Jones County Sheriff Alex Hodge is finishing up his third term as sheriff of Jones County, but he can still remember when he first had the desire to become a law enforcement officer. It started long before his decision to seek the sheriff’s chair back in 2003.
“I can go back further than 12 years. I can go back to when I was five or six years old, as I grew up wanting to be a law enforcement officer,” Hodge remembered.
As a kid Hodge would ride through his neighborhood on his bicycle, blowing a little siren and pulling people over on his bicycle. Being the sheriff of Jones County was a dream then, a passion. Decades later, it still is.
“At that time obviously it was just a childhood dream, but the older I got I realized it was a calling. The Lord called me into service, to serve in law enforcement,” he shared. “I went into military law enforcement with intentions to go into the Mississippi Highway Patrol and hopefully be sheriff. That’s what I wanted to do. Even when I was still in high school, I wanted to be sheriff.”
While working at Laurel Machine and Foundry, and still in high school, Hodge stenciled the following on metal: “Alex Hodge for Sherrifff.” Yes, it’s misspelled, but that’s the way it got stenciled.
“I wanted to be sheriff longer than I could even spell sheriff,” Hodge remembered with a laugh.
As Hodge grew older and went through the military and the Highway Patrol, he began to pray about his future. He felt like the Lord was leading him to run for the office in the late 1990s.
“I called Maurice Hooks one day and told him ‘Maurice, I’m going to be running for sheriff one day.’ He said ‘I want to get one more term in, and then I’ll support you.’”
Hodge put his dream of running for office into motion by placing his name on the 2003 ballot. He came up short in that election, but that defeat didn’t turn him away from his childhood dream.
“I ran in 2003 and was defeated. I told the former sheriff that I was going to run again – there was no question about it. I had to leave the Highway Patrol to run for sheriff. By law you can’t keep the job and run too, so I had to resign from the Highway Patrol to run for sheriff. So when I was defeated, when I went back to the Highway Patrol, the first thing I told L.M. Claiborne, who was a colonel at the time, was that I’m going to run for sheriff again in 2007. I didn’t want there to be any misunderstanding. So I went back to the Highway Patrol and worked until time to leave and run in 2007.”
The second time was the charm for Hodge, as 54 percent of Jones County voters cast their ballot for him. Four years later that number climbed to 68 percent. The 2015 election saw the sheriff garner 75 percent of the vote. He’s appreciative of the support, but he doesn’t take it for granted.
“People are responding to what we are doing, so that tells me that we continue to listen, that we continue to adjust, that we continue to do everything we can to provide professional, fair and equal law enforcement to the people of Jones County,” noted Hodge. “That doesn’t stop. I don’t sit back and say we got 75 percent. No, that’s just a report card – it tells us how we are doing on our day to day jobs. This is our careers, this is what we do, and we don’t change gears come election time. We just keep pressing.”
Hodge believes his department has delivered on his promise to provide fair, professional law enforcement to the residents of Jones County over the past 12 years, but he also understands that being the chief law enforcement officer of a county is always a work in progress that comes with many challenges. Those challenges can suppress passion for the job, even dampen childhood dreams. So, does Alex Hodge still have that passion for law enforcement that he once had, after a decade-plus of service as sheriff? Is he now content with the decision he made years ago to run for sheriff of Jones County?
“Absolutely. I’m at perfect peace with where I’m at now. We have not arrived, we have work to do, and we’re as committed as ever to do what we promised the people we would do,” he said.
To continue to serve the citizens of Jones County better, Hodge is persuaded that it is his responsibility to surround himself with qualified, competent officers and then give them the freedom to do what they were hired to do.
“Senator Vince Scoper always told me prior to me being elected that ‘when you are elected, if you’ll surround yourself with good solid people, you’ll go far,’” recollected Hodge.
The sheriff has worked to follow the former senator’s advice, even in a societal climate that has caused many officers to take off the blue uniform and look for other occupations. Sometimes finding the best officers means hiring employees who don’t live in Jones County.
“So, here’s my practice. It’s been my practice since day one. I hire the best, most qualified people to do the job. I do not discriminate on race, religion, national origin, sex or their address,” Hodge said. “If you would expect me to do any less, I’m sorry. I’m going to hire the best, most qualified people to do the job.”
Owning Private Businesses
One criticism Sheriff Hodge has faced recently is the perception that he is not giving adequate time and effort to the office of sheriff, due to him owning some private businesses. When asked if he was a part-time sheriff, Hodge responded candidly.
“My response to that is that this is misinformation that people are putting out. But the question I always ask if someone asks me that is this, ‘What am I not doing as sheriff?’ and they can’t answer,” he began. “My family, including this family here (in the office) can validate that I’m more than full-time. My wife said it like this: ‘If you’re not a full-time sheriff, I would hate to know what one looks like.’
“I work on average about 20 hours a day – literally I work about 20 hours a day,” Hodge continued. “My people will attest that I’m out all the time and in this office or in the field or always available by phone. I always return calls from people who leave me a voice mail. I’m available to the people; I’ve always been available to the people. People see me on a daily basis; they know I’m out there. I wear this uniform every single day of my life; even sometimes on Sundays I put this uniform on. I’m as full-time and as fully committed to leading this office as anyone could be. To say anything else is just factually not true.
“Now, to my businesses – absolutely I’m a business owner. I embrace the fact that I’m a business owner. I have B-Clean, B-Clean Environmental, Blendex and B-Clean Transportation. As I look at what I’ve gained through 20 years of business, and I’ve been in business 20 years, three of those four businesses were start-up businesses that I started along with the blood, sweat and tears of many other people. They have grown to be successful businesses over the past 20 years, not as the result of me being sheriff,” Hodge added.
