(Lake City Bank President and CEO) David Findlay has expressed interest in really looking at our graduates to hire into the bank, just finding those right fits,” she said. “They’re going to be helping us out with our mock interviews and have had internally people in their organization reach out to them wanting to help with … resume building or interviewing skills or with mock interviews.”
“It’s just encouraging to see the community hear things and then say ‘OK, where do we fit in this? How can we support these people as they come out of this program and really start to rebuild their lives?’ It’s just a good feeling,” she said.
Jenkins also said leaders are working on evaluating 10 candidates for the latest round of the program.
Work release update
The board also heard an update on the county’s work-release program from its Director Heather Desenberg.
She said as of the meeting there were 87 people in work release, with a few more to be added by the week’s end.
She said the group was behaving well. For their work positions, she said “everybody in our building is $20-plus per hour.”
She said Polywood had done mock interviews with some people while they were going through the JCAP program and “they hired two of the guys without re-interviewing them. They were that impressed by them.”
She noted some of the work release participants are now in leadership positions within their companies.
During the snow emergency last week, she said about 80% of the companies that people in the program work for closed due to the weather. As a result, they had the participants help with snow removal at the building to keep them busy.
Tower project
The board also heard an update on the county’s public safety communications tower project from County Administrator Marsha McSherry.
“They’re working at the central site right now,” she said. “They’re doing the borings and they should be pouring this afternoon. So each pier because the taller towers are 40-foot deep, each pier will take a day to do, so when they get those three piers done at that site, then they’ll move to the next site, so you can see about how long it’s going to take unless they have issues.”
There are four towers being constructed in the following locations: 10124 N. 400E, Syracuse; 2936 E. Old Road 30, Warsaw; 2024 W. 700S, Claypool; and 208 Washington St., Sidney.
In other business, the board:
- Heard from Kosciusko County Sheriff’s Office Capt. Travis Marsh that the office should get 20 mobile radios on Friday, Feb. 11, and the office’s portable radios are expected to come in March.
- Heard from Marsh that the office is working on getting helmet-mounted cameras for the SWAT team and body cameras for officers through several grants.
- Heard from Kosciusko County Sheriff’s Office Jail Commander 1st Sgt. Shane Coney that 241 inmates were incarcerated in the Kosciusko County Jail as of the meeting Wednesday.
- Heard from Coney that the state was coming to do its annual inspection of the jail on Thursday, Feb. 10.