President’s Corner

by Kelly Dagenhart

Board Status

We wish to welcome new board members: James H. Roper, who was proposed by Kathy Moore and was voted in by the board at the January 8, 2002 RID Board Meeting. James has retired from the Department of Energy Special Transport Division. He was born and raised in Oak Ridge and has been back in Oak Ridge for three years. He served on the Faternal Order of Police board for six years and was Chaplain of the Christian Motocycle Association. C. Scott Manning is the Anderson County Sheriff and serves on the National Sheriff's Association and Tennessee Sheriff's Association. He also is on the Walter State and Roane State Community College Criminal Justice Advisory Boards. Judy A. Clevenger works at ORNL travel department and is a board member of the Oak Ridge Heritage Preservation Association. Gail Myers is a Kindergarten Teaching Assistant at Woodland Elementary School. Her son, Josh, was hit by a potential drunk or drugged driver on December 30, 2001, on Illinois Avenue in Oak Ridge. David McGaugh has had to resign due to confilicts with other prior commitments as of the April 2, 2002 meeting.

Court Watchers

Wendy Williams, Dick Jernigan, Jim Keeton, James Roper, Bobby Stirling and Will Stirling have bee added since September 2001 as new court watchers. We now have about 13 active court watchers. We still need abut 13 more to be able to watch all of the court sessions and handle vacations, sickness, schedule conflicts, etc. An estimated 80% of the value of a court watcher is in just being at court when the DUIs are tried. (Jim Ramsey, our Anderson County District Attorney, says that the court watchers are valuable). The other estimated 20% of the value comes from the records that the court watchers provide for our trend analysis and the suggestions for changes in the court system and laws to provide increasted court performance. One example of a good thing that happened as a result of court watching occured in 1990 when our court watchers discovered that many DUI court fines were not being paid. After much working with local officials, county officials, and finally the State of Tennessee, action was taken to look into all court costs being paid and ways to improve this dismal performance. A law was passed to prevent driver's licenses being returned until fines were paid. This action was taken over nationally by government and has been mentioned on our RID website.