| OC Sheriff’s Department approaching full strength | | Posted: Thursday, March 22, 2012 9:05 pm
| By KEVIN BOWDEN
Staff Reporter
Sheriff Jerry Vastbinder has made some personnel moves this month to bring his patrol division up to full strength.
For the past few months, the Obion County Sheriff’s Department has been short three deputies. Now the patrol division is almost at full strength.
Two new deputies have been hired by the local sheriff’s department and a third candidate is currently going through the Tennessee Law Enforcement Training Academy in Nashville.
Vastbinder has hired Mack Lovell and Jamie Hall as patrol deputies.
They are filling vacancies in the patrol division and bring to 13 the total number of deputies on patrol in the county for three shifts.
A third deputy candidate, Jared Wilcutt, 22, is currently attending the state police academy and is scheduled to graduate in early June. He has been working at the local sheriff’s department since 2007 as a correctional officer and was recently pulled to work as a patrol deputy. Wilcutt is a 2007 graduate of Obion County Central High School.
Lovell and Hall are graduates of the East Tennessee Regional Law Enforcement Academy at Walters State Community College.
Lovell, 24, graduated from the academy in October 2010 and worked as a police officer in Rutherford and in Huntingdon. He attended OCCHS and graduated from Gateway Christian School in 2006.
Lovell and Hall were both hired away from the Huntingdon Police Department.
Hall, 23, graduated from the East Tennessee Regional Law Enforcement Academy in September 2011 and, ever since, had worked at the Huntingdon Police Department. He is a 2006 OCCHS graduate.
Deputies in the patrol division work three shifts, around the clock, handling criminal investigations, traffic control, working school zones and, on occasion, working as court deputies at the Obion County Courthouse.
Lovell and Hall began work at the sheriff’s department last week.
“It was an arduous task working through all the really good candidates we had for these vacancies. We had so many good applications, but we believe we’ve hired the two best candidates,” Sheriff Jerry Vastbinder said.
“We really think they’ll do a good job for us and the people of Obion County,” he said.
Staff Reporter Kevin Bowden may be contacted by email at kmbowden@ucmessenger.com.
Published in The Messenger 3.22.12 | | | | |
