FM Talk 1065 Podcasts
Baldwin County Sheriff Anthony Lowery - Midday Mobile - Tuesday 9-24-24
There will be no personal nor direct attacks on anyone. And I would ask that you please try to keep down the loud cheering and the clapping. There will be no booing and no unruly behavior. With that? - This is painful and it will be for a long time. - Don't fuck, baby! That's right, this man knows what's up. After all, these are a couple of high-stepping turkeys and you know what to say about a high stepper. No stepper, too high for a high stepper. - This is Midday Mobile with Sean Sullivan on FM Talk 106-5. - Well, Sean's a tough guy. I mean, I think everybody knows that. You know, Sean, he took some licks. He hangs in there. - Yeah, what's wrong with the deal we got? I mean, the deal we got drank pretty good, don't it? Did you hear what I said? - So this is a great council. I had no doubt about them. That doesn't suck. If you don't like it, you're bad. - Last question, were you high on drugs? - Last question, kiss my (beep) - All right, away we go, FM Talk 106-5. Midday Mobile, glad to have you here on this Tuesday. And it's your chance to ask the sheriff, a new sheriff, to ask questions too, and we're gonna do it this hour. Also, coming up at around 1235, our staff meteorologist, Dr. Bill Williams, with the lead sub-date on Helene. You know, like when Doc said yesterday, and really got my attention when he said this could be a category three storm. Not that, and I'll go through this. I have a public safety official and hero, probably chastised me, not to take anything away from tropical storms, and they do, you know, damage. And category one, hurricanes do damage. But when you start talking about threes, you really have my attention out there. And I feel for the folks to the east of us, Dr. Bill, give us a track in the timeline coming up around 1235. I mentioned your chance to ask the sheriff, and it's good to get this man in studio as he has been, I guess, a month and a half or so here. The number of days, Sheriff of Baldwin County, Anthony Lowry, good to see you. - Hey, it's good to see you. I appreciate you having me, Sean. - So you're new to the title of Sheriff, but I remember talking to a horse Mac about you. Not new to the Sheriff's department. You've been there for how long? - So I've been at the Sheriff's office for about 18 years, actually, almost two decades. Came up and originally, you know, I served 10 years for the District Attorney's Office before then, and ultimately Chief Investigator. And while I was there, worked a lot of high-profile cases, major cases, along with Captain Mac at the time, and we realized, kind of, that we worked really well together. And so when Sheriff Mac was elected in 2007, he asked me to come over and be part of his command staff, and I had worked primarily in civil affairs, coming out of the court system with the District Attorney's Office and having a really strong working knowledge of the court system, but ultimately got promoted to the Assistant Chief Deputy over Enforcement Operations. And then for the past six years, I've actually served as Chief Deputy for the Baldwin County Sheriff's Office. - Now, when you came from the judicial side, like that, people might go, okay, but you know the courtroom, you know, the law there, did you know the streets for lack of-- - Yeah, yeah, so, you know, now we have what's called the Baldwin County Major Crimes Unit. I know you've talked, you've just hardly talked about that here on your show. Back in there, back in those days, we did not have something as well to find, but I actually worked out of the Foley Office of the District Attorney's Office. I was a sworn police officer, and I would work the streets with the Foley guys or Daphne or wherever we were having a hotspot. Really, the District Attorney's Office was very active in violent crime prosecution. - Yeah, I gotta think about, yeah, 'cause there's a couple of cliches here. In 18 years, how much you've seen Baldwin County change? Here's a county that's bigger than the State of Rhode Island, right? - Absolutely, yeah. Geographically big, and I would say, I'm guessing in the things you have to tackle, there may be something different from the extreme Southeastern portion of Baldwin County to the extreme Northwestern or from North to South. I mean, you've got urban and like a vacation kind of settings. You have agricultural, you have timber, you've got a lot of different things going on in one county. - Well, absolutely, and I'll tell you, we do some very intentional things in Baldwin County. Obviously, we prefer to hire people from Baldwin County that know the area, but that doesn't mean we don't hire people from other counties, Mobile County or even other parts of the state or throughout the US. But when they're going through their field training program, it's one of the things that you get to kind of identify their personality and their policing style and where that may best fit us in Baldwin County. So if you come from a rural farming family or something along those lines, or obviously, you're probably gonna serve people in Baldwin County better, working in the north end of the county or maybe in the south end where the farming agriculture is bigger. If