The jail in Fordyce now carries a name. Dallas County Sheriff Mike Knoedl says the Dallas County Detention Center will be called the Donny Ford Dallas County Detention Center, after the sheriff who built it.
Knoedl said he asked for the change Tuesday night and thanked the Quorum Court for letting it happen. Ford, who Knoedl said served as sheriff for 24 years, supervised construction of the facility in the early 1990s using inmate labor, which the sheriff said saved the county hundreds of thousands of dollars. Family and friends attended, and Ford was presented a hand-painted picture of the building by Regina Ford.
Burn ban still on. In the same weekly message, Knoedl said the county stays under a burn ban until further notice and that a man who burned on his own land, then refused to comply when a deputy confronted him, spent time in the jail. The sheriff said the county could use about a week of slow, soaking rain.
Other items. A deputy was finishing drug-interdiction and narcotics-investigation training. Knoedl also said jail overcrowding topped the agenda at a recent Arkansas Sheriffs’ Association meeting, and that he was one of three sheriffs who testified to the Judiciary Committee on the issue about three weeks earlier.
Sources: Deltaplex News (Sept. 25); [your]NEWS, weekly report posted by the sheriff (Sept. 25).
