Sheriff candidates to square off

The city's next sheriff will be chosen Tuesday.

Because no one else has filed to run for the position, the June 13 Republican primary will decide the election.

Lynchburg Police Sgt. John Romano is running against Interim Lynchburg Sheriff Don Sloan.

Romano worked with the Lynchburg Police Department since 1999, serving as a patrol officer and detective prior to a promotion to sergeant in 2014.

Romano, 41, has a bachelor's degree in criminal justice with a focus on criminal law. He served as patrol shift relief supervisor for two years. He has touted his experience as a boots-on-the-ground law enforcement officer in touch with the citizens of Lynchburg.

Sloan, chief deputy under former Sheriff Ron Gillispie, became interim sheriff in late Marchwhen Gillispie retired early to tend to his father's health needs. He became chief deputy at the Lynchburg Sheriff's Office in 2002, previously working as an officer, captain and chief deputy at the Liberty University campus safety department and later police department for 22 years. Sloan, 58, served as chief for his last four years there.

Sheriff's office responsibilities

The Lynchburg Sheriff's Office, which currently has 19 full-time and 14 part-time employees, serves the city by providing courthouse security to the Lynchburg General District, Circuit and Juvenile and Domestic Relations courts, as well as transporting prisoners during the judicial process and serving civil papers like subpoenas and summons, among other duties.

Deputies don't handle day-to-day crimes like the Lynchburg Police Department does, although they do assist LPD officers when needed.

In 2016, the sheriff's office completed 517 transports and served 39,509 civil processes, according to Sloan.

Term goals

Sloan said if elected, his first goal for the year will be continuing to provide the "highest level of safety and security to our courts and for our transportation team when transporting prisoners."

The second goal will be to continue the department's involvement in community service, he said, listing the department's Project Lifesaver, a program started in 1999 that helps locate missing individuals suffering from Alzheimer's and related disorders.

Romano said his top three values as sheriff would be integrity, community and future. By integrity, Romano said he meant he would hold himself and the sheriff's office accountable to a higher standard compared to the current administration.

"Community matters tome because we have a youth crisis," he said. "I fear the community my son's going to grow up in when in 1999 I started as a policeman and we only had a handful of gangs and now we have 43 indentified gangs."

Community service

Romano has emphasized community outreach, saying the Lynchburg Sheriff's Office can do more to be out in local neighborhoods and visible to citizens.

Sloan has highlighted the existing community programs at the Sheriff's Office such as Project Lifesaver as an example of community involvement and his plans for expanding deputy visibility, which includes two new programs involving local elementary schools.

Both candidates have touched on gang activity as an issue of renewed concern, since three suspects believed to be members of the MS-13 gang were charged in Bedford County with murder in the case of Lynchburg teen Raymond Wood in March. Although the Lynchburg Police Department is the primary law enforcement agency in the city, both candidates have talked about how Lynchburg Sheriff's deputies can aid in reaching out to youth at risk for gang recruitment attempts.

"As a police officer with the Lynchburg Police Department, the primary law enforcement, I've seen one thing over the last 19 years: a generational cycle of poverty and violence for the disadvantaged - people that aren't as fortunate as I was - that grew up in a single-parent family, maybe their grandparents raised them, who don't have the money for after school activities or transportation," Romano said. "And that's why I believe so much about it being important to be involved in your community."

Romano has plans to reach out to nonprofits Big Brothers Big Sisters of Central Virginia, United Way of Central Virginia and Court Appointed Special Advocates of Central Virginia to "address the youth crisis." Romano has said he believes the city's youth are suffering from a lack of good role models, increased risk of gang involvement and poverty.

He's also said he would begin a Drug Abuse Resistance Education (D.A.R.E.) program, which advocates against drug use and violent behavior in schools.

In addition, Romano said he would pursue a "summer opportunities program" that would allow students a chance to get a minimum wage job at the sheriff's office or city hall.

"We have to be engaged with our youth, not just during an election year but outside of that," he said. Sloan said he's prioritized working on deputy visibility with youths by participating in the Men 2 School program led by city pastors and community leaders, and continuing that visibility through the new "Lunch with a Deputy" program, which the department started experimenting with in Lynchburg City Public Schools in February.

"We recently started a program in our elementary schools at no additional cost to taxpayers to assist our most precious resource, our children, to keep them on the right path, away from gangs, drugs and a life of crime," Sloan said.

The sheriff's office shared a letter on its Facebook page on June 6 touting a new program called FIRST STEP that it plans to implement this fall at city elementary schools. "During each school day, a deputy from the Lynchburg Sheriff's Office will visit your child's elementary school in order to offer an added layer of security, and to foster new and positive relationships between our youth and local law enforcement."

Sloan said the program will encourage deputies to stop by elementary schools throughout the day to provide staff and students with "professional contact and encourage them in their decision-making in how they treat one another."

FIRST STEP will involve "Lunch with a Deputy" as deputies can stay and have lunch with students if they have time, Sloan said.

"So that [students] know the men and women of the Lynchburg Sheriff's Office are on their team and that we care about them and want them to succeed," Sloan said.