Madison County Sheriff shares growing daily function data
by Randy Pierce • Reflecting the huge volume of activity involving personnel with the Madison County Sheriff’s Department, its chief deputy, Marcos Pulido, recently shared numbers for the 2025 calendar year which indicate increases in many of its day-to-day functions.
In reporting to the county board public safety committee at its February meeting, Pulido explained the year-end totals as of Dec. 31, 2025, showed there were 4,537 detainees booked into the jail located in Edwardsville, just under 600 more than the previous 12-month period.
There was also a significant increase, he added, by members of the sheriff’s department transportation division which escorted 557 more, when compared to the previous year, individuals to court appearances, not all of them in Madison County, the total for 2025 being 1,890.
There are three deputies in that transportation division, Pulido added, who, nearly every day, are responsible for such duties and need to ask for help from another unit within the department in order to adequately handle the workload.
Drugs confiscated by the sheriff’s department enforcement team in 2025 showed more than the totals of the prior year for specific substances that included 6.7 pounds of methamphetamine (2024: four pounds), 12 pounds of cocaine (2024: one pound) and just under one pound of fentanyl (2024: a half-pound), which, Pulido explained, may sound like a small total but “just a speckle” of it can result in significant aftereffects to anyone abusing it.
He, earlier during the same presentation, noted dispatchers answered 27,517 calls to the 9-1-1 emergency response number in 2025 and another 88,611 calls on the non-emergency landline, the latter alone representing 1,304 hours and 20 minutes.
The overall number of incidents involving the sheriff’s department for the year ending Dec. 31 reached 26,583, Pulido said, with some of those involving calls where a dispatcher advised a deputy to respond while some others were self-initiated on the part of the patrolling officer.
Deputies also served civil process court papers, which can include orders of protection, 2,799 times, this figure not included in any of the others presented.
There is additionally a special proactive enforcement group within the sheriff’s department which focuses on illegal drugs while also seizing 45 firearms that were in the possession of someone not legally authorized to have one. That total was less than the 51 seized in 2024.
