Lamar County Sheriff deputizes all law enforcement officers within county

LAMAR COUNTY, Ala. (WCBI) – By now, many Americans have spent a few days in social isolation to help prevent the spread of COVID-19.

However, not everyone has that luxury.

First responders are still required to report to work every day, oftentimes coming into close contact with other people.

For small law enforcement agencies, if two or three people are out sick, it can cripple the entire department.

Officers in Lamar County have a plan.

Vernon Police Chief Davy Eaves has been in law enforcement for about 9 years.

Like most city cops, he usually works within city limits, but as of this week, he’ll be serving as the chief of police and a Lamar County Sheriff’s Deputy.

“We’re trying to be as safe as possible. We want to try to make sure that we keep the citizens safe. We try to keep our officers safe,” said Eaves.

Eaves isn’t the only new deputy.

As a precautionary measure, Sheriff Hal Allred deputized every law enforcement officer in the county.

“It just kind of creates a system where we can have each others back a little bit better. In the unfortunate event that some of the sheriff’s department guys get sick and have to be quarantined, well they’re going to be running low on guys that cover the area, so we’ll be able to step up and help them and vice versa, if we go down, they can step in and help us, along with Sulligent and Millport,” said Eaves.

Allred said it’s better to be safe than sorry.

“We really haven’t run into a situation like this before. We’ve had flu outbreaks from time to time. You know, we’re just doing the same thing everybody else is doing, you know, washing our hands, keeping a little bit of distance as much as possible, trying not to be in large groups of people, but this is new territory for us also,” said Allred.

Just because officers have a new title, doesn’t mean their regular duties will change.

“We’re still going to answer calls. We’re still going to run traffic. Just because there’s a virus doesn’t mean we don’t have a job we have to do,” said Eaves.

Officers said it’s all about keeping the public safe.

“Their safety is our concern. We don’t want this virus to spread, and we don’t want any infected people. If we can do anything we can on our end to help prevent that, that’s what we want to do,” said Eaves.

“Stay calm and it’ll be over with soon and life will go back to normal,” said Allred.

Some officers are still in the process of being deputized, but Eaves said everyone should be on the same page by the end of the week.