Patch Gets To Know Mark Warden

MARIETTA, OH — Most people in Washington County are familiar with Sheriff Larry Mincks. However there’s another prominent Washington County lawman, he goes by the name Chief Deputy Mark Warden.

The way the ranks work is Sheriff, then Chief Deputy, then majors, then captains, then lieutenants, then sergeants. Warden has been serving this county for almost three and a half decades in one capacity or another. I had the pleasure to sit down with him in his office for a chat.

Patch: So you’ve been here for 34 years, what’s that been like.

Warden: Quick. Time’s flying.

Patch: I’ll bet. I’ve got to ask the covid question. What’s it been like since that all hit.

Warden: Yeah, covid’s been a challenge for us, as it has for a lot of organizations. Keeping our employees safe and keeping the people we deal with safety in regards to the PPE challenges. There are however some silver linings in it. Such as video arraignment was brought into play. We can do video arraignments from prison to here, and from the jail to the courthouse. It eliminates the travel, so it makes security a lot safer. For the most part we went unscathed for a long time. We’re seeing it creep up on us a bit lately. Had some outbreaks at the jail.

Patch: What about other things like pulling people over. I noticed when this pandemic started, I saw a lot less people being pulled over.

Warden: Yeah we went through a period there like any organization, when it first started. We realized there was a virus causing a lot of problems and heartache. From an agency standpoint, we had to stand back and slow down on some of the proactive stuff. If something happened we handled it, but to go out there and work things we stepped back from a safety standpoint. But once we got a handle on it and started learning more from the CDC and our local health department we went back to operating normally as we do now.

Patch: So 34 years here. Do you have any aspirations to be sheriff?

Warden: I started out here as a corrections officer and I learned over 34 years that tomorrow could be the day you wake up with a health issue. I’ve had some health issues in my past. But I started at the Washington County Jail here and as a dispatcher, did that for five years. Went out and worked the criminal division, rode patrol. Went from road patrol into the detective bureau. I worked detective bureau for many years, got my first supervision there. From there I went to a major crimes task force and worked organized crime for many years. From there I went into supervision and administration, day-to-day activities. I have aspirations, but I do one day at a time.

Patch: So what are some of the issues facing Washington County right now.

Warden: Washington County is like many other counties. We see a problem with the drug issue.

Patch: Drugs in general, or any in specific?

Warden: We can go back in time. Back in 2004, we saw opioids creep into communities. With that you see the prescription pill abuse. That just morphed. We had seen a lot of cocaine and crack cocaine, then the opioids became a lot more prevalent. Just like any other jurisdiction. The pills were just pricing themselves out. At that time an 80-milligram Oxycontin pill would go for $80. So if you had a prescription of 100 pills, that’s $8,000 a month. So that led people with pill problems to go to Columbus, that’s our source city. They come down here from Columbus and set up shop. So we went through the heroin issue, we went through the tar heroin, we went through the powder heroin. We’re still in a heroin phase, but what we’re seeing more now is methamphetamines. Now it seems as if the meth has taken over, the ice.

We’re also seeing the fentanyl. So the fentanyl with the methamphetamines it’s called scag. That’s what they call that on the streets, scag. I would’ve never thought I would’ve seen it in all my years, because they’re on two completely different ends of the spectrum, but that’s what we’re seeing.

Patch: So what about overdoses.

Warden: I’ll tell you what would be really amazing, a really interesting story. Is the onset of Narcan, naloxone, to really illustrate how bad the problem is.

Patch: Do you mean here or in general?

Warden: I’m just saying if you look at a three-county area and just look at how many uses of Narcan from the squads. I don’t even know if you can get that information. Do you know what Narcan is? So Narcan reverses the effect of the opioid use, which is awesome. You can use it and bring people back to life. But I think that might under shadow the problem as it exists because you don’t see the deaths. So the Narcan's being administered, but if that Narcan wasn’t there, it’d be scary to see what that number would be.

Patch: Right, because first responders have Narcan right?

Warden: Oh yeah, we do.

Patch: So what you’re saying is that it’s making the problem seem like it’s not as bad because there aren’t as many people dying.

Warden: Exactly, so because I administer Narcan, that means it isn’t going to appear on the front page of the paper. So the public doesn’t see it. I’ve gone out and they say it seems like that drug problem is getting better, well it’s not, it’s the Narcan, which is good, but it’s concealing.

Patch: Like a band-aid.

Warden: Like a band-aid. And I believe in Narcan, I’ve seen guys that our deputies roll up on and you’d think they were clinically dead, they administer the Narcan and they come right back. So the overdose deaths are still a problem, we still have them. Unfortunately, there’s a time frame to use the Narcan, if they go past that time frame then death’s onset. If it wasn’t for Narcan we’d see overdoses in larger numbers.

Patch: You guys probably have to administer Narcan to people multiple times too right? Repeat offenders?

Warden: There have been laws put into place like the good Samaritan law. That’s where you might call in and say a friend is overdosing that individual won’t be charged. They (the overdose victim) can go to the hospital and get treated and won’t be charged as long as they go into a treatment program. It’s a diversion. We try to keep track of those people who’ve overdosed, and those who’ve violated that portion of the law, they get charged.

Patch: What would you like people to know about the Washington County Sheriff’s Department who don’t know that much about you? People who just see the cars rolling around, what would you like them to know about the kind of work you do here?

Warden: I think we got a bunch of great, dedicated officers out there. You know the sheriff’s office is just not the criminal division you see driving around there. We got three divisions. We have the civil division here, we have the jail division over on Westview Avenue, and the criminal division rolling around. So people see the cars rolling around and think that’s all we are. This is a large operation, we have 106 employees, and I can tell you that every one of them is dedicated in the focus of what they need to do.

So we encourage community involvement, if you happen to know of a crime, we have an anonymous tip line that keeps us busy. So we interact with the community that way. It’s anonymous, you can email. Just let people know that we’re here, if you have an issue, give us a call, we’ll come out and investigate it to the fullest of our resources.

Patch: Is there a way to stay connected to you?

Warden: We have a Facebook page. We have our website where we have warrants of the week, we have any news updates that we can get out there. A place where you can get to know our officers.

Patch: Last question. What would you like to see around here change? What would make the county better, what would make your job easier? If you had a magic wand and could change anything.

Warden: Get rid of Covid. It causes so many issues. It causes issues from an administrative standpoint. It obviously causes health issues. We want everyone to be safe and go home safe. It’s unfortunate, but it’s upon us. So we have to act accordingly to mitigate it and move on.