Henry County Sheriff's Office

The sheriff's office in Henry County, Illinois, dates to 1837, when the county held its first elections, and today it works around the clock from Cambridge, the county seat since 1844. Its communications center is one of the busiest parts of the operation: thirteen full-time telecommunicators and a supervisor answer 911 and non-emergency calls, give pre-arrival instructions and dispatch for seventeen fire departments, fourteen ambulance services and ten law enforcement agencies with jurisdiction in the county, using Next Generation 911, text-to-911 and computer-aided dispatch. They also enter warrants, protective orders, missing persons and offender registrations into statewide databases and back up the Kewanee dispatch center. The Corrections Division, led by a jail administrator appointed by the sheriff, runs the jail in the Jail and Court Services addition completed in 1999 and also holds inmates for other agencies, a significant revenue source for the county. The Civil Process office hands papers to deputies for service, hundreds every year, as Illinois law requires sheriffs to serve and return court processes and judgments.