you come from Mobile PD, we hire a lot of guys from Mobile PD. Well, maybe we need to put you in some of our more active areas where the calls for service are such a higher rate. - What are also the ability, just the anecdotally, friends of mine and folks in law enforcement over the years, their ability to see something that just doesn't look right. Maybe it's not a specific code violation or something. It's that second, you know, sixth sentence. - Yeah, you call it a sixth sentence, but you know, I talked about this the other day. A lot of it's talent. Some of these guys, they just have a talent to be able to see things that others don't see. When they can walk in a room like we're in right now, they may notice three or four things that you and I just wouldn't normally notice. And they get very good at that. Same thing working the road. They see cars on the street, they're going down the road, doing things and something in their mind triggers, you know, something's just not right there. They develop probable calls and that's where they, you know, actively fight crime. - So I mean, you think that's almost, are you born with that or is it trained on? - Now I'll say this, we spend an amount, an immense amount of money and time trying to train, train that into some of those guys. But I will tell you, it's just like being in the NFL. Some guys are just truly gifted and good at it. They actually can put less effort in and still have better results, you know. - What about how you covered the county? 'Cause I know talking to Sheriff Burch here, how he changed some things, he changed, he made it smaller areas of responsibility for deputies, but then also had a task force that comes in and puts extra, you know, men or deputies in were needed. How do you, how do you cut up Baldwin County? - Well, very similar. So essentially we have what we call eight patrol areas, all the way starting in the north end of the state, county would be area one, work your way down to the Fort Morgan areas is area eight. We've able to modify that a little bit with our coastal enforcement division. They're primarily responsible for area eight, unless they're just out and then a patrol, the normal patrol guys would handle that. And then we look at some of our more active areas on the eastern shore and where the population centers hire. And while there's a deputy always assigned to that, we now have the ability to have float deputies that are also there. So, you know, you get a hot call, you want to be able to send two or three officers to that call. And then in the past year or half or so, we've developed a street crimes unit, a group we call special operations unit, and there's several guys assigned to that, and they actually have our canine officers with them as well. And they also hit the hotspot policing, doing those sort of things. And then obviously I know everybody asks about this all the time, you see all of these black tahoos on the interstate on I-65 and I-10. That's also the special operations guys. And while they're primarily working in addiction there, they're also available to handle any hot call or any back any deputy or anything that they need. - Yeah, think about interdiction. And this will segment maybe into my next question. The work y'all are doing on I-10 and I-65, same thing goes on in Mobile County. I remember back maybe 10 years ago when the tackling, trying to tackle the meth issue around here. And it was back then, Sheriff Cochran said, "Hey man, what I'm going to do is for public safety, "I'm gonna try to shut it down to whether or not "blowing the walls off a motel room "and scorching children in the kitchen." But even back then he said, "I don't believe we're gonna stop. "We're stopping making it here. "The people are still buying it here." Then that transitions into absolutely what he said, that even though they weren't making it here, here it comes from Mexico and a lot of it comes right through here. - Absolutely and that's one of the reasons that we put such a hard focus on working interdiction and working I-65, working I-10, working 98, coming in and out of Florida. Yeah, in the old days, the red P, the red phosphorus, that's the explosive stuff you're talking about. But it's gonna be just like the fentanyl. It's able to be produced in China and Mexico in super labs, the quality's much better and the price is absolutely incredibly low compared to what it used to be. - So, wait a second, so even on illicit drugs, the prices come out of China are better and undercutting. - Absolutely, America, absolutely. - Producer, I've got a lot of questions 'cause you're just down on the border and I wanna talk about that with you as well. We're coming right back, your questions as well on the text line at three, four, three, zero, one, zero, six, Baldwin County Sheriff Anthony Lowery, our guest this hour. (upbeat music) - This is midday mobile with Sean Sullivan on FM Talk 106-5. Right, so at 12-20 FM Talk 106-5 at midday mobile, your chance to ask the sheriff, Baldwin County Sheriff, Anthony Lowery, our guest, good to get him on and we're gonna make this, I'm putting it on right now and there, we're gonna make it a regular thing. - Absolutely, absolutely. - Just back from the border, we're