{"id":1217392,"date":"2023-04-12T08:23:52","date_gmt":"2023-04-12T13:23:52","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/ktbb.com\/post\/?p=1217392"},"modified":"2023-04-13T09:26:31","modified_gmt":"2023-04-13T14:26:31","slug":"smith-county-constable-raises-concerns-over-limitations-to-job","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ktbb.com\/post\/?p=1217392","title":{"rendered":"Smith County Constable raises concerns over limitations to job"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"SMITH COUNTY — On Tuesday, Smith County Constable Josh Joplin of Precinct 4 expressed concerns during the commissioners court meeting. He feels the scope of his job is being limited, according to our news partner KETK. Precinct 4 is the largest precinct in Smith County covering 322 square miles. Joplin said recent comments made to him and his deputies by some county commissioners are degrading to his badge. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153We\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve received veil threats from certain commissioners that state that they don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t want us to do law enforcement work. They want us to do the bare minimum of our taxpayers serving papers and bailiff in court,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d said Joplin.<\/p>\n

Another statute of a constable\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s job is to enforce the law, that includes traffics stops, arrests and investigations. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153If they see us at a traffic stop they want to know why we were stopping that car. If they see us taking someone to jail or putting a wanted poster on a social media page, they wanna know why we are doing that. My answer to that is that we are police officers, that\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s our job.<\/p>\n

Commissioners did not respond during the meeting. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153We\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve been totally supportive of our constables,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d said Smith Co. judge, Neal Franklin. Judge Franklin said afterwards that law enforcement is part of their job. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153They have statutory duties and they complete those statutory duties, but the community asks them to do a lot and law enforcement in general is part of their job,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d said Franklin. Joplin fears potential budget cuts for his office and deputies. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Its ridiculous that my staff should have to go home and explain to their spouse with a chance or likelihood that they could lose their job and livelihood over a personal dislike that a commissioner has for what law enforcement is doing in a precinct,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d said Joplin.<\/p>\n

Precinct 4 includes Chapel Hill and Winona, which do not have any law enforcement. Constables are their only officers. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m not gonna let a commissioners court or an opinion or a political agenda from a politician influence what we do as far as keeping the crime off our streets for our citizens,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d said Joplin. Constable Joplin also told commissioners during the meeting, that the safety of his precinct is too important \u00e2\u20ac\u0153to just push papers.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

SMITH COUNTY — On Tuesday, Smith County Constable Josh Joplin of Precinct 4 expressed concerns during the commissioners court meeting. He feels the scope of his job is being limited, according to our news partner KETK. Precinct 4 is the largest precinct in Smith County covering 322 square miles. Joplin said recent comments made to … Continue reading Smith County Constable raises concerns over limitations to job<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":61,"featured_media":1217395,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/ktbb.com\/post\/wp-content\/media\/2023\/04\/JoshJoplin-150x150.jpg","fifu_image_alt":"Smith County Constable raises concerns over limitations to job","footnotes":""},"categories":[177],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1217392","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-local-news-archive-archives"],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-06-09 02:34:40","action":"change-status","newStatus":"trash","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/ktbb.com\/post\/wp-content\/media\/2023\/04\/JoshJoplin-150x150.jpg","fifu_image_alt":"Smith County Constable raises concerns over limitations to job","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ktbb.com\/post\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1217392","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ktbb.com\/post\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ktbb.com\/post\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ktbb.com\/post\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/61"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ktbb.com\/post\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1217392"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/ktbb.com\/post\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1217392\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1217394,"href":"https:\/\/ktbb.com\/post\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1217392\/revisions\/1217394"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ktbb.com\/post\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/1217395"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ktbb.com\/post\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1217392"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ktbb.com\/post\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1217392"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ktbb.com\/post\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1217392"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}