John is a Deputy Sheriff with the Anderson County Sheriff’s Office. After walking us through a typical shift, John urges any interested students to similarly study criminal justice and to then network with their local police department.
Transcript
So my name is John Starks. I'm a deputy with the Anderson County Sheriff's Office. Obviously go by Deputy Starks. Been doing it for about two or three years now. So my duty is pretty much protecting the citizens of Anderson County and we do that by being proactive and what I mean by that is we go to their neighborhoods. We're looking at neighborhoods, we're checking their houses, we're checking their businesses, we're making sure that nobody looks suspicious in the area, you know what I mean? But we also do traffic stops. We try to eliminate the drug and the narcotics through Anderson County and we do have other units that help us with that. We also help EMS when there's a overdose. We have to respond 'cause sometimes we're first on scene, so sometimes we have to do CPR. Sometimes we have to administer Narcan. We also help other agencies out as far as serving warrants that they think the people escaped their county or their city and they've come to Anderson County. They'll give us the location, we'll go out there and help 'em serve the warrant. You know, mostly handling the calls as far as taking the reports for the citizens and trying to get their property back or trying to serve them justice for their property 'cause they wanna see justice for, you know, nobody likes stealing, nobody likes people damaging their property, so that's pretty much our top one is just pretty much making the citizens happy. For the sheriff's office, we run 12 hours. So we start from 7:00 AM to 7:00 PM, or normally we'll switch 'cause we switch every four weeks, so it'll be 7:00 AM to 7:00 PM, and then 7:00 PM to 7:00 AM. But luckily our schedule is we'll do two days on and then three days off, and then three days on and two days off. But I did not wanna be, didn't wanna have a job where I was sitting in four walls. I wanted to be out in the community. I wanted to be able to drive. I wanted to be able, you know, have the uniform, the gun and the badge and be out there, but I say that, but I also will say that all this stuff comes with responsibility, a lot of responsibility. You have to take everything into account of how you use the equipment and when you come home with it.
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