Cole County Sheriff speaks out against state audit report findings

Cole County Sheriff John Wheeler spoke out against the state audit report on Thursday regarding how non-compliant sex offenders are pursued in Missouri counties.

“It’s just erroneous information that the auditor’s office is putting out and what she’s doing is she’s slamming the sheriffs for us not doing our job, and she has no idea the job that we do,” Wheeler said.

The 19-page Sex Offender Registration report published in July is a follow up report on audit findings from October 2018.

In the October report, Missouri Auditor Nicole Galloway used statistics about sex offenders cited from the Missouri State Highway Patrol and accused the Chief Law Enforcement Officers of “not adequately pursuing non-compliant offenders.”

Those MSHP statistics turned out to be inaccurate.

They found that the MSHP database did not account for warrants filed as well as other things.

In the recent July report, the auditor stated the MSHP renovated its database, and the non-compliant offenders numbers decreased by 21 percent.

“This recent report followed up on concerning findings from last year’s audit,” said state auditor spokeswoman Steph Deidrick.

“Auditor Galloway applauds the work of local law enforcement to keep Missourians both safe and informed,” Deidrick said.

However, Wheeler said he is still concerned.

“I’m not doing anything different. Every sheriff I’ve talked to is not doing anything different,” he said. “We’re doing our job, if you’re non-compliant, we’re going after you. That’s just how it is.”

He said he wants Galloway to report accurate information and to speak with Missouri sheriffs before publishing reports.

“If you’re going to throw the sheriffs under the bus, then you need to talk to the sheriffs, its not fair to sit and put out a report saying that the sheriffs aren’t doing their jobs across the state whenever she doesn’t know,” Wheeler said.