Alamance County’s sheriff had both good news and bad news to report to the county’s board of commissioners when he presented them with a roundup of his agency’s latest activities on Monday.
In this briefing, which focused on developments from 2024, sheriff Terry Johnson acknowledged that his agency has begun to emerge from a staffing crisis that had prompted him to propose signing bonuses for new jailers and patrol deputies nearly a year ago.
The commissioners waited until July before they allowed Johnson to issue 10 of these $10,000 inducements on the condition that the recipients remain in the sheriff’s employ for at least 22 months. They went on to authorize more of these bonuses in batches of 10 until the county’s administrators revealed that they had run out of “lapsed” salaries to cover the payouts earlier this year.
The sheriff nevertheless told the commissioners on Monday that these bonuses have had the intended effect.
“We have come a long ways in the last six or eight months in terms of hiring,” he insisted. “We’re keeping our officers better than we used to, and we’ve got several [applicants] on the hook.”
By the numbers
Johnson went on to acknowledge that, at the moment, he has just three available posts in his patrol division, which along with the county jail, had once been a prime area for turnover. He also alluded to four openings for detectives, four more for bailiffs, two clerical vacancies, and 31 for detention officers – 13 of which are assigned to federal immigration detainees and have been previously frozen by the commissioners.
Johnson insisted that these 45 vacancies have left plenty of work for the rest of his force. He noted that in 2024, his patrol division alone answered 89,018 calls for service, conducted 4,972 traffic stops, and drove 1,1520,000 miles across Alamance County. The sheriff added that his agency’s detectives opened 1,015 “major crimes” cases during the course of the year, and they closed the books on 375 investigations. In the meantime, his street crimes unit logged 258 arrests, his civil division attempted to serve 10,775 court papers, while his animal control officers collared 540 pets.
The sheriff also touched on some of his agency’s more specialized activities in his presentation to the commissioners. He mentioned, for instance, the successful man hunts and search and rescue missions that have occurred thanks to the agency’s 11 aerial drones. He was equally proud of the 29 vehicular chases that his deputies conducted in 2024. Johnson added that he has encouraged his deputies to engage in pursuits within certain limits – and utilize advanced training to send a fleeing suspect reeling off course.
“I have a rule – five minutes or five miles,” he informed the commissioners, “and knock ‘em off the road.”
In order to give the commissioners a sense of how these chases feel, Johnson cued up some footage from a dashboard camera in one of his patrol cruisers. It this case, however, it was the sheriff himself who was thrown for a curve by Alamance County’s attorney Rik Stevens.
“I hate to be the fun police,” Stevens told Johnson. “There’s no lawful basis for us to display a chase video in a public meeting.”
The sheriff agreed to forgo the clip.
ICE hot
Johnson conceded that the previous calendar year was especially arduous for his detention division, which had to watch over an average of 346 inmates per day during that period. He added that this average occupancy is uncomfortably close to the jail’s maximum capacity, which he put at something in the vicinity of 376 inmates.
The sheriff nevertheless assured the commissioners that the jail’s occupancy hasn’t imperiled a long-standing agreement he has with the U.S Bureau of Immigration and Custom’s Enforcement, or ICE. The federal bureau currently pays the county to hold at least 40 beds for its detainees, which Johnson added tend to show up in bursts before they’re spirited off to other locations.
“They’re bringing them in overnight,” he explained. “Here, lately, they’ll bring in, like, 72, 73 on a Monday, and on Tuesday, they’re bringing them out.”
Johnson added that, on the morning of his report to the commissioners, only two of the jail’s 350 inmates were ICE detainees.
“But they’re still paying for 40 beds,” he went on to stress.
Johnson informed the commissioners that he and his contacts at ICE are currently negotiating a new “per diem” rate for the county’s detention space. This acknowledgement reminded commissioner Pam Thompson that she has an outstanding request for a copy of the contract that spells out the terms of the sheriff’s detention arrangement with ICE.
“I don’t want the county taxpayer paying for the population that’s illegal…to come here,” she added. “I just want to know what is in that contract…and I want to make sure that before that contract is signed, it is presented to us commissioners.”
Johnson agreed to share the final agreement with the commissioners, although Alamance County’s manager Heidi York pointed out that the sheriff doesn’t need the board’s authorization to adjust the rate he charges the feds.
Team players
In addition to his detention agreement with ICE, the sheriff told the commissioners about several other joint ventures that his office has at the state, federal, and local levels. These collaborative efforts include the Alamance Narcotics Abatement Team, a drug interdiction task force that’s made up of local police officers and deputies. Johnson also observed that his agency is one of four sheriff’s departments that have teamed up with state and federal authorities to form Invictus, a specialized unit that targets child predators who lurk on the Internet.
Johnson went on to mention his agency’s contributions to federal task forces run by the likes of the FBI, the DEA, the ATF, and the U.S. Marshals Service. He also alluded to a couple of strictly local partnerships, including one with the Alamance Burlington school system that has put school resource officers in area schools.
Johnson noted that he’s currently negotiating a new contract with the school system to cover the salaries for these positions. He nevertheless added that, in light of the pay raises extended to his other deputies, the school system will need to “up the ante” to avoid vacancies popping up within the ranks of these school resource officers.
The sheriff also acknowledged that teamwork has been crucial to some of his agency’s more high-profile operations. These large-scale endeavors included 200-plus traffic stops that an in-house “strike team” conducted earlier this year with help from several local police departments as well as the sheriff’s offices in Durham and Orange counties. Johnson added that these stops, which were made on the basis of minor offenses, resulted in a large number of arrests for narcotics, illegal firearms, and various outstanding charges.
Another cross-jurisdiction issue that the sheriff highlighted was the proliferation of criminal street gangs.
Johnson said that one noteworthy operation which culminated in January netted eight “validated” members of a Bloods offshoot dubbed the “Red Life Gang.” The sheriff added that these eight individuals have been charged with offenses ranging from shooting into occupied vehicles to illegal firearm sales.
The sheriff went on to assure the commissioners that Alamance County is still a stomping ground for other criminal gangs, including the Salvadoran outfit MS-13 and Tren de Aragua – a Venezuelan prison gang that Johnson insists has made inroads into this area.
“We have gangs here, and if we don’t keep the heat turned up on them it’s not going to get any better,” he proceeded to warn the county’s governing board. “We’d better open our eyes about what’s going on because if we don’t, we’re going to be another little Durham, another little High Point, or another little Greensboro.
“This means more officers and more money that the county is going to have to spend,” Johnson summed up, “and that’s a decision that you all are going to have to make when it comes to budget time.”
