Category: Criminal Justice

When 25-year-old LaMonte Cooke, a Philadelphian, joined the Kent County Sheriff’s Office in 1975, the entire seven-man force was white. “The day I interviewed for the deputy’s job with Sheriff Bartus Vickers, he had four questions for me. He wanted to know if I voted, what my party affiliation was, how well I got along with whites, and I forget the last one. I must have answered them correctly, for he told me to report to work the next day.”

“That next morning, my first day in law enforcement, the sheriff allowed me to borrow one of his revolvers since, in those days, you bought your own weapon. That was my first gun. For orientation, one of the deputies took me out on the road and showed me around the county. Here I was, a man who’d never given a thought about this type of work, policing Kent County.”

Patrolling Kent County

Once he began patrolling as a deputy, he regularly turned heads from people surprised to see an African-American in a Kent County Sheriff’s uniform. The city guy was much more comfortable with the ways of Philadelphia than the cornfields and waterways of a county with 16,000 people.

While he learned on the job in Maryland’s smallest county, members of the force and community gradually became accustomed to seeing him on the job. “Responding to a call once in an outlying area, I rang the doorbell of a house. When the lady answered and saw me in uniform, with a patrol car sitting behind me, she was so surprised that she telephoned the sheriff to confirm that I was one of his officers before she’d talk to me.”

One particular night, while out handling a complaint, teenagers smashed watermelons around Cooke’s usual parking spot, a place for watching the traffic flow up and down the main road through the county, Route 213. When his fellow officers heard about it, “they wrote up those kids for every infraction they could find,” he says. “After that, this sort of stuff stopped, and I knew I had been accepted professionally.

Over the next twelve years, he rose through the ranks. As a college-educated officer, he was naturally suited for the increasing administrative duties of running a department since minimum requirements were being put in place for jails and police agencies. He first worked to bring an outdated old building constructed in the 1880s into compliance and became the first local facility in the state to reach full compliance. As a result of his handling of several challenging management assignments, Sheriff Blizzard promoted him to Chief Deputy.

May Day Celebration at Washington College

Cooke recalls a little mayhem that occurred at Washington College. It was during an annual student liberating tradition, a fling for International Workers Day. “On May Day, some students celebrated by streaking or making nude dashes across the campus and town. One year [1978], I got a call about undressed people running across the highway, and when I pulled up, I saw several of them. Most dashed off, but I caught one, a student nicknamed Miami, whom I put in the patrol car.”

“But 200 students quickly surrounded the vehicle chanting ‘free Miami.’ They wouldn’t let me move so there I sat with yelling people all around me. I radioed for backup, and it wasn’t too long before I saw all these bodies diving out of the way. Coming through the crowd was Chief Deputy Blizzard just swinging his nightstick, and the mob was just jumping out of the way. Once he opened a path, he yelled hit it. I did but they followed us to the jail. It was sort of tense with all these students surrounding the building, so we called for help from the State Police. Finally, the dean from the college came down to get the students to disperse.”

Queen Anne’s County Warden

“In 1987, Queen Anne’s County was closing its old, outdated jail and opening a modern Detention Center. I applied for the position of warden to run that agency. There were several highly qualified candidates with lots of corrections experience. But I went ahead and applied for the job since the pay was a lot more than I was making as Chief Deputy in Kent. I got the appointment, so my first task was to build the institution, which opened in 1988 with room for 80 inmates. About two years later, a modular addition added 24 more beds, which increased the county’s detention center to 104 beds.”

“In 2008, the county commissioners approved a new modular addition to accommodate a growing female inmate population and a more secure male dormitory unit. Completed in 2009, it increased the facility’s total inmate capacity to 148 beds. I also worked with a committee of several counties considering a regional corrections facility. ”

Reflecting on nearly forty years of wearing a badge, this professionally recognized trailblazer, who has been involved in modernizing law enforcement and corrections in two counties, says: “From the time when I started in Kent County, things have changed so much. When you went into the jail in those days, you pretty well knew everybody. Now, we have such transient populations, and we are faced with more mental health issues, an increasingly diverse population, gangs, and more hardened criminals.”

