Mathews County Sheriff Mark Barrick shared statistics for his first year in office with the Mathews Board of Supervisors during its March meeting.

Barrick said that during 2012, his office handled 7,521 calls for service and dealt with 376 reported crimes.

To better analyze crime data and community problems, he said he and his personnel divided the county into 23 areas, compiled statistics for those areas, and used the information to focus patrols in certain areas as needed in order to diminish and discourage crime.

Barrick said that, at the beginning of 2012, he assigned one investigator solely to the Tri-Rivers Drug Task Force, but after a few months, he decided to assign two part-time investigators to the task force instead. The result was that the two investigators initiated 41 drug cases, said Barrick. He said that the task force, which is made up of officers from the Gloucester, Mathews, Middlesex and York-Poquoson sheriff’s offices, the James City County and Poquos...