Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SATURDAY, June 3, 1995 TAG: 9506050042
SECTION: CURRENT PAGE: NRV-1 EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY
SOURCE: KATHY LOAN STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: CHRISTIANSBURG LENGTH: Medium
Ramsey, 48, of Riner, said he wants to continue the work Sheriff Ken Phipps started and will focus on constant communication with citizens.
"With my training and experience and the excellent base of people in the Sheriff's Office to work with, I feel I can merge [Phipps'] ideas with mine and give the citizens of Montgomery County the best Sheriff's Office in the state."
Ramsey said that if elected, Dan Haga would stay on as his chief deputy. Haga lost a bid for the Republican nomination for sheriff last month to Christiansburg Police Lt. Doug Marrs.
Haga's experience with administration and budget matters "is a good resource for me," Ramsey said.
County Democrats will choose one of five candidates as their nominee today during a morning mass meeting at Christiansburg High School.
Ramsey becomes the second announced independent candidate. The other is Garnett Adkins, a Radford deputy sheriff who lives in Christiansburg.
"I am running as an independent because I feel there is no room for politics in law enforcement. I will be responsible and obligated only to the citizens of Montgomery County," Ramsey said.
Ramsey said he brings to his candidacy a background of experience, training and leadership. He joined the Montgomery County Sheriff's Office in February 1992 and has been an investigator, lieutenant of investigations, evidence technician there before rising to his current rank.
He worked for 231/2 years with the Blacksburg Police Department, where he started as a patrolman and a relief dispatcher. He was promoted to investigator and was named evidence technician after completing training with the state's Division of Forensic Science.
If elected, Ramsey plans to post suggestion boxes throughout the county and at the Sheriff's Office to receive feedback from residents and employees. He would also encourage neighborhoods who don't belong to an organized watch program to participate in a "county watch" program. And he said he would like to print a weekly round-up highlighting crimes in the newspaper so citizens would be alerted to criminal activity.
"We can't be everywhere at once. This county's too big," he said. But banding together would send a message that "we are not going to put up with it in Montgomery County. We've had it."
Ramsey is married and he and his wife have five children. He has an associate's degree in police science from New River Community College, and has been trained in arson, homicide and drug investigations as well as psychological profiling and bomb response. He said he will be a hands-on sheriff who will be at major crime scenes to put his training and experience to work.
"I believe in training and as sheriff I'm going to see that my deputies have the same opportunities."
by CNB