Although Athens law enforcement takes every precaution necessary to patrol fest season and track down criminals, each department only takes general precautions to protect its deputies.
Athens Police Chief Tom Pyle, Ohio University Police Chief Andrew Powers and Sheriff Pat Kelly agree they have been lucky in terms of injuries among their deputies.
Aside from numerous close calls and minor sprains and bruises, all three enforcement offices have steered clear of fatal injuries.
Three weeks after the murder of Mingo County Sheriff Eugene Crum in West Virginia, Kelly said that’s a type of situation that cannot be avoided.
“There is absolutely no way you can stop somebody from injuring a deputy sheriff or a police officer if they want to do it, this guy just walked up and shot him,” Kelly said. “We train for situations in many different ways, but for a random act like that one, we can’t control that like we can’t control a kid walking into a school and shooting people.”
In the last three to four years, Kelly mentioned two deputies who broke their backs from off-duty accidents and some close calls from his deputies going after criminals resisting arrest.
“I worry about (fatal injuries) for my guys, but each one of those guys are like me, they have threats constantly, as that sheriff did, he took on the drug culture,” Kelly said.
When a deputy gets injured in the line of duty or outside of work, the county pays for 80 percent of their insurance and worker’s compensation. The deputy pays for the other 20 percent.
Powers cited an incident in 2010, in which somebody threw a small works bomb out of a car window at an officer, with pennies filled on the inside to create shrapnel.
“All officers are issued and required to wear body armor so anytime they are on duty or in uniform they have a bulletproof vest on,” Powers said. “We have other enhanced protective gear for known high-risk situations, like shields, riot helmets, gas masks and things like that.”
Though there have been few fatal injuries in the city and county, Pyle said minor injuries happen regularly.
“As far as officers injured through a direct assault attempt is pretty rare, usually it’s through a resisting arrest attempt,” Pyle said. “An officer probably hasn’t been shot at for years, we haven’t had an officer involved in a shooting since the mid ’80s.”
Despite the dangers of working in law enforcement, Kelly said he and his staff do everything they can to minimize fatalities, even though it’s a hazard of the job.
“I can’t say nothing will ever happen to me or to one of my deputies, but if it does, then we’ll deal with it when it happens or if it happens to me, they’ll have to deal with it,” Kelly said.
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