WILLOW SPRINGS, Mo. -- Law enforcement officers from Howell County are back from a trip to Texas.  They went to Fort Worth last Friday to interview Steven Harsch, who’s charged with impersonating a police officer there.

  Harsch, who lived in West Plains until a few weeks ago, is also a "person of interest" here in investigations of two attacks by a man posing as a police officer.  Detectives interview Harsch in June before he moved back to Fort Worth but he had a credible alibi for the time of at least one of the two attacks on women near West Plains.

   Fort Worth police arrest Harsch on July 13.  Detectives from this area waited to go to Fort Worth for another interview with Harsch until he was released from a hospital for a medical condition unrelated to his arrest or charge.

  After doctors released Harsch on Friday, he bonded out of jail.  That’s when detectives from here went to Fort Worth.

  Howell County Sheriff Robbie Crites is at a training conference all week.  Sgt. Marty Elmore, a spokesman for the Missouri State Highway Patrol’s Troop G based in Willow Springs, wouldn’t say much about the detectives’ trip.  They returned from Texas on Saturday and did not make an arrest.

  Elmore said Harsch is still a person of interest but detectives continue to follow other leads.

  "We're back to ground zero to some degree with him and with some other leads we have developed, so we're continuing to work those tips out and try to see where they take us,” said Elmore.

  Elmore says, in the meantime, it is putting on seminars for women in the area including self-defense.  The patrol recommends people get to know the various police uniforms in their area to help them know when something might not look right.