BOTETOURT SHERIFF SHIFTS PERSONNEL

                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: WEDNESDAY, January 8, 1992                   TAG: 9201080233
SECTION: VIRGINIA                    PAGE: B-1   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: MARK MORRISON, STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: FINCASTLE                                LENGTH: Medium
BOTETOURT SHERIFF SHIFTS PERSONNEL
Less than a week after taking office, Botetourt County Sheriff Reed Kelly has restructured the Sheriff's Department to establish a chain of command that he says has been lacking Kelly for months.
He also has begun steps to fulfill one of his primary campaign promises: expanding Botetourt's Drug Abuse Resistance Education program in the schools.
Meanwhile, his opponent in last fall's heated sheriff's race, Jerry Caldwell, has left the department after having been deputy and chief deputy for more than 20 years.
Since August, he had been Botetourt's acting sheriff.
Sources in the Sheriff's Department said Caldwell left quietly and did not say what his plans were. Reached by telephone at his home Tuesday afternoon, Caldwell declined to comment.
Kelly has named a chief deputy, promoted five road deputies to supervisory positions, reassigned three investigators to lesser roles and hired a new deputy to help expand the DARE program.
"I put people where I think they needed to be," he said.
As promised throughout his campaign, Kelly named Ken Smith as his chief deputy, filling a position that had been vacant since Caldwell was appointed acting sheriff when longtime Sheriff Norman Sprinkle retired early.
Caldwell did not appoint an interim chief deputy.
Smith, a deputy in Botetourt for 12 years, has spent six years as the DARE officer in Botetourt's five elementary schools. Kelly said Smith will be phased out of his current role in the DARE program over the next few months.
In his place, Kelly has hired former Rockbridge County Deputy Tom Hickman, 42, who was the DARE officer under Sheriff Freddie Spence. Spence was defeated in his bid for re-election this fall by Bobby Day, who since has cut the DARE program in his department.
Smith will continue to oversee the program, however, and eventually will teach DARE classes at Botetourt Intermediate School and at the county's two high schools. DARE now is being taught only at the elementary school level.
Kelly, the department's chief investigator before being elected sheriff, also reassigned three of his fellow investigators who served with him under both Caldwell and Sprinkle.
They are: Barbara Harris and Dick Beard, who both were reassigned as correctional officers in the county jail, and Ronnie Sprinkle, son of the former sheriff, who was reassigned to road duty.
All three were Caldwell supporters.
Kelly denied that his motives for moving them was political, saying that the changes were based on what he felt would result in the best operation of the department and on re-establishing a chain of command.
He said that authority in the department had been "fairly unstructured" in recent months with no chief deputy, a lame-duck acting sheriff and the retirement of Albert Johnson, the uniformed division supervisor.
Johnson retired in September and had not been replaced, Kelly said.
He said the changes also were made in response to the department's growth over the years to 45 employees. Under the restructuring, Kelly has eliminated the five formal investigator positions and promoted several road deputies to supervisory positions that give them investigating authority.
They include Dave Mullins, who has been a Botetourt deputy for 17 years, Delbert Dudding and Larry Carr, who have been on the road for 12 years each. Mike Musselwhite, who had been an investigator, also was named to one of these supervisory posts.
Kelly said they will handle the bulk of the investigations.
"My hope is that someone in that group will excel at investigations and at some point I can maybe appoint a formal chief investigator," he said.
In addition, Gary Guilliams, a road deputy for nearly 15 years, is now a uniformed division supervisor, filling the job vacated by Johnson. Tom Guill, the department's senior officer after Kelly, is now head of court services.
Concerned that skeptics might believe he promoted only officers who supported his campaign, Kelly countered that some of the promotions were given to Caldwell supporters as well. However, he would not say which ones.
"I don't want to get into that," he said.

by Archana Subramaniam by CNB