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The Alamance County sheriff is an elected office, but Sheriff Terry Johnson has not had a lot of competition over the past 20 years, and, so far, he isn’t facing any in 2022.
Johnson had to get past a primary and general election opponent to win his office for the first time in 2002, but the last time he faced a challenger was in 2010 when he beat Ron Parrish with 61% of the vote. Parrish is now the Gibsonville police chief.
Sheriff Terry Johnson
Times-News
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So far, Johnson is the only one to officially run for the sheriff’s office. Candidate filing starts again on Feb. 24 ahead of the May 17 primary.
Without opponents, Johnson's campaign funds have supported others. In 2018, his last re-election year, the Johnson for Sheriff committee gave more than $6,000 to other local Republican candidates, $4,800 to the Alamance County Republican Party and even $1,000 to the NRA.
That committee had more than $80,000 in its accounts as of last summer, according to the North Carolina Board of Elections.
Former Burlington Police Chief Jeffrey Smythe was a potential challenger this year. After spending about 18 months meeting with what he called his inner circle considering a run for sheriff, Smythe decided not to seek the office.
Beyond wanting to stay with the state Attorney General’s Office as director of the North Carolina Criminal Justice Standards Division, Smythe did not want to talk about his reasons not to run.
Smythe was open, however, about why he spent so much time thinking about challenging Johnson.
Over Smythe’s eight years leading the county’s largest law-enforcement agency, the differences between him and Johnson were wide. Johnson calls it a "difference in philosophies." Smythe put great stock in best practices rooted in data, like limiting car chases and having fitness standards, which did cost the department some officers. Johnson is old-school, favoring aggressive and visible law enforcement.
Both men denied any personal animosity between them, though some professional tension showed itself as Smythe got close to retirement in 2021.
“When I entered retirement I took a look at the policies and practices of the sheriff’s department and the leadership and decided it was time for a leadership change,” Smythe told the Times-News.
“When we hear from Terry it's, ‘There’s a drug cartel problem in Alamance County and you should be afraid, and I’m the sheriff and I’m going to keep you safe,’” Smythe said. “When you’ve been sheriff for 20 years and you’ve done everything you can to keep them safe, and they’re not safe, that doesn’t hold up.”
Johnson points to large seizures of drugs and guns since he became sheriff, multiple murders he ties to cartel activity in Alamance County going back to 2002, and to the Drug Enforcement Agency calling Alamance a trafficking hub. The issue is larger than this county, he said.
"You know how you solve it? Close the border," Johnson said. "There are good people coming just looking for a better life in the United States; there's also MS 13."
Smythe also criticized Johnson’s relationship with the Black and Hispanic communities.
“There’s a certain level of fear that exists across the county,” Smythe said.
Johnson said many people in the Black and Hispanic communities know and trust him. He pointed to the sheriff's office substation in Green Level and the improvements it made in the local crime rate and the community's relationship with law enforcement.
"I have been labeled something I really am not. I have never been a racist," Johnson said. "Talk to the people that know me."
The lawsuits against the sheriff’s office show the downside of Johnson’s approach, Smythe said.
The sheriff’s office is one of the defendants in an open federal lawsuit over the Oct. 31, 2020, crackdown on a protest outside the Alamance County Historic Courthouse on the last day of early voting. Another suit over the protest was settled last year. Johnson is a defendant in a defamation suit, and there was the long court battle with U.S. Department of Justice a decade ago followed by a wrongful-termination suit by a former deputy who testified against Johnson – both ending in settlements. There have been others.
Smythe said he also heard complaints from people arrested in the summer of 2020 about having their masks confiscated when they were booked in the county jail, a sign Johnson did not take seriously widely accepted best practices. That was shortly before the detention center had one of the biggest COVID-19 outbreaks in a North Carolina jail.
A commissioner with the Commission on Accreditation of Law Enforcement, Smythe said the sheriff’s office should go through that process like Burlington, Graham, Mebane and Elon University police departments.
“That’s how you embrace professionalism, and they have yet to do that,” Smythe said. “You see a distinct difference in the professionalism of those agencies that are accredited and those that are not accredited.”
Johnson counters that most sheriff's offices and police departments are not accredited, and accreditation takes a lot of resources like having an accreditation manager on staff when his department is already short-staffed.
That said, Johnson said the North Carolina Sheriff's Association was working on an accreditation for sheriffs' offices that his office would get when it's ready.
While he is not running, Smythe thinks others are considering it. While Alamance County voters have heavily favored Johnson for five elections, Smythe said he hopes someone will challenge him this year.
“I think the people in Alamance need a choice,” Smythe said.
"If someone wants to run, I won't badmouth them," Johnson said, "I'll run on my record."
Isaac Groves is an Alamance County watchdog reporter for the Times-News and the USA Today Network. Call or text 919-998-8039 with tips and comments or follow him on Twitter @TNIGroves.