talking about that in the interdiction, kind of got me started on that. So you're down to the border. You know, there's a lot of politicos go down, look at it and they come back and they've been on the show talking about it, but through your eyes, obviously, you know, as a sheriff, a law enforcement person, what did you see that maybe, you know, the regular elected official wouldn't see? What are you looking at? - Well, so essentially, there were five or six sheriffs that we were able to go down with and some legislators and we were sent by a group called Fair Federal American Immigration Reform, yeah. - Yeah, and so we were able to go to McAllen, Texas, you got to see the border wall, all the things that you saw that you see on the national media and they're proud to stand in front of because there's no immigrants in front of that, right? Well, we also were able to travel north around 70 miles to another town and I say that's important to me, Sean, because if you're an immigrant, you're not seeking asylum 70 miles north of the border. If you're seeking asylum, you're seeking it at the border. - Yeah, just get across the border and see it. - So the coyotes are taking these people across the border, they're getting them across these land, these vast ranch owners trying to do that. And so we got to see some of that. You see the trash, you see the backpack, you see all the stuff associated with smuggling these people into the United States, it's human trafficking and it's worst form. The classroom portion of that, everybody ought to have to sit through the border school. For the first day, you sit in school and they show you some videos and they bring some speakers in that have actually been there. They've battled that sheriff Mark Lamb of Arizona and some other people and they have those videos. And then you start learning a little bit about the funding and how what a big, big money maker it is for the cartel to do this. So we talked a little bit about the fentanyl. You know, the fentanyl is produced in China, it's brought in over to Mexico. The cartels pay to bring that fentanyl into the United States. What do we have, 100,000 people that died from fentanyl poisoning or overdosing last year? That's 100,000 without a shot being fired from what I think most people would agree would to be a strong enemy of the United States. So that's troubling to me. And then when you hear the numbers that anywhere from 150 to 180 countries are actually illegally crossing the border into the United States. So when you hear that, that's even more concerning 'cause that's when you're getting here, your Russians are coming in, Venezuelans and the Middle Eastern, you're having all these people that are not friendly to the United States. And especially with China, as we know, China's willing to play the long game. They live on 50 and 100 year plans, not four year presidential terms. Exactly. And so if they're bringing 20, 40,000 people across the border illegally, they know that you can't get out of China and get into the United States without China knowing it. It's not like it is here. So those things were extremely concerning. But I will tell you this, and I'm gonna credit Governor Abbott, he's devoted tremendous amount of resources and a tremendous number of assets to the border. And the Texas border that we saw, it looked great. It was well policed, it was well maintained, morale was high. Border patrol. That was my next question 'cause I hear stories of morale is low, but the morale there was high. Now I also saw probably 25 or 30 Florida highway patrol vehicles there that are also there. Governor's Census has them working in association with Texas DPS and border patrol to secure the Texas border. But like everything else, when that balloon got squeezed, now all the border crossings are moving further to West, they're moving to Arizona, they're moving to California where there's little to no enforcement and it's coming in there freely. And that's where our drug problems coming from. That's where the tremendous human trafficking problem comes in. You know, the Balland County Sheriff's Office, people routinely ask us about our issues with human trafficking. And while we do have some, we don't face it nearly on the level that other parts of the country have it. Down there, I don't even know how you could quantify the amount of human trafficking going on. What was described to us Sean, literally you have coyotes that are bringing them across the border, well, there may be other coyotes standing in wait that killed the original two coyotes and now they have a whole new group, recharge, you know, charge them again to continue to get them into the United States. The cartel from my belief and my understanding what I've learned, they've pumped a tremendous amount of money into both sides of that border down there. And their budget far outweighs that of the United States Border Patrol. - Yeah, 'cause there's a profit incentive for them. - Absolutely. - Yeah, there's a story I had pulled actually. It was gonna get to the next hour, but one of the things I've read today is they're drugging kids, you all listen to this, drugging kids who they're smuggling across the border because the people are acting, the coyotes are