Fred Smith Sr. is a lifelong resident of Rockbridge County, having been born and raised in Buena Vista and serving as a member of the Lexington Police Department for more than 30 years.
During that time, he worked as a patrolman, master patrolman, field sobriety instructor, weapons instructor and field training officer. He also worked as a special enforcement officer, a role that had a variety of responsibilities, including parking enforcement, animal control and weed control, and was serving in that role when he retired in 2015.
“Anything the officers couldn’t get to, they kind of dropped in my lap,” he said. “I was the catch-all.”
If elected sheriff, Smith hopes to pass on the lessons of his life experience and law enforcement experience to the deputies in the sheriff’s office.
“All those years [of experience] and living here all my life, those are the things I want to give to the new officers,” he said. “It’s a different world, and with my life experiences and law enforcement experience, the younger officers get a little old school leadership, somebody who knows how the councils work, how the board of supervisors work, [and] just how the community perceives you. With my experience, I can pass that onto our younger officers and make their job easier and make the community safer.”
One of the things Smith said he would do to address drug-related crime in the county is continuing to work with the James River Regional Drug Task Force, and he also plans to raise awareness by reinstating the DARE program, “especially in lower grades like elementary and middle school … because their minds are still able to be formed.”
As part of his strategy to address domestic and inter-family crime, Smith said he would like to hire more female deputies, with a goal of having one on each shift.
“If something happens to a lady – God forbid, I hope it doesn’t – she’s not gonna want to talk to a … man,” he said. “But if that female [deputy] is there, they can bond. And having a female deputy out there, the children are going to gravitate and bond with a female deputy a whole lot better, and senior citizens will too.”
He added that he wouldn’t be hiring female deputies “just to have a woman out there,” but that he wanted the deputies to be “the best of the best” with as much training and experience as possible. He said he would also like to work to increase the deputies’ salaries as an incentive to keep them in the department, and work to get the best training and equipment for the officers, including body cameras.
“I want each deputy to have a body camera, because that will cut down on frivolous complaints and the big lawsuits,” he said. “You go to the video and it’s there.”
Smith acknowledges that it’s a lot to ask for the county to pay for and plans to hire a grant writer for the department to apply for grant funding to cover the costs of some of the new equipment.
Smith also said he plans on being very active in the community as sheriff if elected and plans to be as transparent as possible about things the department is doing and investigating.
“I’m not gonna be the sheriff you [only] see every four years,” he said. “I’m gonna be the sheriff that might show up at your church on Sunday morning. You might call for a deputy and I might be the one answering your call. The citizens have to see you. That’s one thing people have said – they don’t see the deputies. But you’ve got to get out and you’ve got to be seen. If you’re sheriff, people have got to be able to see you.
“I know a lot of people and a lot of people know me,” he added. “I just want the citizens here to feel safe and to know if they have a problem, they can come and talk to the sheriff. He’s not just this guy back in this back office. You can come talk to me, man-toman, woman-to-woman, person-to-person. That’s my way of doing things.”
