As part of these efforts, the sheriff created two new positions as a part of the Special Investigations Bureau.
GUADALUPE COUNTY, Texas — The new Guadalupe County Sheriff Joshua Ray has been on the job for 27 days.
“It has been a lot of work,” Ray said. “We have hit the ground running.”
Sheriff Ray has a focus on a certain crime. It’s one he came across as he previously worked with the Texas Department of Public Safety and as a Texas Ranger.
“I think it is more of problem than the public really knows,” he said. “Some of the crimes that I struggled investigating the most were the crimes against children.”
The sheriff is putting more resources to tackle crimes against children. He created two new positions as a part of the Special Investigations Bureau.
“I think it is a big issue everywhere,” he said. “There is not a week that goes by that my criminal investigation section that doesn’t catch a case of child sexual abuse.”
He said the sole mission of these two investigators is to proactively target and go after child predators.
“What can I do to proactively target these crimes,” he said. “Because reactively the only thing that we are doing is were are catching the ones that are self reported. We are catching the ones where the victim is brave and courageous enough to come forward and say I need help. But there is a lot of victims out there that don’t do that.”
Sheriff Ray said these investigators will work with the task force from the Texas Attorney General’s Office and said they will funnel his investigators leads.
“We have to protect our children,” Ray said. “Not just children but all victims of sexual crimes. This shouldn’t be happening.”
The sheriff’s other area of focus is to hire more deputies. He said he doesn’t believe they have enough of a patrol presence, especially in the rural side of Guadalupe County. Sheriff Ray said he also wants to closely track data to figure out crime hotspot locations, so he can change patrol patterns.