{"id":38560,"date":"2022-09-05T11:00:00","date_gmt":"2022-09-05T17:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/la-plata-county-sheriffs-office-sergeant-has-a-memory-like-a-steel-trap\/"},"modified":"2026-03-31T02:45:22","modified_gmt":"2026-03-31T08:45:22","slug":"la-plata-county-sheriffs-office-sergeant-has-a-memory-like-a-steel-trap","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/la-plata-county-sheriffs-office-sergeant-has-a-memory-like-a-steel-trap\/","title":{"rendered":"La Plata County Sheriff\u2019s Office sergeant has a memory like a steel trap"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

\"Sgt.
Sgt. Wes Doughty, with the La Plata County Sheriff\u2019s Office, is known for his exceptional memory. (Jerry McBride\/Durango Herald)<\/span>Jerry McBride<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>

After working in law enforcement for more than 10 years, it can be easy to forget all the faces, people and places, but not for Sgt. Wes Doughty with the La Plata County Sheriff\u2019s Office.<\/p>\n

\u201cWes remembers license plates, dates of birth, associates that people hang out with, and even folks that are wanted with arrest warrants and things like that,\u201d said Sheriff\u2019s Office spokesman Sgt. Chris Burke. \u201cHe\u2019s really outstanding at portraying our mission, vision and values.\u201d<\/p>\n

Though he\u2019s never been tested for eidetic memory, or extraordinarily accurate and vivid recall, Doughty thinks it\u2019s a safe bet that there\u2019s something similar going on in his head.<\/p>\n

\u201cI get a lot of flak for it sometimes,\u201d he said. \u201cPeople like to poke fun because I\u2019ve got a weird memory. I think I heard the dispatchers making fun of me one day because someone ran a person\u2019s name over the radio and I was able to give them that person\u2019s license plate number.\u201d<\/p>\n

Doughty graduated from the police academy in 2011 and started his career in law enforcement with the Durango Police Department. In 2015, Doughty said he decided to switch over to the Sheriff\u2019s Office for family reasons. He was promoted to sergeant in 2018.<\/p>\n

\u201cWes is a great officer, a great father and a great community member,\u201d Burke said.<\/p>\n

In some cases, his colleagues will look to him to remember things like license plate numbers or names to help with police work.<\/p>\n

\u201cPeople will have someone caught on camera doing A through Z and they\u2019ll ask me, \u2018Hey, who is this?\u2019\u201d Doughty said. \u201cOftentimes, I have to disappoint them and say to be honest with you I have no idea. Other times, I\u2019ll know exactly who it is and can tell you about something they did eight years ago.\u201d<\/p>\n

Doughty said he can\u2019t take any credit for his steel trap memory; rather, he sees it as a gift from God.<\/p>\n

\u201cI can\u2019t claim it as my own success, because I didn\u2019t really ask for it and I\u2019ve never really practiced it or anything,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Doughty said his memory is sharper at remembering residents who commit crimes.<\/p>\n

\u201cI kind of joke about it sometimes, but unfortunately, I\u2019m not as sharp at remembering people who haven\u2019t crossed my path for a bad reason,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

One benefit to remembering people at their worst is getting to see them in the community when they\u2019ve turned things around, he said.<\/p>\n

Burke said Doughty\u2019s strange memory has helped with police work on a number of occasions. However, he can\u2019t currently remember any stories of Doughty that don\u2019t involve potentially active cases.<\/p>\n

Doughty said one time he was driving by the mall with a trainee and spotted a vehicle and named the license plate number that was too far in front of them to see clearly.<\/p>\n

\u201cI saw that it was a dark-colored Pontiac, and there was a family of individuals at that time that were heavily involved in crime in our area,\u201d he said. \u201cI recognized from a distance that this was the car and I told my trainee the plate number, and sure enough he pulled up and it\u2019s the correct plate number.\u201d<\/p>\n

In one case, Doughty said he was subpoenaed because he was able to help identify someone based on a nickname they used around town.<\/p>\n

<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Doughty recalls names, birthdays and even license plate numbers, sometimes for years<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":38561,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[28,1194,1142],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-38560","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-headlines","tag-la-plata-county-sheriffs-office","tag-profile"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38560","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=38560"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38560\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":84057,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38560\/revisions\/84057"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/38561"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=38560"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=38560"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=38560"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=38560"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}