‘Support Your Local Sheriff’

‘Support Your Local Sheriff’

Allen announces bid for re- election

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Mike Allen’s father taught him that you don’t walk away from a task until the job is finished.

Although he’s already put in 37 years in law enforcement, Allen announced this week that he is running for another term as sheriff because he still has more things he wants to accomplish.

“I want to finish what I started,” Allen said. “I figured that while I’m still young I can still get some more things done to improve the sheriff’s department. I’d like to think I am building this department up every day, and I feel like I need another term to complete what I started.”

Allen was first elected sheriff in 2010. Prior to that, he served for 22 years with the West Memphis Police Department where he headed up the criminal investigation division.

Allen started his career in law enforcement right out of high school as a parttime jailer and dispatcher with the Johnson County Sheriff’s Department in Clarksville, Arkansas.

“I worked three days a week in the jail and three days a week in dispatch,” Allen said. “After that I went to a patrol unit.”

He moved to Crittenden County after his father, who worked for Alcohol Beverage Control, was transferred to West Memphis, and took a job with the Crittenden County Sheriff’s Department when he turned 21. Eight years later he went to work as a detective for West Memphis PD, eventually retiring as assistant chief of that department.

“They say we all return to our roots,” Allen said. “I actually had eight years with the sheriff’s department before I went to West Memphis.”

Today, Allen oversees a department that has 150 employees and covers a county that has 600 square miles.

Allen said he’s proud of the fact that since taking office he has managed to increase salaries for his employees.

When he first started as sheriff, jailers were earning $9.50 an hour and being asked to risk their lives every day. Today, they are paid $27,000. Starting salary for a deputy was $25,000. Deputies now start at $31,200.

“You could go to Walmart and push a shopping cart and make ten dollars an hour,” Allen said. “Ever since I’ve been here the Quorum Court has increased the salaries by at least three percent.”

Allen said he has also focused on upgrading the department’s technology.

Today, residents can see photos of who is locked up in the county jail, and every patrol car now is equipped with a computer. “Before, a deputy would have to drive to Horseshoe Lake and take a report,” Allen said. “They would have to drive back to the sheriff’s department, come in, sit in an office and type in that report on a computer. Then, if they got another call in Horseshoe Lake, it was another 20 or 25 minutes to get there.

Now they have computers in the cars where can do their report in the car. They can also run a license plate without going over the air to dispatch.”

Allen also transitioned the department to 12 hour shifts. Deputies worked eight hour shifts and many times those shifts were under-staffed.

“I remember when I first campaigned I stopped and talked to a deputy who was at the Exxon station in Crawfordsville,” Allen said. “I asked him how his day was going and he said he was the only working on that shift. We now have four shifts and they work 12 hours and we are averaging more officers on each shift. I think if I went back to an eight hour shift I would have a mutiny on my hands.”

Allen said he also plans on continuing to increase the level of training for the department so that deputies have the best training they can possibly get.

“We’ve got a new training officer and we’ve already seen a lot of training going on to make our employees much better,” Allen said.

But the biggest reason he wants to continue as sheriff is because he loves what he does.

“They say if you love what you are doing, then it isn’t really work,” Allen said. “I wake up every morning and this honestly is one of those jobs that I enjoy coming to work every day. We have a good group of people that I work with every day. I just feel like every day this place gets better and better.”

By Mark Randall