Farm Cop

Good friend of the show Matt Brechwald produces a very good podcast called Off- Farm Income. In one episode he interviewed Detective Corey Stacy of the Kern County Sheriff's Office Rural Crime Investigations unit and, as we will learn, farmers face crime as well as urbanites. “In our rural farm unit we take care of the farming and ranching. Anything that happens within those categories gets assigned to us. Mostly its thefts and we have our own homicide unit as well. We get farmers who will call us and say something is going on out there and we take it from there. We get a hold of landowner or farmer and say we've got detectives on the scene. What are the major crimes? Definitely copper theft. You have farmers who have irrigation systems and when they get the copper wiring stolen the irrigation no longer works and crops will die, so that's a major concern.”

 

Detective Stacy said that even homicides taking place on farmers property are not that unusual. Also meth labs. And then there’s cattle rustling.