GASTON COUNTY, N.C. — The Gaston County Sheriff’s Office is looking for a man who is pretending to be one of them.

This fake deputy has been getting in touch with residents and threatens to throw them in jail if they don’t pay a fine on a Green Dot card.

“Law enforcement doesn’t work that way in North Carolina. We never ask you to get a Green card. You come up in person and deal with us personally,” said Gaston County Sheriff Alan Cloninger.

The department learned about this scam after a victim came up Tuesday night and told deputies they had paid a $2,500 fine after missing jury duty.

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Name: Don Ladd

Coaching: Voyager softball

Day job: Chief Deputy Sheriff of Durham.

Coaching resume: Assistant coach, N.C. Spinners travel club, 1998-2002. N.C. Dominators assistant coach, 2003. Cape Fear Storm assistant coach, 2004-present. Durham Riverside High assistant coach, 2004-14. Voyager Academy coach, 2014-present.

Five Questions

How do you go from the sheriff’s office to softball: “When my daughter (Jennifer) joined the N.C. Spinners, I had no idea what we were getting into. … Sitting and watching games from the stands all summer got pretty boring. So when the opportunity to coach came up, I took it. … In 2004, I thought there was absolutely no way I could devote the necessary time to coaching a high school team. (Then-Durham Sheriff Worth Hill) had coached me when I played football at Southern High, and he reminded me that coaching was another way for people in law enforcement to give back to the community.”

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HENDERSON COUNTY, N.C. — In Henderson county, there’s one thing law enforcement volunteers are never asked to do– carry a weapon.

They play a vital role for many counties that are strapped when it comes to cash and manpower. Whether it’s traffic duty or courthouse security, the county relies on volunteers every day.

The Henderson County Sheriff’s department fingerprint room gives other departments a blueprint for how volunteers can be utilized.

“The criminals are done in the detention center. We just do the nice people in here,” says Bob Huskey, who’s been volunteering for 18 years.

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What is a sheriff? Mention the word “sheriff” and many people’s minds will fill immediately with images of shootouts and gunfights in the Wild West. Such is the power of old movies and television series, which have so magnified the role of the nineteenth-century American sheriff that it is now virtually impossible to think of sheriffs as existing in any other place or time. Most people would be surprised to know that the office of sheriff has a proud history that spans well over a thousand years, from the early Middle Ages to our own “high-tech” era.

With few exceptions, today’s sheriffs are elected officials who serve as a chief law-enforcement officer for a county. Although the duties of the sheriff vary from jurisdiction to jurisdiction, the sheriff’s office is generally active in all three branches of the criminal justice system: law enforcement, the courts and corrections.

The importance of the modern sheriff was stressed by President Ronald Reagan in his address to the National Sheriffs’ Association on June 21, 1984. He said, “Thank you for standing up for this nation’s dream of personal freedom under the rule of law. Thank you for standing against those who would transform that dream into a nightmare of wrongdoing and lawlessness. And thank you for your service to your communities, to your country, and to the cause of law and justice.”

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DURHAM  —  Durham County Sheriff Mike Andrews is a constant advocate of crisis-intervention training for all law enforcement personnel, and he makes it personal for trainees by sharing a story of his own.

Andrews’ dedication to having the first people on the scene of a crisis understand the situation for the person involved and the people around that person was part of why the National Alliance on Mental Illness’s North Carolina chapter named him Outstanding Law Enforcement Executive of the year at its 2015 annual meeting in February.

Andrews, the group said, “is both passionate and compassionate in his desire to divert people with mental illness from jail.”

His agency has about 120 patrol and detention personnel who have been through the course and aims to have everyone trained, Andrews said.

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GREENSBORO − Guilford County Sheriff BJ Barnes and his wife, Dena, were awarded the Order of the Long Leaf Pine in a ceremony Monday, according to an announcement from the N.C. Governor’s Office.

“BJ’s dedication to the State of North Carolina and the people of Guilford County should not go unnoticed,” Gov. Pat McCrory stated in a news release. “His service has been truly incredible and I am lucky to call him not only a colleague, but a friend as well.”

