Message from Sheriff John Montgomery

We are very proud of the Baxter County Sheriff’s Office’s website. It has received a lot of press and publicity. Local newspapers and radio stations, as well as television stations from Springfield and Little Rock are covering the story.

Why the coverage? The website does the traditional things that websites do. It shows the history of the Sheriffs of Baxter County, the different departments, and how to contact and communicate with the different divisions.

So, what sets our website apart? Quite simply, it is the interaction with the community and our emphasis on keeping our citizens informed. After all, the Sheriff’s Office belongs to the citizens of Baxter County.

By the end of this week, we predict that we will have more than 100,000 visits to our website. This is unheard of for any law enforcement website, much less in a small community like Baxter County.

Why the popularity? We believe it is because the website gives you, the citizen, access to the inner workings of the Baxter County Sheriff’s Office and provides up-to-date information. For example, not only can you view the identify of sex offenders, but through Google Satellite Maps you can see where they live in relationship to your home. In addition, you are kept informed of Baxter County’s Most Wanted. This gives you ownership in the safety of this community by allowing you to help us “get the bad guys off the street” and keep our community safe. To date we have arrested 185 people from our Most Wanted website postings - all of this in less than nine months.

Our newest feature allows you to view who is in our jail and who has been released in the past 48 hours. Launched July 1st, it has proven to be a huge success; in fact, the number of daily visits to our website has more than doubled since we added this feature. The information is updated automatically every 10 minutes. Click on the Inmate Roster located under the Jail Section, to view this feature.

Want to be informed of events as they happen? Sign up for our email alerts. You can receive press releases at the same time they are sent to the media. You can receive an alert when a sex offender moves into a Baxter County neighborhood. You can receive an alert when a person is posted on the Most Wanted list and when that person is arrested. Want to know who is in jail? Sign up for a daily morning email to view who was booked into jail and who was released. Interested in the daily operations of the Sheriff’s Office? Sign up for the Captain’s Newsletter describing law enforcement operations and issues affecting our county such as scams that prey on the elderly.

The Baxter County Sheriff’s Office belongs to the citizens of this county. By leveraging technology, it is our strong desire to keep this office transparent, and to enlist the citizens of Baxter County as our partners in preserving the safety and quality of life we all enjoy.