During his tenure, Cooke served on several boards and commissions, including president of the Maryland Correctional Administrators Association (twice), vice chairman of the Maryland Police and Correctional Training Commission, commissioner on the State Commission on Criminal Sentencing Policy, acting county administrator for Queen Anne’s County. He also served on the board of directors for Peoples Bank of Kent County and worked with other criminal justice agencies on legislative matters in Annapolis.

Warden LaMonte Cooke of the Queen Anne’s County Detention Center got his start in the old days when the Kent County Sheriff’s Department consisted of just a handful of deputies, a couple of patrol cars, and a century-old jail built for wrongdoers of another era. In 2008, three African Americans served in the the Sheriff’s Office, which had twenty-two sworn officers.

A LECTURE — For the Hereditary Order of the Signers of the Bush Declaration, I was recently asked to examine the era in our criminal justice system when the sheriff was the county executioner or hangman. This gruesome responsibility was eventually centralized in the state prison systems, but the duty remained in the hands of local lawmen until the 20th century.

In 1906, the State of New Jersey took on the responsibility for executing the condemned, while Maryland took similar action in 1922. I drew on archival and fieldwork involved with examining crime and punishment in the 18th, 19th and early 20th century, for the lecture. This included working with long unexamined coroner’s inquests, court proceeding — death warrants, pleas, motions, and trial transcripts — dockets, and police blotters to develop an understanding of how local law enforcement carried out the grim task for centuries.

For more on when the sheriff was the Executioner

When the Sheriff was the Hangman — more information oh these and other photos related to this era.

Photographing an Execution

Somerset County Sheriff Robert Jones, Maryland’s longest serving sheriff, has been the long arm of the law in Somerset County for 39-years.  Since starting his career working in an antiquated jail built for henhouse robbers, drunkards, horse thieves, and criminals from another era in 1975, he has devoted a lifetime of work to combating crime.  He kept jailbirds behind bars, prowled the dark night looking for problems, chased reckless drivers, corralled troublemakers, and oversaw the development of a modern law enforcement agency, as the decades flew by.  Although he recalls a different time, place, and era for policing in Somerset County, the very popular sheriff successfully bridged the gap.

Jones started in law enforcement almost by accident.  Sheriff Thomas H. Foxwell, Jr. while out fishing on the Chesapeake Bay, caught a tub of Spanish Mackerel.  “On his way home, the sheriff stopped by to offer the fish to the people at the Oyster shucking house where I worked. While he was there I asked him if needed any help,” Jones recalls.   “It wasn’t too long before I got a call asking me to work some weekends and holidays as a deputy.   When I started that December, I went over to a deputy’s house to pickup an old badge and gun.”

The county slammer was built in 1850 and rebuilt after a disastrous 1902 fire.  The place, designed to handle 16 inmates, averaged about twenty prisoners a day at the time.  “We often worked alone, and we had some dangerous prisoners, from the Western Shore and elsewhere.   Murders, work release, you name it.   If they were incarcerated in Somerset County, we had them.  If you opened that cell door for whatever reason to move some of those inmates around, you wondered what might happen sometimes,” the sheriff recalls.

When Foxwell decided not to run Jones entered the race and was elected Sheriff in 1986.  With eleven years experience, he assumed command of a department that had three deputies to assist the top cop.

Sheriff Robert Jones

The pace of law enforcement in those early decades was a bit like life in general, a little bit slower and more predictable for major drug busts and gangs were unfamiliar to the thin blue line in Princess Anne. Still, with nearly forty years in the criminal justice system, Jones recalls many remarkable incidents, humorous and serious.

The sheriff recalls one man whom one could imagine being Otis Campbell, the town drunk in the Andy Griffith Show.  This man got tanked up so frequently that he had his own cell.  In those days we had trustees so they’d run errands and help out in the kitchen and things.   So we’d let this man go downtown to cut grass or earn a little money doing odd jobs.  We’d warn him not to come back drunk or we wouldn’t let him back in his cell for the night.”

“Once he came back really tanked up so when the jailer asked what we should do, I said let him sleep it off outside.  He’ll be out there in the morning.”  Well, the next day he was nowhere in sight.  “We started looking around and soon noticed a broken window in the basement.”   The inmate decided he didn’t want to sleep under the Maryland stars that night so he broke into the building.  “That’s the first time we ever charged someone with breaking into the jail.”

