Sheriff Provides Phones to Victims 

Sheriff Wendell Hall has offered further options to the victims of violent crime in Santa Rosa County by arranging with the Nextel Company through USA Digital to provide free cell phones at the victim's request. Sheriff Hall took over the Global Positioning Satellite (GPS) from private vendors the first part of April of this year in order to provide a greater margin of security and protection to the public. He has now added a further option by giving the victims the choice of receiving a free cell phone from Nextel in addition to a limited amount of free text messaging. The sheriff's office can use the "texting" option to send text messages to the victim as well as calling them on the phone. The details of the agreement were worked out between the sheriff, Nextel , USA Digital, and the Sentinel Company who is the provider of the GPS system for the sheriff's office. The new option allows the sheriff's office to call the victim or have the victim call the deputies directly. The victim also gets an alert if there are any reported violations by the offender. The Nextel cell phone has two programmed numbers; one to the sheriff's office dispatch center and the other one to the individual GPS patrol deputy. The only restriction is that the victim cannot make any other calls on the phone other than the ones previously mentioned. Sheriff Hall states that, "this system is far superior to the pagers that were originally going to be used when the system first began. My program director, Sergeant Ricky Perritt and his assistant Deputy Jamey Kahalley are doing an excellent job in tracking everyone placed on GPS since the program's inception as well as keeping the judicial system informed of the progress or lack thereof of each individual case. The phones will be additional tools for the officers to use to assist them in protecting the victims."