Mercer County Sheriff's Dept
In response to non-county residents that were stopped in Mercer County. Mercer County is a very rural county in North Missouri. We are very grateful for our county's largest employer, Smithfield Farms. Smithfield is a large glob- ally known, hog production company that owns production farms in several surrounding counties including Mercer County. Mercer County is also the home to Smithfield's main office. In addition to this, Mercer County has two state highways that cross the county. I believe that these two factors contribute to the number of traffic stops conducted on non-Mercer County residents. While reviewing the letter and numbers received with your letter. We observed that the Mercer County 2020 population listed in your letter is 2,820. While the population for Mercer County in 2020 listed on Wikipedia is 3,538. This may be a publication error, however I wanted to inform your office in the event that it would taint the statistics.