"We've got things going on in the county that I can't tell you about," stated Clay County Sheriff Joe D. Shook in a recent Sentinel interview. Despite the slew of cases and troubles that the sheriff's office handles on a daily basis, Shook was able to spend some time outlining the "severe drug problem" that the county faces.

"We work for months and months and months on different aspects of our drug trafficking here in the county," Shook said. "We run our routine patrol everyday throughout the county [and] try to patrol every road in the county sometime during the day. [It's] the simple presence of patrol cars out in the county on all the roads, the back roads, everywhere. On some of these back roads you never know what you're gonna see. We're also out lookin' and watchin' for different types of crimes. Breaking and entering, larceny, drug operations.... All these deputies are very aware of what's going on and places that they need to be lookin' at."

Shook said his office has received numerous domestic violence calls in recent days.

"We've had a rash of domestic violence for the last week. We've had very few larceny calls, which is good. I think by stepping up our patrols out in the county [it] helps to cut down our larcenys. Hopefully it will cut down on our drug traficing. We arrest somebody just about every week with some type of drugs. Sometimes it's small arrests, sometimes it's big arrests."

The sheriff said that his focus in the county is on substance abuse, particularly drugs.

"Prescription drugs is the biggest problem in the county. You hear Meth everyday. People talk about methamphetamines but prescripion drugs is the biggest....problem....we...have"

Shook said that there have been cases where people have gotten pills through the Medicaid program and turned around to sell them on the market within the county before getting arrested for their actions.

"The last several years [the prescription drug problem has] just gotten bigger, bigger and bigger. [It's] because it's so easy to move these pills around. And they're OxyContins, Lortabs, Xanax, Methadone...."

Shook made it clear that he believes he has an excellent staff of deputies and that their department will continue to place focus on the problems.

To comment on this article, email Harrison at hkeely@gmail.com

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