HANCOCK COUNTY — Across the nation in recent years, tensions between law enforcement officers and the communities they serve have been high.
Such concerns have prompted Hancock County police to boost their community outreach efforts — hosting community cookouts and increasing their social media presence, for example — hoping those connections will foster positive relationships between officers and residents.
The four men vying for the Republican nomination for Hancock County sheriff say they’ll work hard to grow the department’s current outreach efforts and introduce new initiatives.
The race for sheriff — a job that involves managing a nearly $6 million dollar budget, overseeing the county jail and supervising nearly 90 merit, reserve and jail officers — pits current Chief Deputy Maj. Brad Burkhart against his colleagues at the sheriff’s department, Lt. Donnie Munden and Deputy Donnie Smith, and former probation department chief Wayne Addison.
Burkhart and Munden have careers that nearly mirror one another: both started at the sheriff’s department as jail officers about 30 years ago and have climbed the department’s ranks simultaneously, serving as road deputies, detectives and members of the SWAT team.
Munden served as chief deputy under former Sheriff Bud Gray and was appointed acting sheriff for the last four months of Gray’s term before Gray retired.
Smith worked as an officer for the Cumberland Police Department for about four years before joining the sheriff’s department, where he’s worked as a road patrol deputy for the last 26 years.
Addison retired from the Hancock County Probation Department in 2017 after 35 years working as the department chief. During those three decades of service, he worked as reserve deputy for the sheriff’s department and spent 10 years as the reserve commander.
No Democrats have filed to run for sheriff.
Each Republican candidate has plans for enhancing the department’s relationship with the community with initiatives they say will build trust in the police while reducing crime.
Some think the focus should be on empowering the deputies to ensure they’re doing their best work on the road, while some want to create or grow programs for residents young and old to teach them more about law enforcement.
If elected, Addison wants to create a division within the sheriff’s department made of local volunteers, primarily retired police officers and veterans, who can lead select non-violent inmates in community service projects.
The volunteers would be trained to oversee inmates while they complete landscaping work around county buildings, pick up trash along local roadways or complete different chores inside the current jail facility, he said.
The program could serve as a bridge, helping give inmates confidence in their work ethic as they re-acclimate to the life away from lockup, Addison said. And as residents see these sheriff’s department-sponsored good deeds being done in the community, it’ll grow their trust and pride in the force, Addison said.
Munden wants to focus more attention on the youth in the community.
For the past 10 years, Munden has run the department’s explorer program, a facet of the Boy Scouts of America’s career-exploring program that gives teens a chance to participate in police training, ride along with deputies and complete first-aid and firearms courses.
If elected, Munden said he’ll grow the current explorers program and create a new one — one made specifically for at-risk youth. The new initiative would give first-time juvenile offenders a better look at the criminal justice system, perhaps with tours of the jail and chats with inmates there, in hopes of deterring them from committing further crimes. The same program would give the teens a law-enforcement role model, someone to whom they could turn to for help and guidance, he said.
Smith said he believes targeted neighborhood enforcement efforts will help to shape the public’s perception of the police.
This would involve adjusting current patrol tactics, which call for assigning a pre-determined number of officers to patrol a select area of the county each day, Smith said. Instead, he’d like to see the department more regularly put manpower in areas where crimes have taken place. For example, if a string of car break-ins has occurred repeatedly in one subdivision, deputies should flood the area around the subdivision, Smith said.
These targeted enforcement tactics show criminals and residents alike the department takes even the pettiest crimes seriously, he said.
But enforcement isn’t the only job of a sheriff’s deputy, Burkhart said. When officers put their uniforms on each day, they commit themselves to public safety and public service, he said.
Introducing more training aimed at teaching officers to identify why a person is committing a crime — similar to the crisis-intervention training some 40 local police officers recently completed that focused on mental health issues — would go a long way in building community-police partnerships, Burkhart said.
He hopes to one day create a team of officers that would be tasked with following up with families after they’ve had run-ins with the police to ensure they are taking advantage of social services offered by area nonprofits and state agencies — further reminding residents that police officers are here to help always, not just when something bad has happened.
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