A message from Beltrami County Sheriff's Office & Beltrami County Health & Human Services

Dear Beltrami County Residents and Businesses,

The Beltrami County Sheriff’s Office has been serving the citizens and visitors of Beltrami County for over a century. We have experienced many events and disasters over the years. You have asked for our assistance and we have delivered… on the other side, we have asked for your support before, and you have delivered in a myriad of different ways… from our K9 program to Project Lifesaver… those are all incredibly worthy and meaningful initiatives and we appreciate your support. Those have all asked for financial contributions; today we are asking for a completely different contribution.

As you are all aware, the COVID-19 Pandemic is taxing the entire country on resources and plagued with misinformation. One thing that is certain - local emergency responders and Public Health personnel are critically lacking in what we refer to as PPE – Personal Protective Equipment. When the country went into a mode of “panic buying” one of the things that was cleared clean from shelves and distributors was PPE. PPE isn’t being restocked nearly as quickly as other essentials such as toilet paper and groceries.

We are asking the public and area businesses to do an inventory and consider donating excess or unneeded PPE to Beltrami County for our law enforcement, emergency medical services and public health needs. Obviously, you have your personal safety at the forefront to take into consideration. If you are sitting on a large cache of PPE, such as N95 masks, surgical masks, gowns, gloves, "booties" or other PPE… how much do you NEED? If you have excess supplies, please consider donating to us. Your donations could help save lives.

The BCSO is making it incredibly easy to donate… all you have to do is call us! We don’t want to inconvenience you or make you drop them off, exposing you to possible illness. We will come pick them up and get them to our PPE donations management site. Please call our Records Division at 218-333-4187, let us know what you have, how much and when you’re available. We have a simple donation form to complete and we will come to you and deliver the donation to our donations management site.

It sounds small, but the State of Minnesota has tasked your local Emergency Management Directors with coordinating donations of anything less than 500 pieces. If you have donations greater than 500 pieces, we will be more than happy to facilitate getting your donation to where it needs to be. Just to ensure we make this is as easy as possible… please call Beltrami County Sheriff Records Division at 218-333-4187, Dispatch at 218-333-9111 or Emergency Management at 218-333-8386 or message our Facebook Pages and we will let you know what to do.

Thank you for your generosity, and helping everyone during this crisis,

-Ernie Beitel, Beltrami County Sheriff

-Christopher Muller, Beltrami County Emergency Management Director

-Cynthia Borgen, Beltrami County Public Health Director