Sheriff: Jones will
be an investigator
Andrews – The former Graham County sheriff, who resigned last month in the middle of his first term, has been hired as an officer with the Andrews Police Department.
Joseph Jones, 44, resigned as Graham County sheriff on June 30, citing personal reasons as the motivating factor.
“Due to health issues that have further developed due to the stress related to the job, threats against my family, and the need to spend more time with my children and my precious granddaughter, I must distance myself from the position as your sheriff,” Jones wrote in his resignation letter, according to The Graham Star.
Jones declined to elaborate on his reasons for resigning in a conversation with the Cherokee Scout. When asked whether joining the Andrews police force was a play to take over as chief of the department, Jones replied, “No, sir. That definitely hasn’t been discussed.”
The hiring of Jones comes on the heels of former Andrews police chief Michael Hobgood’s resignation earlier this month. Today, the police department is run by Cherokee County Sheriff Derrick Palmer, who reached a deal with town aldermen to manage and rebuild the force without interference from lawmakers.
Jones, who plans to continue living in Graham County while working in Andrews, said he looks forward to “interacting with the community,” and doing his part to “build up the department” and establish “a stable law enforcement agency.”
“I’m going to use him as an investigator,” Palmer said, touting Jones’ 15 years of experience in law enforcement. “He’s worked with the Graham County Sheriff’s Office and the Cherokee Indian Police Department. He has a stack of certifications. He would be the go-to person if we have a homicide, sexual assault or other major crime.”
While Palmer rebuilds Andrews’ police force, he is also working to fix “discrepancies” in the department’s pay scale and make salaries commensurate to an officer’s experience and certifications. At an emergency meeting Thursday to approve hiring Jones, town leaders disclosed that they are working on a uniform pay scale for all town employees.
“I don’t think there will be a lot of change,” Palmer said about the police department’s pay scale. “It’s not going to break the bank. We’re probably looking at 25-50 cents here or there.”
With the addition of Jones, the town’s police department has five officers. However, Officer Nick Roberson, who left Andrews police in May last year to join the sheriff’s office but returned to the town’s police force two months later, has moved to a part-time position in order to pursue additional employment outside of law enforcement.
Despite Roberson’s step down, town officials believe the police department is headed in a better direction under Palmer’s leadership.
“The word is out,” Mayor James Reid said. “Just having a police presence in Andrews is making all the difference in the world.”
However, officials say there’s a lot of work to be done.
“My daughter was playing tennis the other day, and we had quite a bit of drug dealing going on in the park in the middle of the day,” Alderman Steve Jordan said at last week’s meeting.
Palmer believes some illegal activity has spread to other areas since his officers have increased law enforcement presence downtown.
“We’re kind of running them to the fringes [of town],” he said. “We’ve been hard on them in the middle of town, all up and down the streets. [As a result], they’re moving off to the sides, going to the parks and going to the rivers.”