Undersheriff Carol retired from the Michigan State Police in 1996 after 26 years of service. Undersheriff Carol was a Sergeant at the State Police Post in South Haven upon retirement and was appointed to his current position by Sheriff Gribler in 1996.

Together accomplishments including a new addition to the jail, a new county-wide 800 Mhz radio system and county-wide computers in all the squad cars. Sheriff Gribler can be reached at 269-657-2006 Ext. 200, and Undersheriff Carol can be reached at 269-657-2006 Ext. 202.

The Van Buren County Sheriff's Office is located in downtown Paw Paw, one block south of the main light. A new wing to the old department was added in 2001. This new wing now houses the administrative offices, Narcotics and follow-up Bureaus, 911 Central Dispatch, and the Emergency Operations Center. The second floor of the new building houses additional inmates. The entire new addition was created without the use of tax dollars. The new addition makes it possible to house 158 inmates.

2005 Annual Report - ADMINISTRATION :

Over the past 10 years the Administration of the Van Buren County Sheriff’s Office has implemented annual reviews of our short and long term strategic plans with all division within our office and with line representation from each unit to ensure collaboration and shared visions. Because of this and the concurrence of the Board of Commissioners we have excelled in the advancement of public safety far beyond other counties in our state and many other counties throughout the nation.

As illustrations of our counties progressive, yet cost effective approach, we have been able to be the first county in Michigan to implement communication interoperability between all of our public safety entities; due to cooperation expanded the jail bed capacity with county, state and federal funds to ensure criminals remained incarcerated and not released early; develop a criminal data base that can be accessed by other local police agencies to help all law enforcement in the apprehension of criminals.

Internal policies and procedures are continually upgraded to make sure our practices from the annual training programs for each division to arrest procedures meet the federal, state and insurance industry standards minimizing our liability exposure.

In the future we hope to expand our criminal data information to wireless application, regionalize our training efforts, procure more grant funding for equipment, explore a regional jail concept for efficiency and building even further on the public involvement with public safety than we have already.

This type of progressive, forward thinking has and will help to ensure the public safety of our county residents for years to come.