acting like their parents. So they drug the kids with sleeping pills and all this to act like, so the kids can't say, "That's not mom and dad." And so they've, and they've got two of them that were dang their comatose, these kids, from how much drugs they had given them. So they could act the part of the kids bringing them in. - Well, it's that and I can say something even worse than that. They're giving these young girls essentially rape kits, not the rape kits that we take to USA when we have a rape. It's the morning after pill, there are condoms, there are different things in these kits that they're giving these young girls when they start on this trek into the United States because they are telling them, you need to understand as part of this trip, you're gonna experience sexual assault along the way. And so a lot of these people were at the Catholic Social Services. We went there, the Catholic Social Services is very well funded on the border. And where does that funding come from? Does it come from a cartel who's historically Catholic in their religion? - So you think they're, the NGOs are not just, you're not just talking about like elected officials along the border, you're talking about the NGOs you think have. - Absolutely, I think that there are groups there that we learned through this training, that there are actually organizations there that are meant to help people but they're funded by cartel money to help them temporarily but to continue to push these people into the United States. - What do you, what do you see, you're talking about, you don't have the issues here that they do there, obviously. But do you have issues here? - Absolutely. - In Baldwin County? - Absolutely, Baldwin County has an illegal immigration problem. We don't pretend that we don't. We don't have the level that they have in Texas, obviously. - It's very relative but this is home relative, right? - Right, yeah. - And we still have crime associated with illegal immigrants. You know, I know right now we're in a harvest season in Baldwin County, the next four, the six weeks to two months, you know, everybody's house is gonna be dusty from peanut dust and doing it. - Yeah, peanut's being turned, right, right, right. And sweet potatoes and doing those things. But a lot of our farmers, they work hard to make sure that the people that are here legally, they use them year after year after year but to say that we don't have an illegal immigration problem that's impacting our services, our schools is just not true. We do have that problem. - Okay, for folks who don't know how this works, one of your deputies pulls over somebody, for whatever it is, but they're illegal. They don't, or at that point they don't have any documentation to show they're here on a visa, this right. - Right, right, so what can y'all do? - Well, we have to have an offense against the state of Alabama for us to move further because obviously the determining their status in the United States is an ice issue. Now we're one of two. - So if you've got somebody, there's not an issue against state of Alabama and you know that they are, 'cause I know this is pedestrian to you, but I mean to a lot of people, you can't. - You don't know, we just can't determine their status on the side of the road. They have to have violated the criminal code of Alabama and we take them ice determinants within 72 hours whether they're here legally or illegally, and I'll say this, we've had a good relationship with ice. - Yeah. - And they will take them into somewhere in Louisiana, the Metari area, and deport them or whatever that needs to happen, and I think the only other facility close to here is in Mississippi. Now it doesn't come without a lot of issues. We started today, a five day process of ice inspecting our correction center, and it's a very detailed inspection. - In fact, it's-- - Because of possibly housing people there? - But because we agreed to house them for the 72 hours, so essentially, you know-- - They're gonna say-- - No good deed goes unpunished. We're having to jump through all these hoops. Now we're already cleared with the Marshall service. We hold federal prisoners and we have no issues. - Seems like they could just say, Marshall's clear, Joel. - I wish they could. - It wouldn't be the first time federal government has made things a little Byzantine out there. - Absolutely. - That's a good way to put it. - Coming back, I got a text coming in here for you at 3, 4, 3, 0, 1, 0, 6. I have quite a few more questions. It's your chance to ask the sheriff, Baldwin County sheriff, Anthony Lowery, our guest right here on the day mobile. (upbeat music) (upbeat music) (upbeat music) - This is Midday Mobile with Sean Sullivan on FM Talk 106-5. (upbeat music) - At 1235, FM Talk 106-5, Midday Mobile. Glad to have you along and give back to our conversation with Baldwin County Sheriff Lowery in just a second. Let's go to our staff meteorologist, Dr. Bill Williams, for the latest on the tropics, specifically here in the Gulf of Mexico. Dr. Bill, thanks for your time. What are we looking at right now for, is it Helene now officially? - It is now Helene, yes, it is now a tropical storm. And so far, things are looking pretty good from Opio and Pensacola, and