Another time, he was in court for something and the judge said I’m giving you 30-days, but it’s suspended.  The man protested, saying your honor you can’t do that.  He went out, got drunk, and fell asleep in the courthouse door. “We arrested him and put him in his cell.”

During trials, one judge would occasionally call the sheriff over to the bench to whisper this prisoner is going to cost a lot of money if we lock him up.  “Take him over to the Greyhound Bus Station and buy him a ticket to Norfolk,” the judge told me.  Jones followed orders, but when he handed the troublemaker over to the bus driver, I’d put a little twist on the story just to make sure we got him far out-of-town.  I’d say now the judge has ordered you to take this man to Norfolk.  He says you’re responsible for getting him there, so don’t drop him off over the line in Virginia.  Make sure he gets to Norfolk.   You’ve got to come through here every day and if he gets back here tomorrow, the judge isn’t going to be happy.  Those drivers always got the convicts to their destination, as far as I know,” Jones recalls.

On the road, a large part of the department’s job in the 1970s was serving papers.  “We used citizen band radios to communicate, and they didn’t cover the entire county.  We had handled such as sugar bear and names like that.  When I was out on Deal Island serving papers, I’d say come in “great wizard’ this is sugar bear.  Everybody monitored the CB radios in those days.  When someone on the island answered, I’d say call the office and tell them I’m going over to Crisfield to serve papers, I’m finished out on Deal.  That person would call the office and let them know.  That was our communications system.  It worked because everybody was listening to the CBs in those days.”

Make no mistake about the easy-going style of the time, for Jones periodically faced dangerous moments, such as when a weapon was pulled or when he had to worry about being jumped in an attempted jailbreak.  In those early day officers were often on duty alone and backup was far away.

“We had some tough characters, but I remember this one man who would fight an officer in a minute. One time we got a call that there was trouble at his place and he had a gun. When I got there a couple of officers were already on the scene.  He was inside the house creating a ruckus so I shouted, put the weapon down, it’s Bobby.”  We exchanged some words, but in a few minutes he shouted ‘Bobby is that you out there.   Come on in, I’ve put the gun down’. While he’d fight most men, he always listened to me.”  That could be because the sheriff mentioned that he always treated everyone with as much respect as possible.

One night a prisoner started a fire in the jail, after I was sheriff.  We managed to get the inmates out safely, but there we were across the street with these prisoners in this little frame building.  I had to do something to cut the population, so I started pardoning people on the spot.  I said how many of you are on work release.  Okay you guys get out of here.  How many of you have terms that are ending tomorrow.  Okay, hit it.  That way we cut the population down, until we could manage it and arrange safe lockups for the remainder of the people.”

Robert (Bobby) N. Jones, a Somerset County trailblazer, oversaw a department transitioning from an earlier time to the modern agency that serves the county today.  He was first elected to the county’s top law officer’s post, an agency with four full-time officers (including the sheriff) in 1986.  It now has 26 sworn personnel.  Having decided not to run for an eighth term, the 74-year-old will wrap up a long career in law enforcement on Dec 2, 2014, at 3 p.m. 

His chief deputy, Ronnie Howard, will serve as the next sheriff of Somerset County.  His personal philosophy of “treat the people with respect,” must have had a lot to do with his success, which filtered down to the force.

Note: I was saddened to see that Sheriff Robert Jones passed away on May 6, 2019. About fourteen years ago, I did extensive fieldwork in Crisfield and Somerset County and met the sheriff in the course of completing those research investigations.

He was an unforgettable officer, and helped me with my work, introducing me to other remarkable Somerset County retired officials and people in the community. One was Judge Lloyd “Hot Dog” Simpkins, a retired 80-something circuit court jurist. There were many other people as “Bobby” knew practically everyone in the county.

The Sheriff was always generous with his time and I ended up writing a couple of magazine articles about him in major regional publications. All these years later, I still fondly recall Sheriff Jones’ stories.

This article was published in 2014 a few months before Sheriff Robert Jones retired. Since he passed away, I thought I would reshare this article.