(Credit: Steve Thurston, 2023)
James LaFarr
Warren County Sheriff James LaFarr has announced he is running for re-election this fall.
“I wake up in the morning and I still love the thought of going to work,” LaFarr said in a recent interview. “I love it. I love our people. There’s a family, and a brother- and sisterhood that comes with police work that unless you’re in it, it’s difficult to comprehend. I’m not ready to let that go,” said LaFarr.
Not much has changed in his attitude toward the job or campaigning (he is not a huge fan of the latter) though this time around, he expects it will be a little different, he said.
When LaFarr first ran for sheriff back in 2019, he was able to go from township to township and knock on doors to collect around 800 signatures, meeting the community as a relative unknown.
“This year I plan to do the exact same thing, but now when I reach a doorstep I expect I am going to get some feedback, because now everything has been resting on my shoulders. If you’re doing something that they don’t like, they’re gonna tell you about it,” he said.
LaFarr said he embraces the criticism, relishing in public engagement opportunities.
He even started a coffee group called “Sit (or Sip) with the Sheriff,” where he meets with county residents to discuss the issues important to them. Those interactions don’t just apply to the sheriff but to all officers in the department.
According to LaFarr, most complaints relate to traffic and speeding around neighborhoods.
In that respect, the department has taken a proactive approach to combat speeding by allowing people to share their complaints through a site called Safe Pace, and an officer will then be assigned to that location for patrol.
“What we wanted to create in our sheriff’s office is Mayberry, USA,” he said, a reference to the Andy Griffith TV show of the 1960s and the homespun town where it took place. “Our officers are extremely courteous. I’ve said to them when you go into a shop, ‘Lift up your head, make eye contact, and have a conversation with people’.”
LaFarr admits to some difficulty in making Warren County into Mayberry since the sheriff’s department covers such a vast county of around 900 square miles, compared to that of a small village. To combat this, officers are being purposefully assigned to consistent locations where bonds can be formed, said LaFarr.
LaFarr compared being sheriff to running a business, and wearing many hats. These include understanding human resources, budget, and finance, as well as management.
He acknowledged that he would take the job one term at a time, and that if it weren’t for the support of his wife and family it wouldn’t be possible.
“I wanted to be a police officer since I was a little boy.”
The inception of his dream came in middle school when members of the sheriff’s office at the time, William “Billy” VanNess and Timothy Guy, spoke to his class.
Driven, LaFarr enrolled at SUNY Adirondack after high school to take criminal justice courses. There he had a professor who informed him of a part-time summer deputy program through Warren County to help in the village of Lake George.
As for his campaign, LaFarr says, “I work very hard to stay out of politics. I like to campaign because the public gets to choose who they want as sheriff. My campaign activities, strategies are atypical from what you might see from other political officials.”
“I’m not going to take anything for granted,” LaFarr continued when pressed about a possible challenger. “We have a small, tight group in our campaign committee, but we will run like we’re 10,000 votes behind the entire process.”