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ea16fd67-1ea1-41c7-bfdf-92a9b6a7beee #72, Peelian Principles Guide May 28, 2025 Sheriff Charles S. Blackwood In 1829, Sir Robert Peel established three core ideas and nine principles central to ethical law enforcement. I encourage you to look him up. Often considered the father of modern policing, his almost 200-year-old work has aged quite well. The “Peelian Principles” continue to underpin my beliefs about ethical law enforcement and community relations. In brief, Peel’s core ideas state that law enforcement’s primary goal is to prevent crime, not catch criminals; public support is the key to crime prevention; and officers gain this support by respecting the community. I agree with Peel’s thinking. My team knows I expect professional, ethical, and empathetic behavior as we interact with the people we serve, and we enjoy widespread support. We recognize how special this support is. In recent years, the news media has pushed a narrative of widespread dissatisfaction with law enforcement, amplifying the voices of those clamoring to defund the police. Moreover, and perhaps most disingenuously, journalists hammered away at stories of extensive vacancies and officer attrition as if there were a dishonorable explanation for the departures. They frequently failed to provide the highly relevant context that the 1994 Crime Bill and financial grants from the Community Oriented Policing Services (COPS) program enabled the hiring of over 100,000 new officers and deputies in the United States leading to a significant reduction in crime. Thirty years later, those hires are completing their careers and earning retirement, just as do other civil servants such as teachers, health department workers, and courtroom clerks. Likewise, our agency congratulated many experienced deputies and detention officers on their retirements in recent years. Fortunately, we have not suffered the number of vacancies other agencies faced. We continue to enjoy a steady influx of talent as we hire people new to the profession and offer positions to seasoned professionals from other agencies. I like to think the word is out that the Orange County Sheriff’s Office delivers community confidence and safety, and it is easy to sell products you believe in. Success breeds success. Businesses want to open in communities where people feel safe to move about and explore. Criminals tend to avoid places bustling with positive energy, and as people feel safer, they stay out longer, spend more, and talk about how much they love the area in which they live. Thriving businesses seek out such vibrant communities, and as they grow, so does the commercial tax base. Local government then has additional resources to invest in schools and use for infrastructure improvements. As a rising tide lifts all boats, a thriving community also makes the area more attractive to people who want a public safety career. My office currently operates at 93% of our employment capacity, an enviable statistic. I am fortunate to have a recruiter who works hard to find qualified candidates, especially those who are a good fit for our agency. We serve in an honorable profession, and it is one with a lower barrier to entry than some others, as a college degree is not a prerequisite. A motivated candidate can complete the application process in 30-45 days. Once hired, a person starts working in the detention center, gaining experience, and eventually choosing whether to continue serving there, or to pursue the additional training necessary to become a deputy. If the new-employee already holds law enforcement certification when hired, they generally work in the detention center for a shorter period, meeting colleagues, learning our culture, and waiting for an opening in the field-training program. We begin incorporating new team members into the fabric of our agency immediately. First, and most importantly, we orient them to the standard of our office and make it clear that everyone must commit to upholding it. Second, we provide strong leadership and support from the top down as new employees acclimate to our brand of service-delivery. Third, we demonstrate that we value our employees, and we do so by investing in appropriate training and high-quality equipment. When people feel both committed to the mission and valued by the team, a culture of stability grows, benefitting the individual, the agency, and the broader community. Someone will wear the badge. I want to find the best and the brightest to have that privilege. Once hired, it is my job to lead in such a way that our employees believe serving with us is work worthy of their time and talents. If you or someone you know might be a good fit, please call Sergeant Glenn Powell at 919-245-2944. ### Previous Next

Request off-duty deputies from the Orange County Sheriff's Office at your event. Off-Duty Deputy You may request a paid Off-Duty Deputy(s) for your event to provide security, direct traffic, etc. You will be responsible for paying any Deputy(s) you wish to hire. Please complete the form below, and a member of our staff will reach out to you regarding your request. Each request is approved or denied on a case-by-case basis and is dependent on staffing. If you need to request a Deputy to make an appearance at your special event, CLICK HERE for the Special Events form.

