Carolyn Cary, I had to write to tell you how much I enjoyed your article about the sheriffs of Fayette County.

It was such a good article and good to see one that you have written. I have enjoyed your writing for a number of years. I have not been living in Fayette County for 34 years but I still have family there and they gave me the article. I don’t think that you can ever say enough about the good law enforcement of Fayette County.

I was lucky to have been hired and trained by Hugh Stinchcomb and James Jones. When I worked for them in the mid and late ‘60s, Hugh was the sheriff, James Jones was the chief deputy and I was the Indian. There were three of us to work the entire county.

In Hugh’s later years as sheriff he had a lot of health problems so it left James and myself to handle all crimes, whether it was a car accident, moonshine, robbery, domestic or burglary. I remember one year, along with everything else, we locked up 43 people for burglaries at different times on one local business.

With only two deputies working most of the time and two cars for the three-man department we were lucky that local citizens like J.D. Moore, Bo Ingram, Drew Wyatt (a local Department of Revenue agent) and Randall Johnson ,another Revenue agent at the time, and others would come and ride with me and James so we would not be out patrolling by ourselves.

Hugh bought a black board and put in the Sheriff’s Office. The only thing I remember that was ever written on it was a slogan that Hugh wrote on it when it was new: “Always do your duty and take any consequences later.” That has worked well for me in law enforcement for the last 45 years.

I hope the people of Fayette County realize what good law enforcement they have had with Hugh, James and now Randall and not just the sheriffs but also with the judges and courts. They have deterred many criminals from committing crimes in Fayette County and they would go to other places.

After I left the Fayette County Sheriff’s Office I worked 30 years with the GBI and held many different offices. The training that I received from Hugh and James helped me though many different hard times and tight places and tough decisions.

When I became Special Agent in Charge of the GBI Drug unit, I diverted many of the drug buys to be delivered in Fayette County not only to help your tax base but to make sure the drug dealers would get justice and not a slap on the wrist like they would have in many nearby counties.

In talking about Hugh and James, I did not intend to shortchange the excellent job that Randall Johnson has done.

While keeping up the tradition of excellent law enforcement, he had the ability and forethought to set up and work with the neighborhood watch and citizen groups to make the people feel involved. When Fayette County’s population exploded with people from all over the United States moving in to Fayette County, you had many more people than deputies to keep up.

Randall knew that you need the people‘s eyes to help be the places that deputies could not be all of the time. Randall made them feel welcome and got them involved to help watch for violations.

He was the right man for the job.

I could go on about many stories but I just wanted to tell you how your article brought back good memories of my friends and how the training I got from them is still helping me in my present job with the Regional Organized Crime Information Center. ROCIC is an organization that is funded by the Department of Justice to assist law enforcement and prosecutors.

I think James and Hugh are still helping law enforcement.

Charles McMichen

Law Enforcement Coordinator for Georgia ROCIC

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