Seven months after his election, Pike County Sheriff Kenny Cotton is settling in to the job, but not without facing opposition.
Since his election, Cotton has wrestled with a number of issues.
The most recent revolved around a rift between his office and a local drug task force. The drug unit’s commander — Cotton’s opponent in last year’s sheriff’s race — rejected Cotton’s recommendation for a deputy to represent the sheriff’s department in the Southwest Mississippi Narcotics Enforcement Unit. Cotton threatened to leave the unit but reconsidered earlier this week.
Other topics of contention have included his honorary deputy program and allegations of poor jail conditions.
Cotton recently addressed those issues in an interview with the Enterprise-Journal.
Honorary deputy’s honor questioned
Cotton’s new honorary deputy program — in which people selected by the sheriff receive identification cards essentially designating them as neighborhood watch captains — received backlash after Cotton made a man with a felony record an honorary deputy.
Cotton said he doesn’t understand the beef.
“They have no authority. None,” he said. “They don’t get a gun. They can’t make an arrest. It’s just an identification card. That’s it. It’s just for my neighborhood watch.”
Without elaborating, he said there are other things he will do to help create a strong neighborhood watch program.
“This is just the first,” he said.
Cotton said he’s not afraid to give someone a second chance just because they’ve stumbled in life.
“I don’t turn my back on people because of their past,” he said. “Others in law enforcement do but I don’t. That’s where I’m different and I want people to see that I’m different.”
Defending deputies
Cotton said he accepts the fact that not all people are accepting of him.
“Keep in mind, I only won the election by a few hundred votes,” he said. “There’s a large part of this community who doesn’t support me and will never support me and I’m OK with that,” he said. “I think they’re still angry with the fact that I’m sheriff and they judge me and my deputies.
“But there’s a larger part of this community who said they wanted Kenny Cotton and support me.”
Cotton acknowledged criticism his deputies have received, but he defends their actions.
He said people reacted negatively to a deputy who was mentioned in a newspaper article about a McComb man who helped a stranded woman at a truck stop after the deputy declined to offer help.
Cotton said the deputy couldn’t help that he had to go to a call. He said he’d love to have a deputy who would respond to calls such as blown tires or someone who’s run out of gas.
“I’d send someone out just for calls like that, but I can’t,” he said. “Because we’re the county, deputies have to drive further out for calls.”
He said if the motorist was in danger, the deputy would have helped her.
“She wasn’t in danger and she was in a safe place to get her tire fixed. When it comes down to a call and a tire, the call will win out,” he said. “If she was on the side of the road, I promise a deputy — if not that one — would have helped her.”
Jail conditions, inmate health
Cotton has also come under fire for jail conditions.
In April, an inmate died while in custody. The inmate was transported to Southwest Mississippi Regional Medical Center, where he was pronounced dead.
Other inmates notified corrections officers that the man was having trouble breathing.
Chief Investigator Greg Martin said at the time that corrections officers tried to perform CPR on him but were unsuccessful.
There have been other incidents, most recently a fight that sent one inmate to the hospital.
Cotton confirmed the incident, which did not result in life-threatening injuries.
He said sometimes things like that happen in the jail.
“It’s the nature of the beast,” he said. “We don’t have individual cells for them. They’re in groups. It’s about 100 or so inmates back there. Some of them are sick, some of them are really sick — just like they are at home or in the streets.”
The sheriff said he receives feedback from the inmates on the conditions on the jail and what they want.
Cotton said inmates are given grievance forms to air their complaints — and he gets them quite often.
“I visit the jail regularly and I get complaints. I get a lot of complaints and I read them. I take them seriously,” he said. “If there is something that we can do, we do it. I get them every day — every day. And I read them. I get tired of reading them sometimes.
“The chain of command knows I’m looking at this so they do what they can to serve them, so it’s kind of like checks and balances.”
Cotton said there’s been no neglect ofo inmates.
“We’ve got some hard-working staff back there. They get attacked by the inmates, too,” he said. “Again, inmates do what inmates do. We answer just like any other call and we do use force if we have to.
“I mean, it’s not Sunday school. It’s not your good church members socializing,” he said. “Some think we’ve got to do something extra because they’re in jail. We serve them. And again, it comes with a huge cost — a huge cost, but we’re obligated to do it.”