445713af-7362-4fc8-a99f-ba66e3a46c3b #19, Year in Review, 2020 December 30, 2020 Sheriff Charles S. Blackwood If you enjoy a good understatement, how’s this one? This year has been difficult. However, despite the pandemics of COVID-19 and systemic racism, and in many ways because of them, there have been upsides. For example, we are working with other components of the justice system and involved stakeholders in new ways. These efforts have resulted in innovative approaches and initiatives that are both efficient and economical. We can see this in bond reform and other efforts to lower the population in the Detention Center. These new procedures allow for the effective and safe pre-trial management of alleged offenders in the community. I will write more about this subject in a future column. For this year-end-review edition of The Lowdown, I asked my staff to reflect on other 2020 upsides. Captain Nate Fearrington related how much he enjoyed our annual Shop with a Sheriff event. He said, “Even though we couldn’t actually shop with the kids due to COVID-19, we were still able to purchase wish list items and bundle them into Santa sacks for special delivery. It made me feel good to hear employees and other shoppers say how proud they were that we ‘made a way out of no way’ and continued our tradition.” Tom Parker, one of our IT Specialists, mentioned several highlights. We converted many desktop computers to notebooks, allowing staff to work remotely. He is really excited about SmartForce, a new work management system used to communicate more efficiently across divisions. Additionally, a new database streamlined our training records, and we are preparing to launch a new app, giving the public tools to interface with us directly from their Smartphones. Watch for that in 2021. Captain Tina Sykes, who directs our School Resource Officer Program as well as the Training Division, noted, “We donated more than 6,200 items of food to the Orange County Schools Holiday Food Drive. We pitted the nine divisions in the office against each other, and the competition was ferocious. It tickled me to see them try to outdo each other, driving up the value of the matching donation promised by the Command Staff.” Tim Jones, Captain of the Detention Division, answered my query with a personal anecdote. “I had a very unfortunate tib/fib break to my leg, which kind of summed up the year 2020. I was out of work for over a month. I quickly learned the friendships made at the Office extend way past quitting time. From calls, to visits, and of course, food, I was astonished with the amount of caring I received from folks at the Sheriff’s Office and from the wider community. Ashley Woodlief, a sergeant with the Criminal Investigations Division, noted the year began with the sentencing of John Russell Whit – the long awaited conclusion to a 1998 case in which a lawn mowing crew found the skeletonized remains of a 10-year-old boy. Closing that cold case helped another agency solve his mother’s related murder. Woodlief and her colleagues are pleased that for the fifth year in a row, they solved all new homicide cases, and she is relieved there were only two! Deputy David Funk is one of our three K9 handlers. He reports the dogs assisted with over 300 calls, located 23 people, found 117 items of evidence, and sniffed out 10.25 pounds of narcotics. Individual highlights included K9 Tres running a successful track following a hit and run, despite the track being almost five hours old. Callie located a suspect from a different wreck who had buried himself and a large amount of narcotics, while Zar helped the Highway Patrol locate a firearm thrown from a vehicle during a traffic stop. Community Services Division Major Kevin Jones is most proud of the way his division and the Department on Aging collaborated to take the place of the volunteers who usually deliver meals to seniors in the community. “Due to COVID-19, our deputies, in partnership with the municipal police departments, delivered more than 2,000 hot lunches, emphasizing the ‘serve’ part of our duties. We also coordinated the distribution of more than 2,200 food boxes, and we delivered more than 2,000 meal kits donated by Food Lion.” My Chief Deputy Jamison Sykes summed it up well. He said, “This was a hard year, and a strange year. We are ending it tired. But it’s the good kind of tired; the kind where you know you worked hard and you will sleep well, and you are excited to see what tomorrow will bring.” Previous Next

9e72b690-5cf3-422d-b9b9-a57233dd729a < Back EMPLOYMENT TERMINATED September 22, 2025 Hillsborough, NC (September 22, 2025) - Orange County Sheriff Charles Blackwood terminated the employment of Detention Officer Brian Edwards this morning. Chief Deputy T. Sykes placed Edwards on administrative leave Saturday, September 20, 2025, when the Sheriff’s Office learned of concerning social media posts allegedly made by Edwards and opened an investigation. The investigation confirmed violations of both the Standards of Conduct and the Speech, Expression, and Social Networking sections of the policy manual. Sheriff Blackwood terminated Edwards’ employment accordingly. “We must maintain the public trust as we go about our mission to protect, serve, and treat everyone with dignity and respect,” said Blackwood. ### Previous Next 1/0

