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Smith will seek second term

Chris Smith feels he has accomplished a number of things in his first four years as Fayette County’s sheriff. Now, he’s ready to hold that post for another four years.

Smith announced on social media on Monday that he had picked up his nominating papers for the primary election next spring.
Smith, a Republican, feels good about some of the things he has done in his first term.
“We’ve tried to improve the jail, bring back more federal inmates, and we’ve had a large increase in the number of bookings,” Smith said.
“We had 138 (bookings) last month, and that’s a pretty good daily average of inmates,” he said.
Smith said that since taken office, one of his priorities is going out and finding people with warrants.
“It’s something that we concentrate every day,” he said.
“We still have a sizeable number of warrants, but when you become more active as a department, you get more warrants.”
Smith said that he has gotten help in that area both by working with other law enforcement agencies and using social media.
“I have reached out to other agencies for help,” he said. “Like today, I made contact with the U.S. Marshall about an outstanding warrant in the county.”
“Social media has also really helped us in getting warrants served,” Smith said. “We get a lot of good contacts through social media like Facebook.”
Getting help from other agencies and using social media, he said, is of great benefit to the overall operations of his department, and taxpayers, because it “saves a lot of time for the county of our deputies going out, spending a lot of time looking for these people.”
Smith also talked about his department’s monitoring of sex offenders.
“We’re going through the process of getting set up with Offender Watch, a nationwide tracking program, and we’re just about ready to release that,” he said.
“Once I heard about that, I was excited to get involved with it. It’s an awesome program and something I firmly believe in,” Smith said.
During his first term, he said, the department has “really concentrated on sex offenders.
“We do sex offender compliance annually, which involves a lot of outside agencies coming in to help us.
“We also do spot checks periodically, make a lot of home visits, to ensure that they are in full compliance of state law,” Smith said.
Smith is also pleased with the financial side of operating the sheriff’s office the past four years.
“We’ve gotten money through the Howard Buffet Foundation, and have increased significantly the revenues coming into the county through the sheriff’s department,” Smith said.
The gift from the Buffet Foundation, along with revenues through providing security during pipeline constructions, have allowed Smith to upgrade the department’s vehicle fleet.
“We were blessed with the pipelines that came through here. They were good to the sheriff’s department financially,” he said.
Those funds, along with the Buffet funds, allowed Smith to purchase seven new vehicles, as well as make significant repairs on those already being used.
The good thing about all of that, Smith said, “Since I’ve taken over as sheriff, we’ve not used any taxpayer money for vehicles.”

Chris Smith

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