Travis Allen enters race for sheriff

Travis Allen

By Jessie Burchette

jburchette@salisburypost.comTravis Allen likes working in the Rowan County Sheriff's Office.

He'd like to move on up to the top job.

The 39-year-old Mount Ulla resident will be on the Republican primary ballot for sheriff May 4.

Allen wants to make changes in how the department operates. He says that means taking the politics out and making it a totally professional operation.

"A modern-day professional sheriff's office can no longer operate as one man's personal empire. The office of sheriff should be accountable to the taxpayers of Rowan County," Allen said. "The next sheriff must work closely with the county manager and the county commissioners to cut costs while improving services.

"A political atmosphere promotes wasted resources and poor allocation of manpower," he said. "The only way to stop the waste is to end the days of the traditional, politically motivated, southern-style sheriff's office."

Allen, with 15 years in law enforcement, said it's time to end the good-old-boy political atmosphere full of favoritism and selective promotions and discipline. "This has led to poor stewardship of taxpayer dollars and wasted resources."

He is pledging not to take any contributions from any employee of the sheriff's department or any member or their immediate families.

"If elected sheriff, I will come into that office with no political favors owed to anyone," he said.

Allen has issued a challenge to all other candidates for sheriff to also refuse contributions from sheriff's department employees and their families.

The first resource officer at Southeast Middle School, he has worked in courts and has spent most of his time in patrol.

He is jail-certified and a master deputy.

Allen said there are several changes he would enact if elected. These include:

- Making sure every break-in report is assigned to an investigator. "We're doing a disservice to the people of the county. A lot of break-in reports are never investigated."

Currently, break-ins stay with the patrol officers if there is no suspect.

"We need to take the cases off the backs of patrol. ... We owe it to the residents of the county that every break-in has an investigator."

- Saying the department is too top heavy, he would eliminate two captains' jobs and two lieutenants' jobs — he would not fire the people in those jobs — and create more investigator positions;

- He said a department that now has almost 200 employees "can't be run like the old traditional southern-style sheriff's office. It must be governed by policies and procedures."

Allen said he sees no reason to change uniforms or paint schemes on Sheriff's Office cars.

Allen's campaign Web site travisforsheriff.com comes with a theme song, "I Fought the Law and the Law Won."