9b8f8fec-c236-4572-ae2b-252b473b2c21 #52, Victim Identified After 33 Years September 27, 2023 Sheriff Charles S. Blackwood Thirty-three years ago, crews working on the side of I-40 found the remains of a young woman near the New Hope Church Road exit. I remember that day – I was a patrol deputy working in the southern part of the county. The victim had been dead for about a week, and the investigation revealed her killer probably strangled her and dumped her body alongside the Interstate. She was likely between 15 and 25 years old. Investigators wondered if she had been a runaway. Some witnesses reported seeing a person matching her description at a truck stop. Despite pursuing hundreds of leads, investigators were unable to determine her identity or that of her killer. Throughout the decades, some of our finest investigators kept plugging away. When you can’t close a case, it gets under your skin. You might set the file aside for a while, but you keep coming back to it, looking to see something you didn’t notice before, or hoping information gathered in ensuing cases has relevance to your cold case. Think back to 1990. Most of us probably didn’t have an email account or regular access to a computer. We did not have smart phones or social media accounts. Searches and inquiries we can accomplish now in a matter of seconds at a keyboard previously required an entirely different skill set. During the ensuing three decades, technology improved, and investigators continually had new tools at their disposal. They repeatedly checked web-based missing person sites as those became growing repositories of information. They turned to social media. Early in the case, someone made a bust of the victim, applying forensic facial reconstruction techniques to a model of her skull. By 2018, a talented digital forensic artist was able to generate an illustration that resembled a photograph. We pushed out this image and renewed pleas for help on the thirtieth anniversary of the day workers located her body, but nothing came of those efforts. Meanwhile, in laboratories all over the world, people continued to push the frontiers of science, particularly in the field of DNA research. Although prosecutors first won a criminal conviction using DNA in 1986, the field of forensic science as we know it today was still in its infancy in 1990 when we began this investigation. Although scientists could perhaps confirm someone’s identity via a DNA match or prove someone’s involvement in a crime through the biological clues they left behind, they could not use DNA to identify an unknown person. Through the years, we received substantial assistance and resources from the State Bureau of Investigation and several volunteers with a passionate interest in solving missing persons cases. We assigned Investigator Dylan Hendricks to the case in June 2020. He eventually learned from an SBI agent about a California lab doing phenomenal work extracting DNA from rootless hair, another new frontier. Hendricks sent a degraded hair fragment to Astrea Forensics in May of last year. The company returned a DNA profile last month, and after 33 years, we finally had the breakthrough we needed. Forensic genealogist Leslie Kaufman worked with the profile to identify family members of the victim using genealogy databases and other forensic tools. She identified some paternal cousins and investigators began conducting interviews. They learned of a female relative named Lisa Coburn Kesler whom no one had heard from in at least three decades. Investigator Hendricks said, “Essentially, there was a Lisa-shaped hole on a branch of the family tree right where the DNA told us Lisa should be, and no one knew where she was.” A maternal relative provided a DNA sample. Once analyzed, we had additional confirmation. Lisa was 20 years old when she died and had spent most of her life in Jackson County, Georgia. The results satisfied Clyde Gibbs, a Medical Examiner Specialist in the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner. He updated NamUS, a national database used to connect missing persons cases to unidentified remains, reflecting that the DNA method resolved her case. Additionally, the Chief Medical Examiner is now able to amend her death certificate, providing her correct name and adding other demographic information. I am very happy we solved the decades-old mystery of this young woman’s identity, and I hope it provides solace to her remaining family members. We are grateful to the many investigators, passionate volunteers, and talented professionals who assisted with this effort. Our work on this case is not finished. Although we collectively demonstrated the value of dogged determination, we still need to identify Lisa’s killer. There is no statute of limitations on murder, and the investigation remains open. If you have any information about this case, please call Investigator Hendricks at (919) 245-2951. Previous Next

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