Lincoln County Sheriff Steve Rushing told the Noon Lions ClubTuesday that radar is a useful safety tool he’d be happy to have inhis arsenal.

“It’s a hot topic, but I think it’s worth it,” he said in answerto a question from the audience. “If you’ve ever been to one ofthese ugly wrecks where speed is involved, you’d understand.”

The bill to allow sheriffs to run radar on county roads passedthe Mississippi Senate by a vote of 31-18 and is currently beforethe House of Representatives.

Rushing told the group that radar would be a useful tool incertain areas of the county, but that he wasn’t looking to set upspeed traps or focus on ticket writing.

“There’s a lady over on Zetus Road who has called us a few timessaying she can’t cross the street to get to her mailbox because ofthe people speeding up and down the road in front of her house,” hesaid. “It would be nice to have it to address problem areas.”

Rushing pointed out, too, that the office of sheriff is one thathas already been entrusted by the voters to have a certain level ofintegrity. He said the argument that radars would be misused by asheriff’s department IS not entirely fair.

“Everyone says the sheriff would be corrupt if you give usradar,” he said. “But you’ve given us a gun and badge and you trustus with it.”

In response to a different question about state inmates, Rushingtold the group the jail went back to being state certified shortlyafter he was appointed sheriff in October 2006. It had lost itsstate certification under the previous administration, and Rushingsaid regaining it was in a large part due to the help of Departmentof Corrections Commissioner Chris Epps.

“He told me whatever I needed to get the jail back certified,he’d help,” he said. “He does a good job up there, and he’s been agood friend to me.”

The jail currently houses 28 state inmates that work on crewsfor the city, the county, the multipurpose building and the LakeLincoln area.

“They worked 4,400 hours in January, and all we have to do ispay to house and feed them,” he said, adding that the state refundsmoney for housing the state work crew inmates.

The jail sometimes is refunded as much as $20,000 a month onstate inmates, he said.

In addition, the trustys are encouraged to keep up good behaviorso they can keep their status, Rushing said. He said inmates workto keep what is called “A status.” Every day they work on work crewis a day off their sentence, he said.

Another club member asked a question about how missing personsinvestigations are conducted. Rushing told the group about thecurrent investigations by city, county and state officials into thedisappearances of 83-year-old Virginia Ratliff and 27-year-oldTravis Henderson, both of Brookhaven.

After praising the Brookhaven Police Department’s work insearching for Ratliff and his own investigators’ work in theHenderson search, Rushing said the first step when someone goesmissing is to register them with the National Crime InformationCenter, so that law enforcement officials all over the country haveaccess to the information if a driver’s license or license plate isentered.

“Then you have a lot of things you do,” he said. “And we’ve donethem quite a bit. You ride the roads; we’ve flown in both airplanesand helicopters.”

Rushing said one of the hardest things, depending on the missingperson, is keeping it in the public eye, saying it’s important forpeople to know the search is ongoing and the person is stillmissing.