California MO PD

10/30/2024

Please see (and follow!) our new page! This will be the last post here as all future updates will be done on the new page!

We've heard it from many people in town already, "what's happening with the police department"? Well, here's the scoop...

As of today, October 30th, the police department is in a rebuilding phase. 4 members of the Maries County Sheriff's Office have either joined or will be joining our ranks by November 6th. We will be doing posts in the coming weeks highlighting each one of them so you can get to know them better.

Who they are:

Scott John, a US Navy veteran and former Chief Deputy of the Maries County Sheriff's Office has been sworn in as our new Police Chief. He has been working here part time during the month of October and will become our full-time Police Chief effective Monday, November 4th.

Dale Harp, a US Army retiree, former Police Chief from Kentucky, and former Maries County Sheriff's Detective began working fulltime at the police department October 7th and has been assisting Chief John with the initial assessment of the department.

Two more personnel will be joining the office next week and will be introduced after officially starting.

What they are doing:

Drinkard's Construction has begun the addition of the ADA bathroom in the lobby of the police department, and we expect that to be completed shortly.

There is still a lot of gear and evidence at City Hall in the old police department and we are in the process of inventorying them and determining if items need transferred to the new evidence room or a request for destruction is needed. Either way, we are permanently moving in to the new Police Department.

Chief John & Sgt. Harp are also completing a full assessment of the department equipment and will be presenting their findings to the City Council on November 4th.

We will be posting weekly updates as progress is made and we get closer to being fully operational.

09/25/2023

FOUND PROPERTY (turned in to Police Department):

1. Chevy vehicle fob with other keys attached found in street near City Basketball Courts 09/25/23.
2. Apple iPhone found by “pay-to-dump” dumpster near City Hall 08/18/23.
3. Motorola Cell Phone found at Proctor Park east shelter house 08/18/23.
4. Mongoose Scooter found at Latham Family Memorial Park 07/28/23.
5. Boys bike found at Smith-Burke Park 07/17/23.
6. T-Post found on Thomas Street in early June.
7. Pink & White backpack with characters found at Proctor Park Shelter House 05/22/23.
8. Ring, gold in color with 8 c.z. and one hole for missing c.z., found at Bond Pharmacy ATM prior to 05/22/23.
9. Black Backpack with Rollerblades inside, found at Basketball Courts 05/20/23.
10. Black/Blue Backpack with Rollerblades inside, found at Basketball Courts 05/20/23.
11. Pair of glasses (possibly readers) found in the vicinity of Linda Lane first week of May.
12. Ford vehicle fob and other keys in small coin purse found at Bond Pharmacy. Will ask you to identify purse & other contents. Found in April 2023.
13. iTouch Air 3 Smartwatch. Unknown date or location found. Prior to 12/2022.
14. Phone in case. Unknown date or location found. Prior to 12/2022.
15. Phone (no case). Unknown date or location found. Prior to 12/2022
16. Phone with shattered screen. Unknown date or location found. Prior to 12/2022
17. Car Stereo. Found in drainage ditch on Rice Blvd. Unknown date found. Prior to 12/2022
18. Small child’s fishing pole. Found at Proctor Park 06/2022.
19. Men’s mountain bike with milk crates storage attached. Unknown date found. Prior to 12/2022.

These items will be kept for at least 90 days and then disposed of. Thank you for any help you can offer in getting these items back to their owners.

09/20/2023

***UPDATE***Owner has been located and will be picking Louis up soon. Thank you to all who shared which helped get him back to his family!

Found dog! This dog was found wandering near Bowling Street in California this morning. No tags and no microchip so we are asking the community to help us find the owner!

The dog is currently being held at the California Vet Clinic so if you know the owner, or if this dog belongs to you, please call the clinic at 573-796-3168. 

09/15/2023

FYI. No move date set yet.

Press Release

08/28/2023

Home 🥰

California. This guy is running around west of the park. No tags.