Barnes, the longest-serving Sheriff in Guilford’s history, has focused much of his tenure on crime reduction. The department has experienced a 46 percent reduction in crime under Barnes’ leadership, according to the news release.

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RALEIGH, N.C. (AP) — North Carolina’s history museum is giving patrons an opportunity to look back at nearly 90 years of the state Highway Patrol.

An exhibit opening Saturday highlights the patrol’s history and showcases vehicles and other artifacts since the organization’s founding in 1929 to address the increase of motor vehicle traffic and resulting deaths on the state’s highways.

On display at the N.C. Museum of History in Raleigh are instruments that catch speeders ranging from a speed-timing watch used in the 1950s and ’60s to radar used until a decade ago.

Admission to the exhibition is free. It runs until August.

Nearly 1,800 troopers work statewide.

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The Pitt County Sheriff’s Office has been working with various East Carolina University athletic teams in order to promote an anti-bullying campaign.

The campaign started in November 2014 when the Pitt County Sheriff’s Office received two reports of possible bullying incidents that resulted in two teenagers committing suicide in Pitt County.

“Sheriff Elks decided that he needed to do something and that we weren’t doing enough to really combat the problem and be more proactive,” said Christy Wallace, public information officer for the Pitt County Sheriff’s Office.

After some brainstorming, it was decided that the Pitt County Sheriff’s Office was going to reach out to students with the help of some East Carolina University athletes and coaches.

“We decided the best way to get students involved is to let the people they see as potential heroes to speak out against the same thing and then they would be more likely to come out and speak against it as well,” said Wallace.

The campaign was kicked off with the filming of a Public Service Announcement featuring the East Carolina University football team along with members of the coaching staff. The PSA debuted on all major local networks and a few local eastern North Carolina stations on Dec. 4, 2014.

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NASHVILLE, N.C. – It was a late night operation. Nash County deputies managed to raid the house of suspected drug dealers without disturbing a sleeping 6-year-old girl.

Sheriff’s deputies carefully removed the still sleeping child from the home after finding drugs there and placed the youngster safely in her grandmother’s car. Those in the house were arrested on drug charges.

The ordeal got new Nash County Sheriff Keith Stone reflective. He thinks about the lives saved that will never be known, things difficult to quantify.

“The child never knew we were in the house,” Stone said. “That’s the type stuff I want to bring to this office … I told my guys, ‘You did a good job; you didn’t wake up the baby.’ That’s what I want to be about — the compassion and diligence, bringing the two together, getting the child in a safe environment. The kids who grow up today who are supposed to be taken care of but instead grow up in this environment … it’s gut wrenching.”

From the age of 4, Stone remembers taking the first steps toward his more than three-decade law enforcement career that would take him from overseeing prisoners in rural Robeson County to the N.C. Highway Patrol and now the top law enforcer in Nash County.

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RALEIGH — Officials from the state departments of Justice, Health and Human Services and Public Safety will train law enforcement agencies, first responders, mental health providers, schools and other stakeholders in southeastern North Carolina on ways to prevent and respond to school violence. The day-long symposium will take place Jan. 23 in Wilmington.

Chief District Court Judge J.H. Corpening II – a member of the New Hanover and Pender County Safer Schools Task Force – is hosting the “School Violence Prevention and Response Symposium” from 8 a.m. – 5 p.m. on Friday at the New Hanover County Government Center, located at 230 Government Center Drive in Wilmington. Law enforcement, school personnel and mental health providers from New Hanover, Pender, Brunswick and Onslow counties have been invited to attend the training. Stakeholders will spend the morning discussing proactive approaches to preventing violence in schools, such as effective ways to address bullying and ways to identify and respond to mental health needs. As the day progresses, the focus will shift from prevention to developing a plan for a unified rapid response to the challenging but rare event of an active shooter on campus. These sessions will focus on increasing collaboration and clarifying roles among stakeholders.

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