Adams County Sheriff Travis Patten told county supervisors Tuesday something no parent wants to hear — your children are trashy.

But the sheriff’s alert to the county’s parents was a needed one.

You see one of the many things the sheriff’s office does is operate inmate work crews charged with picking up litter.

So the sheriff’s office knows a thing or two about trash and the sheriff said some county residents have a problem being trashy.

The sheriff told supervisors that in the last month inmate crews had picked up nearly 700 bags of trash along county roadways.

Sheriff Patten said that crews could finish cleaning up a road and come back hours later to find trash scattered about again.

“It is a serious problem,” Patten said. “We need to self-police each other because there is too much trash. As soon as we go down a road and clear it, two hours later we go back down the road and it’s flooded with trash again. We need to be our brothers’ keepers and start calling in tags on folks.”

Patten is correct in calling for the public’s help. His deputies can only be in so many places at once, but if all law-abiding residents took it upon themselves to keep watch, it’s quite possible the litterbugs can be nabbed in no time.

This is our home and the last thing we want anyone to do is trash it up. If you see someone littering, please report it.