that the storm is going to stay to the east of us, and then we'll be on what we call the good side. Right now, Helene is located still over the northwestern Caribbean. It is west of the Cayman Islands, and it'll continue to intensify through the day. And late tonight, it will move through the Yucatan channel, between the Yucatan Peninsula and Cuba. And at that time, it should reach a hurricane intensity. And it will then turn more to the north. Right now, it's headed northwest at around 12 miles per hour, so it's picking up some forward speed. And it will intensify tomorrow as it turns more to the north and northeast. And by early Thursday morning, it will become a major hurricane. And then we remain a major hurricane all the way to the coast. Now, the likely target at the moment is Appalachia Bay, which is just south of Tallahassee. And, but that's the target at the moment. Could it change a little bit? Yes, it all depends very much on where the actual center gets established or the eye. And that helps a lot in determining the final location. But it's going to be a lot of growth of that storm, both in size and in intensity. And it could possibly get to a category three before landfall. Now, that will take place Thursday night. The closest big city to the landfall would be Tallahassee. And if that track continues, Tallahassee would actually end up being in the eye wall, because that city is not very far from the coast. The storm will continue right up through Georgia on Friday as a tropical storm. In fact, it'll still be a tropical storm in Atlanta. It'll then turn to the northwest, and it'll cross to Tennessee, Kentucky as a depression. And Saturday morning, it'll be in Indiana, around Indianapolis as a tropical depression. Dr. Bill, I mean, category three storm can be-- I'm thinking about Tallahassee and just the landscape. There are a lot of trees, obviously, are going to be down in that area. But also, where it's going in there, the big bend, that should-- is that going to increase the amount of storm surge because of that pocket in there? Yeah, that's sort of a concave coastline. And that does increase the surge, because the water sort of gets trapped in that configuration. And that's going to be a real problem. There's a little town there of St. Mark's Wildlife Refuge, who's a beautiful area. And that's going to be a target. We'll call it Springs, in that area also. So that's where it looks right now. If it does deviate a little bit, it could maybe go a little bit west to Appalachicola, or possibly a little bit to the east, getting over towards Cedar Key. But that seems to be the area that the storm will head. And it's going to produce quite a bit of a-- put it in a damage in Georgia, much like Michael did several years ago, which was a CAT5. And this one is going to come pretty close to that track. Maybe just a little bit to the east of it. But it'll get into southwest Georgia and on up to Atlanta. It should reach Atlanta early, around the morning hours, maybe around daybreak on Friday. And then turn more to the northwest, because of the upper weather pattern. Right now, the hurricane has a little bit of wind shear down in the Caribbean. But that wind shear is going to drop off once it gets into the eastern gulf. And so the combination of the lack of wind shear, which tends to tear the storm apart, if that's shocking, which is going to be the case, the very warm waters of the gulf loop current. And it'll be going over that. And so it has all the ingredients to really intensify. Once it reaches the coast, it may get some wind shear back. And it would possibly lose a little bit of intensity. But not much, as it reaches the Appalachia Bay. Dr. Bill, any kind of the size of the lane, do you think we're going to see, even though we're on the good side? Do we see any bands coming off this? Do we get any rainfall from it? I know we're going to get the north wind. But if we're getting any of it, is it far? A lot of the rain, we're going to see Sean is due to a cold front. The weather front right now is around Memphis. It's going to drop down through Mississippi. And late tomorrow, it won't be very far from us to the northwest. So it's going to help generate some showers and thunderstorms. And that's going to be a factor in a rain that we get, because the greatest rainfall in this storm is going to be a long track into the eastern side. And that means the northern Florida peninsula of the eastern half, and in fact, most of Georgia, will get some very, very heavy rains that will carry all the way up to the Ohio River. All right, Dr. Bell, we sure appreciate the update on this. And we'll keep checking back with you. OK, Sean. There's our staff meteorologist, 40-plus years of calling it correct, along the Gulf Coast, always good to hear Dr. Bell's voice. Look over here at Sheriff Lowry. That means one less thing that you've got to worry about right now from Poland County. Absolutely, you know, I've been sheriff now for about a month. A lot of boxes have already been checked, Sean. I'll tell you that. I'm glad that's not one of them. Yeah, I mean, I just think if not, you know, what happened to you in Sally in Poland, even though it didn't affect us here in Mobile County, it was a way worse