According to the Small Business Administration, 70 percent of small businesses fail within 10 years, many within the first two years after opening their doors. Hodge’s businesses have not failed, and he said he leans on the experiences he has gained from being a private business owner to assist him in making financial, personnel, budget, and crisis type decisions – some of them split second decisions – for the Sheriff’s Department.
“The fact that I’ve been in business 20 years, employing a number of people and successfully moving those businesses forward has given me a great opportunity to use that experience as I make decisions just like that here on a daily basis, because, by the way, this is a multi-million dollar business. Some may think this is not a business, but it’s a service business. True enough I own those businesses; I am involved in those businesses, but it doesn’t affect my ability to be sheriff. The fact that I have businesses, in my personal experience, has benefited me more professionally sitting in this office and managing what we do here.”
What about Sheriff Deputies Providing Security for Private Companies or Churches in Jones County?
“What happens in those scenarios is that people hire deputies for off duty work. I took a lot of criticism because people said ‘they should be out in the county or they should be catching calls.’ Those deputies are off duty deputies being compensated to provide security. Now we must not forget that as sheriff it’s my job to provide public safety. So if I’ve got a power company that’s gonna be stretching lines across the road, and someone runs through there and gets killed, who are you gonna be fussing at? Are you gonna be fussing because I’ve got a deputy sitting out there or because I didn’t have a deputy sheriff sitting out there?” asked Hodge.
The sheriff then explained that in order to save the taxpayers money, the private companies hire deputies who are not scheduled in the regular rotation that day to work a private security detail. The private companies have to compensate the county for the detail at an overtime rate.
“What happens is that the entity that needs our service pays the county directly for that service. We bill them and they turn around and pay the county for that service. We don’t pull from the rotation of deputies that are scheduled to work. We call those extra details. Those deputy sheriffs you see at businesses and other places providing security, like churches on Sundays, those are deputies scheduled to be off that day. They are not on a regular day of work.”
Do We Have a Narcotics Division to Combat the Drug Problem and the Crimes Related to Drugs?
“Well, the way you address that is simple. In 2008 when I was elected sheriff, Lt. Tony Stiles was immediately put in charge of our Narcotics Division. So we’ve had a very vibrant, active narcotics division since 2008. Here are the facts: we’ve made hundreds of drug arrests, we’ve saved thousands of lives as a result of our efforts in narcotics and we’ve saved hundreds of thousands of dollars in potential thefts, but at the same time we recognize that there is a lot of work yet to be done.”
Statistics released by the Sheriff’s Department show that there have been 52 felony arrests and 45 misdemeanor arrests by the Narcotics Division through the first six months of 2019.
The Sheriff’s Department currently employs three full-time narcotics officers. Hodge said the most the unit has ever had is four. Hiring more narcotic agents is one reason Hodge asked for a larger budget last year.
“Common sense will tell you that three or four people cannot cover this county, whether it’s narcotics or patrol,” the sheriff said.
Hiring more deputies to provide the residents of Jones County with a greater patrol presence is a goal the sheriff wants to accomplish soon. It’s the reason he says he will ask for the same budget increase he asked for last year, and he believes the budget increase is a necessity, no matter who sits in the sheriff’s office in the future.
“This office needs several million more dollars to effectively and efficiently operate. I’m at perfect peace with the constant adjustments that we make to be able to do every thing we can with the least burden possible on the taxpayers with the budget we have today,” he explained. “But we’ve gone as far as we can go with the budget we’ve been allotted. We are severely underfunded at the Jones County Sheriff’s Department. We’ve put more people on the road than ever before, and they are not getting rich. I know because I’ve been here that we need ten deputies per shift. We have three now. The budget I will propose and have been proposing would put those boots on the ground. It does not add any administrative positions whatsoever; we’re already at a bare minimum on administration, but it just adds additional deputies. With that increased visibility comes a greater deterrent.”
The sheriff said he will not go silent on the budget just because it’s an election year. “You hired me to do this job, and I’m going to do it. I know what we need because I’m here. I’m not going to sugarcoat it. You need deputy sheriffs on the road. My position is that the money is there – it’s just about priority spending.”
According to a Laurel city official, the Laurel Police Department averages eight to nine officers on patrol per shift, on a nearly $5 million budget, even though their geographic and citizen footprint is smaller than the Sheriff’s Department. Hodge’s response to that is that the LPD needs every officer they’ve got, and they deserve every dime of their budget – to him it just confirms that the Sheriff Department needs more funds to add additional deputies.
Hodge asserted that he has fewer civilian employees (non-sworn officers) than the previous two sheriff administrations, noting that his office currently has just four administrative employees. The sheriff also explained that his law enforcement budget and his correctional facility budget are two separate items that can’t just be lumped together. The Sheriff Department’s budget funds the law enforcement activities and staffs, while the correctional budget pays for the staffs and operations of two jails (adult detention center and juvenile detention center) that is used by other law enforcement agencies, not just the Sheriff’s Department.
The Jones County jail, according to Hodge, has been exceeding capacity for some time, often housing over 200 inmates in a 144-bed facility. The jail’s inmate capacity became so overwhelmed that the sheriff had to send out a letter to other law enforcement departments in Jones County, informing them that they could only send him felonies and bondables to incarcerate.
More of the sheriff’s interview will publish in a later edition of the Laurel IMPACT or here on www.Impact601.com.