08/25/2023

FYI

08/25/2023

FOUND PROPERTY (turned in to Police Department):

1. Apple iPhone found by “pay-to-dump” dumpster near City Hall 08/18/23.
2. Motorola Cell Phone found at Proctor Park east shelter house 08/18/23.
3. Metal "garage sale" sign found outside City Hall 08/10/23.
4. Box of items belonging to Danielle Maddox found outside City Hall 07/25/23.
5. Mongoose Scooter found at Latham Family Memorial Park 07/28/23.
6. Boys bike #1 found at Smith-Burke Park 07/17/23.
7. T-Post found on Thomas Street in early June.
8. Pink & White backpack with characters found at Proctor Park Shelter House 05/22/23.
9. Ring, gold in color with 8 c.z. and one hole for missing c.z., found at Bond Pharmacy ATM prior to 05/22/23.
10. Black Backpack with Rollerblades inside, found at Basketball Courts 05/20/23.
11. Black/Blue Backpack with Rollerblades inside, found at Basketball Courts 05/20/23.
12. Pair of glasses (possibly readers) found in the vicinity of Linda Lane first week of May.
13. Ford vehicle fob and other keys in small coin purse found at Bond Pharmacy. Will ask you to identify purse & other contents. Found in April 2023.
14. iTouch Air 3 Smartwatch. Unknown date or location found. Prior to 12/2022.
15. Phone in case. Unknown date or location found. Prior to 12/2022.
16. Phone (no case). Unknown date or location found. Prior to 12/2022
17. Phone with shattered screen. Unknown date or location found. Prior to 12/2022
18. Car Stereo. Found in drainage ditch on Rice Blvd. Unknown date found. Prior to 12/2022
19. Small child’s fishing pole. Found at Proctor Park 06/2022.

These items will be kept for 90 days and then disposed of. Thank you for any help you can offer in getting these items back to their owners.

08/21/2023

***UPDATE***
Phone service has been restored.

City Hall phone lines are down. We are working with the phone company to get them restored.

Please visit City Hall if you have any urgent issues. This post will be updated when the issue is resolved.

As always, PLEASE CALL 911 IF YOU HAVE AN EMERGENCY. Their phones are not affected by this outage.

08/19/2023

City of California is aware of the water main break on Rice Boulevard near Latham Road. They are working on getting it fixed!

08/04/2023

08/04/2023

Excellent information!

Notice the Outdoor Warning Sirens sound last night. Allow us to answer some questions you may have:

1) Why were they activated?
The sirens were activated due to radar indicated rotation noticed by the National Weather Service (radar indicated tornado) in the southern portion of Moniteau County. This prompted a Tornado Warning which is an indication for sirens to be activated.

2) Why didn’t they sound that long?
Sirens only sound for 3 minutes at a time, they run off batteries that are solar charged and don’t want to burn up a speaker. They were not reactivated due to the rotation being located where sirens are not.

3) Why did the sirens in California, Jamestown and Tipton go off for something happening in Highpoint? The sirens in Moniteau County are all or nothing. We have attempted to reprogram them to be individually activated however due to their age the vendor didn’t want to attempt it because they were afraid it would break them.

4) I didn’t hear the sirens/ they didn’t sound as loud as they should…
Outdoor Warning Sirens are not intended to be heard inside, hence the name Outdoor Warning Sirens. They were activated around 8:30PM when most were inside. The intent of the sirens are to alert people who are outside to seek shelter and to tune into other resources such as TV, Radio, Weather Radio, Cell phone etc for additional information.

5) Why didn’t we hear an all clear?
People should be indoors and monitoring local media for updates on the storm, and are not intended to be heard indoors. Many people have a false reliance on OWS when they should be more reliant on weather radios or other informative media.

We recommend a weather radio in your house to alert you to weather warnings. Although mine went off about a dozen times last night which would have woke me up if I was sleeping you have the ability to program them for which types of alerts you would receive.
You can also subscribe to alerts through our Smart911 system. For severe alerts such as tornado warnings and considerable flash flood warnings, the system will call your phone rather than just a simple notification pushed to your phone.

If you have any questions regarding this please email [email protected] and we will be glad to help.