By Audrey Posten
Brent Ostrander’s first year as Clayton County Sheriff was one of learning.
“Year one was learning for everybody—learning how I operate, learning how they operate and how we operate as a group. Learning what the expectations are, what the responsibilities are. It takes time for an agency of this size to blend itself together. But I feel good about where we’re at,” he said.
Personnel remain busy. The Clayton County Sheriff’s Office dispatch center received 14,937 total calls in 2025—13,179 of which were assigned to law enforcement and emergency personnel agencies. The sheriff’s office itself responded to 6,284 calls, an increase of 830 calls for service from the previous year.
“Every year we seem to have a higher volume of calls coming into our dispatch center,” Ostrander shared. “The people who don’t get enough recognition is the dispatch center, because every call goes through them first. With our 14,937 calls, somebody answered that phone for every single one and then dispatched through the radio on at least 13,000 or more. There are calls that go directly to dispatch that are just logged and they maintain the records of areas that we need to know, but maybe not need a response. We respond to whatever they tell us we need to respond to.”
The highest percentage of call types, at 39.7 percent, was for criminal offenses, then 24.9 percent for traffic stops. Welfare/public assist came in at 18.2 percent, accidents 11.1 percent and medical 6.2 percent.
Ostrander said Clayton County is a low crime area. The sheriff’s office remains focused on law enforcement as well as public safety. With his investigative background, his priorities have been on victim services, child sex crimes and internet crimes, in addition to narcotics enforcement.
“Probably our main criminal offenses are drug possession, OWI, domestic assault, theft. Obviously, narcotics are going to impact a lot of what happens with thefts and burglaries,” he noted. “But you can’t just go out and enforce drug crimes every day, so we have traffic enforcement. That’s public safety. That leads into criminal offenses like OWIs, driving while revoked or suspended. Low level crimes.”
Calls related to scams are also on the rise.
“We have a lot of people being victimized by online scams. We’ve been successful on a few,” Ostrander said, “but once they cross out of the country, there’s nothing we can really do.”
He said education and vigilance are key in preventing people from falling prey.
Another area that is also busy, but receives less attention, is the civil division that handles duties like the sex offender registry, gun permits, paper service and sheriff’s sales. The department no longer has a designated civil deputy, meaning duties are spread across more people now, according to Ostrander. He handles all sheriff’s sales and deputies share paper service.
“That’s twofold because you’re not just putting one person in charge of one task, and it also encourages our deputies to go everywhere in the county. Now you’re going to serve a paper from North Buena Vista to Postville, and Strawberry Point to McGregor. It moves the cars around,” he explained. “And, actually, just serving some papers has turned into criminal cases where they found a crime being committed at the residence.”
Overall, the sheriff’s office saw a new chain of command in the past year, not only with a new sheriff in Ostrander, but Mark Kautman stepping into the role of chief deputy and Dylan Rumph as lieutenant.
Ostrander said he’s worked more hours in a year than he ever has, but has learned to delegate duties and responsibilities to others as well. He trusts staff and is proud of their efforts.
He said, “I control the outcome of everything, but so does everybody else in this office.”
Employee retention has been one of the sheriff’s office’s biggest challenges. Between retirements, resignations and some newly hired personnel stepping down during their training periods when they realized it wasn’t the right fit, the agency was fully staffed just twice in the past year—for around two weeks each time.
To help with this, Ostrander said the sheriff’s office has implemented an extensive hiring process with an interview panel and matrix to score applicants.
He credited current employees for stepping up during periods of short staffing.
“We started in a deficit, built it back up, deficit occurred again, built it back up, and I think we’re on a trajectory going straight up and then plateauing out where everybody’s happy. I hope that’s the case,” Ostrander said.
One area Ostrander hopes to alleviate some staff duties is in mental health commitments.
“It takes a lot of time, takes a lot of money, to deal with this. Then, with county social service funds kind of being regionalized, we’re trying to figure out ways to make it cost effective,” he shared.
He’s proposing hiring a transportation company who understands how to bill to the appropriate entity for these transportation services.
“If it’s state funded, if it’s a mandated court order, if it’s county funded, however it is, they’re going to send the bill to that person. As of right now, it seems like the billing is kind of questionable,” Ostrander said. “This kind of streamlines it and also reduces our fuel costs and our paying an employee to do it. We’re just looking at options.”
Another budgeting area Ostrander is focusing on is training. He has plans to make it more cost effective, yet tailored to department needs and unity.
For him, it’s about “Where can we cut spending and then increase a line item that provides a better benefit.”
He’s also developing a revenue increase plan.
“We’re not a money making business, but there’s areas where we can maybe help generate some income to finance what we’re doing,” Ostrander said.
One idea is putting an impound lot behind the sheriff’s office to keep vehicles for evidentiary purposes—those involved in vehicular homicide or criminal investigations, for example. Instead of being held by a tow company, these vehicles would be nearby, secured and have a well-established chain of command.
“You would charge a fee for that. It’s minimal, but it does help offset some of the costs that we have around the building here,” Ostrander said.
Vehicles impounded for other reasons will still be kept by tow companies, who can charge their impound fee.
Outside the budget, outreach will be a focus for the sheriff’s office in 2026. Early last year, Ostrander and chief deputy Kautman took the most up-to-date incident command training. The goal now is to start working with first responder units and other law enforcement agencies to establish a clear understanding of incident command and how all entities will respond and work together. This was one priority Ostrander spoke about with local fire departments when he was campaigning.
“It takes everybody on the same page to have what is a chaotic scene not be so chaotic,” Ostrander said. “It’s going to probably take a year or better, maybe two years, just understanding what our roles and responsibilities are. You have to establish a good line of communication and what the incident command looks like, but we’re hoping we can bring everybody together. I think it will be really good.”
While some efforts were underway last year, including the first National Night Out in August, the sheriff’s office aims to increase volunteerism and community awareness too.
“Year one, I initially had the view of being out in the community more often. It didn’t work that way. Year one was a lot of internal work for me,” Ostrander said. “Year two, once we get through this budget portion of it, is going to be more out of office, going to meet with community groups, going to meet with people and saying, ‘What do you want to see differently? What can we do to help?’”
These efforts, “and just having an honest conversation with people, are what strengthens and builds relationships,” he added.