for you in Baldwin County. Absolutely. It took me three hours to change all my way out of my own driveway so I could get my patrol car to the road. I think your experience was a lot of folks' experience in Baldwin County. You and I were talking to her in the news break, too, about your trip to the border, and you're talking about this rancher down there. And I've gotten to talk to ranchers and events there from Arizona. But this is a Texas rancher. I want you all to listen to what the sheriff told me. This is a grisly, grisly statistic. But it's one that shows something. You said this rancher told you what? So essentially, he owns about 11,000 acres, and he has a team that helps patrol his ranch. And they're patrolling, obviously, for the migrants crossing. In the last year of President Trump's presidency, they recovered 34 dead bodies. I don't have the count of actual numbers. And this is crazy, 34 dead bodies. Well, keep in mind again. So first of all, that number is a lot to somebody who doesn't live there. Well, while it's staggering, well, keep in mind, this is a criminal enterprise, an enterprise where there's a lot of drug trade and people are getting ripped off and they're killed there on the spot. Their drugs are taken from them. Their hostages or the human trafficking component picks up. So there's no safe spot in that organization. So we're talking around 34 bodies recovered. In 2023, they recovered 237. So not only is the violence increase, it shows you just the number of people coming across the border, how much that's exponentially higher. Yeah, any of y'all think about, if your property here in Alabama that you found two dead bodies on, what that would be like, let alone. If we find two dead bodies on your property, we're going to be looking at you pretty hard here in Baldwin County. Yeah, that's just, it's insane to think about. Two hundred plus. Speaking of that too, so it's just the violence issue. And, you know, we'll, I'm sure talk about this more when you come back. But, you know, I saw the story in Birmingham over the weekend, all right. And I've just, I remember five points going there. I worked in Radio 4. I came home, I worked in Radio and Tuscaloosa in Birmingham. We do present the band, do the show, whatever back in the music radio days in places in five points, it's kind of like Lode is here. And I see those number 17, four killed, and a slack jog, but I also said, you know, wouldn't that many months ago, that you had numbers like that happen in Baldwin County back in May. Absolutely unprecedented. And, and I'm sure 18 shot. It was actually ended up being 19 shot that we're aware of. You know, not everybody always goes to the hospital either. And so, and again, and I had, I don't have all the details on the Birmingham shooting, but I promise it started a lot like the others, like the, the one that we had in Baldwin County over the weekend. It starts what would be a normal fight argument between high school age or our young adults, and it escalates into shooting with, you know, automatic weapons and, and driveby's and those sort of things. And I'm sure that's what's going to be in Birmingham as well. I mean, those, the Birmingham thing, shocking, the thing for Baldwin County was shocking too. I mean, to me, it was like it, you know, you would say, well, it can be anywhere. Yeah. But I mean, in, in the, that part of Baldwin County, it just, it's shocking, it's not the people from Baldwin County. So we, you know, part of that investigation and I don't want to get too far in it. Obviously we have a lot of trial ahead of us, but we didn't learn a lot of those people are professionals. They come in from other parts of the country, other parts of the state. And even some that from, from adjoining county's come in for the May Day operations and the good times, but some of their for nefarious reasons, obviously, too. That's right. I mean, I think we may, we talked earlier, agreed that the whole key to this or the people that would go just randomly shoot other human beings to murder them. But a lot gets talked about about the equipment. Absolutely. Glockswitches get discussed or the switches in general get discussed. I know here in Mobile County, how about for you in Baldwin County? Is that show up? Yeah, absolutely. We're having the same thing that, that's, you know, a lot of these people are crossing the Bay. They do have the, the Glockswitches and while that is a federal crime, it needs to be a state crime, you know, a federal crime for us to, to, to arrest someone. It has to be adopted in the state system and that takes some time. If we can catch them with a Glockswitch in Baldwin County, we can go ahead and arrest them immediately on the spot and they would have to make a bond in Baldwin County. And if you wanted to pursue prosecution both in the federal and state system, it would give you that opportunity. Okay, because I know here that it's been, hey, we'll let the feds do it because the law and maybe longer time, but is it, so does it enhance it to have the state also have the law or does it, how does that, you know, tell me how it works? Well, I'll tell you, in a lot of instances, you would get more time in the federal system than you would in the state system