Williamson County sheriffs recall modernization, growth and staffing challenges

Former and current Williamson County sheriffs told a class interviewing them that the job has changed dramatically over decades and that county growth and tighter staffing budgets pushed successive leaders to modernize operations.

Ricky Hetley, who served as Williamson County sheriff from 2002 to 2008, said he entered law enforcement as a child and later returned to Tennessee after beginning his career in Alabama. Hetley said he prioritized training and workforce stability by sending correctional officers to the academy so jail staff could be certified as deputies and receive patrol-level pay, which reduced turnover in the jail. "I started sending correctional officers to the academy and getting them certified deputy sheriff so that they would make the same salary that a patrol deputy made," he said.

Hetley said two programs remain among his proudest achievements: the county's first K9 unit and Project Lifesaver, a transmitter-and-receiver program he brought to Tennessee for families coping with wandering dementia and severely developmentally disabled children. "Project Lifesaver was something very, very important to me because it was for families that had family members that were dealing with a dementia patient that may wander off," he said.

Jeff Long, sheriff from 2008 to 2019 and later Tennessee commissioner of the Department of Safety and Homeland Security, said modernization included securing donated aviation assets for search-and-rescue and pursuing state accreditation to professionalize the agency. Long recalled the county's 2010 flood as a turning point for rescue capability — the office lacked equipment to extract people from deep floodwaters and later developed a swift-water rescue team and aviation supports. "We were able to get the aviation unit ... and it didn't cost the community anything to get helicopters for recovery of missing children, elderly people that wander off," Long said.

Long and other interviewees said technology and training have been the biggest changes in day-to-day policing: longer academies, in-service training, body and in-car cameras, and computerized records have replaced the brief academies and paper registers of earlier decades. "Technology is the main thing," Hetley said. "Professionalism ... has really come a long way through the years."

Current Sheriff Jeff Hughes, who took office March 12, 2024, described organizational and pay reforms aimed at staffing and accountability. Hughes said he restructured command by creating four deputy chief roles to improve span of control and pushed a compensation plan that moved starting pay toward the 75th percentile of market comparisons, a change he said helped recruitment. "We were severely understaffed when I took office ... we're as close to full staff now as we've been in a long time," Hughes said.

Hughes also recounted a recent eight-hour bridge standoff where negotiators and crisis-response personnel persuaded a man to step away from the fence; Hughes said he spoke with the man, prayed with him and even shared a cheeseburger as part of rapport-building until the subject surrendered to protective custody. "Somebody shows up with a sack of burgers ... I took him over a cheeseburger," Hughes said. "Apparently the golden arches saved the day."

Interviewees emphasized that Williamson County's population and service demands have grown sharply — speakers recalled county population counts measured in tens of thousands early in their careers and hundreds of thousands more recently — and that growth complicates staffing, response times and resource allocation. One speaker cited a historical study noting that a large share of those jailed in Williamson County were from outside the county, underscoring the regional role of some detention facilities.

All of the sheriffs praised investments in training, accreditation and mutual policies on high-risk practices. Long said collaborative model policies on use of force and pursuits, developed with state associations and the governor's office, helped align local practice with training and reduce liability risks. "We created some model policies ... so that we all were working off of the same playbook," he said.

The interviews offered operational anecdotes and cautionary notes: earlier generations of deputies worked with minimal equipment (tube radios and pen-and-paper reports), and leaders said modern standards demand matching policy, training and practice. Several recounted traumatic calls, including a deputy who was shot and an in-custody extraction that left deputies to repair property, and said those events informed later investments in equipment and tactical protocols.

The session closed with interviewees thanking the students for preserving departmental history and restating a common theme: sheriffs must balance public safety, staff welfare and fiscal constraints while adapting policing to new technology and population pressures. "The citizens of Williamson County expect and deserve to feel safe in the places they live, work, and play," Hughes said. "That's why I'm doing what I'm doing now — to leave this place a little better than I found it."