Working to ensure that community change is fair
Change is inevitable, Ledford says of Madison County, but part of his job is to ensure that the change is fair. He seems to mean that he must continue to serve all his constituents, whether change favors them equally or not. He describes the explosive growth of one highway exit in a nearby county, and worries that Madison County is not ready for similar growth.
Citing this Excerpt
Oral History Interview with John Ledford, January 3, 2001. Interview K-0251. Southern Oral History Program Collection (#4007) in the Southern Oral History Program Collection, Southern Historical Collection, Wilson Library, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
Full Text of the Excerpt
How much change is good? Where do we-
- JOHN LEDFORD:
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I guess my answer to that is and I think you would agree with this,
change is inevitable. It's coming. You want to throttle that
or control how much change comes in. The things that the county
commissioners or even the sheriff have to be very careful of is to make
sure that change is fair. Every community in this county is different
from the next. Mars Hill people are even though they're from
Madison County are different than Marshall. Marshall is different from
Laurel. Laurel is different from Spring Creek. They're
different in many different ways. We have to be fair about it. When I
first came in, my statement was that the reason that I wanted these four
COPS officers-and this is a true
statement-I've got one deputy. He can spend all his
time in North Marshall, Beech Glen and Mars Hill. You'll
never see a deputy in Laurel or Spring Creek because that's
where the calls for service are because that's where the
population is and will be. But it's not fair because they
deserve, you deserve, to have your house checked. Or if you need a
deputy, call a deputy if you live in Laurel. If you don't
give me these officers, they're going to stay up here. They
can't go down. They can't be in two places at
once. I don't care who the sheriff is. So we've
got to be fair. Another things is, is like cell phones, I know there has
been a big war in this county about cell towers. Either
you're for them or against them. I know that you know having
been from other places from a law enforcement stand point I
can't, I tried to keep my mouth shut as much as possible
because I felt like anything I might do might sway it one way or the
other. But I felt like we were going to get them, and I felt like we
needed them from a law enforcement standpoint because myself and my
chief deputy from Marshall down only have the Madison County
Sheriff's Department channel one, and it cannot be secured.
So if I'm down here on something very, very important going
down, I don't have the ability to talk to anybody any other
way than come over that main channel or stop and find two pay phones. I
don't think you're really going to find any pay
phones in that area. These cell phones are very important and not just
cell phones but digital cell phones. So I thought we needed the service,
but now as far as the types of towers coming in, I tried to stay out of
that. I think there's a legitimate, I think I'm
glad that's a decision made by the planning board of
adjustments or commissioners or whomever and not up to me. So I think
what you do is we accept that cell phones are coming, but we try to
determine how they're going to come.
Probably how much change is coming is the good Lord only knows because
I'd say it's going to be amazing.
- ROB AMBERG:
-
Right.
- JOHN LEDFORD:
-
I watch Haywood County and some of these counties have these interstates
through them. It seems like. I'll give you an example. In
1991 my chief deputy and I, my chief deputy was the chief investigator
and I was the fugitive officer working in Buncombe County. Mark Lane ran
a pawnshop on Leicester Street. He was about twenty years of age and was
shot and killed. They sent myself and another SWAT team member to
Dandridge, Hamblen County, Dandridge, Tennessee on a manhunt. The boys
that did it were named Davis and Hood. These boys, one of them was
paroled, had killed a man in Ohio, did seventeen years and paroled out.
Came down and lived with his sister in Hamblen Tennessee or Hamblen
County, Dandridge, Tennessee there and began to armed rob everything
down there. Came over into North Carolina and armed robbed the McDonalds
in Canton and came out and pulled this armed robbery and shot and killed
this young man. I spent five days in Dandridge, Tennessee. The sheriff
down there at that time, this is 1991 now, they had about eight deputies
about like my department now, a little smaller. The deputies
didn't have bullet proof vests and really were no better
equipped, probably not as well equipped as we are now. I know they were.
They sent Charlie Long, who was the sheriff then, sent two of us down
there heavily armed because he figured they'd come home and
there may be a shoot out, and they wanted help. They signed a mutual aid
agreement and sent us down. We had Federal warrants. We had
jurisdiction. They had a hotel there, and they had one truck stop type
diner. This year, which is about not even ten years later, I went to
Pigeon Forge with my wife and got off at that exit,
and in ten years now they have you just would not believe the place.
They have McDonalds. They have Taco Bell. They have just, that whole
exit is just. It's just like, you wouldn't even
know it. If it weren't for that one hotel that's,
that truck stop still there, I wouldn't even know the exit
now. That's in nine years. So we're not going to
be any different. Exit 11 will explode up here I believe, and the change
will be so great, so quickly that I hope we're prepared for
it. But I'm not sure that we are. I really don't
know that we are. I don't know that we could be prepared for
it because I'm not sure we have the tax base from a law
enforcement standpoint to hire the deputies and the equipment and get
them trained and pay them salaries to keep them.