because of state overcrowding the prisons and those sort of things. And in the bad guys, they fear federal time a little bit more, but passing the law on the state side, it gives us that immediate ability to set that hook and hold them in the Baldwin County jail on a high bond until that, the case can be, you know, adopted by the federal government. Now we have lots of deputies, investigators that are assigned to ATF and, and HSI, so that we can facilitate and try to get those cases into federal court as soon as possible. But Alabama absolutely needs a law on the Glock switch. All right, I have some questions here from the text line to talk about illegal immigrants, or y'all checking, as we said, checking job sites, not lost the text, but do you go check job sites in places in Baldwin County? We don't go check a job site and run everybody all that they're out. Say they're building on a house. We don't do that, obviously, but if we have a report of a crime, we investigate the crime. And anyone that we believe that that is illegal, and they've committed a crime against the state of Alabama, we make sure that that person is checked with ICE. But I'll tell you this, Sean, too, just real quickly. I know you have a couple questions, but I'll tell you a friend of mine, he runs an HVAC system or a company, and he had a worker for him. And he was very proud of him. He says, "This guy's here legally. He does everything by the book." He says, "He's just gone, and we think someone took him. We think ICE just took him." I'm going to explain to him what that doesn't sound normal. One, can you send me his paperwork? And two, let me check. Well, come to find out, my deputies have arrested arrested him for domestic violence strangulation. He was taken to our jail in Baymanette. Well, guess what? He was illegal. So I asked my friend. I said, "Can you send me what he had given you?" Well, every year had upgraded, updated documentation that he purchased off the internet. So my friend thought he had hired a completely legal immigrant in the United States with a proper working visa. So there's stuff out there, too, that employers are falling victim to that they're finding this paperwork off the internet, just totally unknowing what's going on. What happened to it? This is another road we're going to. But the E-Verify, I thought, was going to be this big. It's going to fix everything, remember? Oh, yeah, absolutely. And I know that the Baltimore County Sheriff's office, we've had to follow that to the letter. But as far as everyone else, it's going to do it here. Yeah. Changing administration, and those things become less important, Sean. Okay. That's interesting, because I mean, it was this thing, and then I'm like, I don't hear. You don't hear about that? That's absolutely right. Sean in Baldwin County, not me. Another Sean said, "First tell, Sheriff Lowry, congratulations. And are there any signs of MS-13 in the county?" Yes, there are some signs of MS-13. It's not nearly what you're going to think about in bigger cities, but absolutely. We have several different groups of people that are at least affiliated. I wouldn't call them hardcore gangs. Do you all have a gang problem in Baldwin County, because it's a discussion for Birmingham and Mobile. Do you all have? Well, certainly. If Mobile has it, and Sheriff Birch and I are good friends, colleagues, and we work very closely together. But anything that happens in Mobile has a propensity to spill over into Baldwin County. So, to sit there and say, "Oh, no, that doesn't happen in Baldwin County, it's just wrong, okay? It's just wrong." Those roads go both ways. But we're proactive with it. Now, do we have guys that are marking up street corners, and we really don't have that. Well, we have our biggest problem similar to what we have here in Mobile, and I think if you shot, taught with Sheriff Birch, I'll tell you, it's that 14, 15 to the early age 20s, groups of kids that are at least loosely affiliated. They may want to be a gang, but they're causing problems. They're thugs, no doubt. Yeah. They get a rose by any other name, whatever Shakespeare said. I mean, if they do gang stuff, if they have a membership card in their pocket or not, if they're doing gang stuff, then that's what I'm worried about. Yeah, absolutely. And so, and I'll tell you, with that street crimes unit of ours, they've been very proactive, but there's some things that have hurt our ability and forced a law, and some of that is when you stop a car and there are six guns in there, and there's no reason for anyone to have a pistol permit, that's limited our ability to take some of those guns off the street. Coming right back, more with Sheriff Lowry right here on Midday Mobile. This is Midday Mobile, with Sean Sullivan on FMTalk 1065. Right, now 1253, FMTalk 1065, Midday Mobile, and ask the sheriff. Baldwin County Sheriff Anthony Lowry, our guest, good to get you on the show. A lot of questions in the future. I know people are chimeing in here. I'm going to get a few of these asked here. This is a personal question, and I don't know if you heard this yesterday because it was in Mobile County. I had an EAS go off yesterday for a car wreck. Is there anything that, have you heard anything changed on? No, I haven't heard that. So, you know, I've been working radio 30 years, I've run many EAS tests, had EAS warnings, were certified, do all the things, came across yesterday, and it was for a car wreck. I was like, that was, I had never heard that before. I mean, we have it for weather issues, we have it for, you know, missing, you know, amber alerts and silver alerts and all those things make sense, but yeah, a car wreck came through. It was strange. Yeah, I do know, being on the 911 board, I know that we get a lot of calls through 911 from, you know, on-star and those sort of things that would normally generate a 911 call too. So, not exactly what you're saying, but yeah, it is a burden on the system. Yeah, it was just, it just stood out to me after all the years. Let's see. Oh, questions about, do you know of any Haitian migrants in Baldwin County? So, my staff and I, we went over to Fair Hope last night. Are you at the meeting? We did. We went to listen to the, to the council meeting and actually had spent Saturday speaking with Congressman Carl, who was a tremendous help to us, Mayor Sullivan, Jennifer Fedler, Mayor Francis, Francis Hope Jones, apologize. And, and we worked on this. What I found out about all of this, no one has an answer. There's not a point of contact that can tell you where these numbers are coming from. Yeah, we hear that, yeah, there's a thousand coming, but who told us that? We can't find that person and so... It wouldn't be a big with the feds to call and say, "Hey, y'all have a plan." We know we can't find anyone in the feds as a point of contact that will talk to us. I have a text group here with the other 66 Alabama sheriffs. One of them got information that they'll be getting 30,000 Haitian immigrants. I don't believe that their county doesn't have 30,000 people in it. So, some of this obviously is fear of being driven by Facebook and just fake, fake news. We can't substantiate any of it. That's a, there's a part that frightens me too. You're the sheriff of Baldwin County. Right. If y'all can't figure out where in the phone book the number is to call with the feds and say, "Is this happening or not?" As a citizen, what the heck do I know? No, absolutely. And we've, I'm telling you, we've been diligent over the weekend and trying to track these things down and using our federal partners. Sure. We just haven't. You know, because I'm going to tell you, Baldwin County just doesn't make a lot of sense for it to bring in Haitians. One, it costs a lot of money to live in Baldwin County. The housing, it doesn't make sense. The harvest season only has a few weeks left. We're not going to have poultry jobs or those jobs that are going to be year-round. So financially, it doesn't even make sense for Baldwin County to be considered in this group. Not to say that they want, but we can't find anybody yet to say, "Yeah, you're going to get some Haitian immigrants." Yeah, I just, this is not even, it's just a bigger discussion, not even specifically with the Haitian immigrants. You'd think, you'd be able to call up, you know, and that's why we have our representatives in Washington. But you think even before you did that, there'd be a phone number you'd call, especially somebody who's a sheriff, and say, "Hey, Sally, is this, you know, making it simple, but is this thing happening? Oh, yes, it is. It's not, you know, we got a note on it." Well, you would think you would be able to call ICE and they could tell you exactly how many they are and who they are, but we can't get that information. And frankly, they're not saying they have that information. It's me stuck with who has it. Yes, I don't know. When the sheriff of the county in discussion can't, they didn't even, they should have called you if it's happened, said, "Here's what's happened, Sheriff." Absolutely. I mean, and let me tell you, not just me, the governor's office, I mean, she's been completely open about this too, trying to help the governor's office, no information, the attorney general's office, no information. So again, it's just, even if the answer is no, it's just, but somebody to be able to say no and let people be reassured that we're going to be okay. Now, we're going to be okay. We're going to police like we normally do, and we're not going to allow any one nation or any else to violate the law. But again, it would be nice to know that we're going to get an influx of immigrants into Ball and County. Yeah. I mean, I think that would be a thing that you could get an answer on. Absolutely. Well, if you remember years ago, there was an effort to try to move some immigrants into Wolfield and some different places. And now that we were very active once we knew that, because we were able to fly to DC and talk to our senators and to our congressmen, and we were able to prevent that because the resources, Sean, we just don't have the resources to handle that population. But you knew it was going to be a thing that happens. Right. And then we had a person to talk to. Wow. Sheriff Lowry, thank you for your time. Coming back soon. I'll be back soon. You can count on it. All right, good deal. So, Bolton County Sheriff Anthony Lowry, our guest coming back hour number two of Midday Mobile Bex. [Music]