Vidalia — Two men are vying for the top law enforcement position in Concordia Parish.

The incumbent, Kenneth Hedrick of Ferriday, is seeking a second term as sheriff on a record of which Hedrick says he’s proud. His challenger, former state policeman Payne Scott of Monterey, is asking voters to give him a chance to implement a vision of change.

Kenneth Hedrick

Hedrick, 67, began his career in law enforcement with the Ferriday Police department in 1969. After six years, he was appointed chief of police in Ferriday and held that position for seven years.

He then worked with the enforcement division of the Louisiana Department of Wildlife and Fisheries for 26.5 years before being appointed chief of police in Ferriday again. He served three years as chief before running for and ultimately being elected sheriff in 2011.

Hedrick said he’s proud of the things he’s been able to do in office, including adding equipment and turning the sheriff’s office budget from a deficit to a surplus.

“I am proud of the equipment I have gotten them,” Hedrick said. “We have gotten all new computers for cars, gotten body cameras for officers, gotten everybody working together — investigators and narcotics together — a good administrative assistant who takes care of finances for me.”

Meeting the budget meant scaling back on some expenses, including employees. The office employed around 320 — including correctional officers at the parish prison — when Hedrick took office, and that’s down to approximately 285 now. The reduction was done largely through attrition, he said, but hasn’t resulted in scaled-back patrols.

“Some retired and some quit, but I did it without firing anybody,” Hedrick said. “I have kept the patrol up. Some of the people we retired, we hired them back part time, and when they come back part-time, we don’t have to pay benefits on them.”

Renegotiating contracts and updating equipment to make the department run more efficiently overall reduced other costs, he said.

The new equipment includes switching to using Chevrolet Tahoes for patrol vehicles. Hedrick said the state police are using them, and are able to get approximately 300,000 miles use out of the Tahoes, as opposed to approximately 200,000 miles out of the older police units they were using.

During his time in office, the narcotics task force and investigators moved into the former Vidalia Police Department building on John Dale Drive, a move that was facilitated by a donation from the City of Vidalia and cost the taxpayers nothing extra, Hedrick said.

Being sheriff has allowed him to get to know the community and help people, he said.

“I have got an open-door policy, and a lot of my work is public relations,” Hedrick said. “I enjoy taking care of the people of Concordia Parish, meeting and greeting them. I have an open-door policy, and I answer my phone calls. I enjoy helping people when I can, and if I can’t I don’t lie to them.

“I think we have done a good job, been effective leaders. I have got experience people, I have them educated to do the job, and I think we do a good job. I plan on keeping on doing the right thing.”

Payne Scott

Payne Scott, 62, began his law enforcement career at 20, working as a dispatcher at the Concordia Parish Sheriff’s Office. He joined the Louisiana State Police in 1976 and patrolled with Troop E until 1982, when he went to work with the narcotics division, which was followed by a transfer to the Baton Rouge region the following year.

Scott’s work in Baton Rouge included working as an undercover agent, including two separate months-long stints in deep cover, and an instance in which a criminal tried to hire him to kill six people, Scott said.He also served as a bodyguard for three governors, Buddy Roemer, Edwin Edwards and Mike Foster, retiring from the state police as a sergeant.

He returned to the CPSO in 2011 as a patrolman and was appointed captain of patrol and search and rescue the following year. He is currently the parish director of Homeland Security, a position he’s had since February.

Scott said he’s running for sheriff because he’s concerned about the future of the area.

“My little boy, I want him to grow up in a decent parish,” Scott said. “He is a good kid and gets around well, but I want him to have a good place to grow up in. I want my friends and family to have a decent parish.

“I had no desire to get into politics. I was hoping the parish was moving along and coming up the way it was supposed to, and then people started hammering me to run, coming by my house, calling me stopping me at convenience stores.”

Scott said he believes the parish population is in decline and businesses are closing because of crime.

“Crime in this parish comes down to illegal narcotics,” he said. “It is not just the enforcement deal, it is a socio-economic deal. If I can cut the crime rate, we can start attracting people, businesses back to the parish, I feel like the parish will start recovering.

“I know it’s a cliché that every politician says about the children being our future, but it’s true, and youth are being brought up in this kind of culture, and they are going to stay in this kind of culture until we can get them out.”

Payne said part of his vision for change includes having officers more highly trained.

“I don’t believe the office is right now being run in a professional manner,” he said.

“You can have somebody in-house to train how to shoot a laser or a shotgun for self- defense, but for a specialized unit you there has got to be more extensive, professional training, and sometimes that has to be outside training. The state police would bring in experts from other states to teach us.”

In addition to greater training, Scott said he would like for the department to have a criminal interdiction unit not attached to narcotics. U.S. 84 may just seem like the main strip through Concordia Parish, he said, but it’s a major U.S. highway and can be used to traffic all sorts of crime.

“You do not go out there and profile, but you look for people that stand out from the public, such as the traveling criminal, a person who is a courier for cash or a person bringing in a load of dope headed east, but you have to know what you are looking for and how to do it legally,’ he said. “There are a lot of other factors in there other than a person’s appearance that you look for.”

Scott said he intends to properly delegate authority — “I prefer locals if I can find locals interested in the job” —  and he wants to make the DARE and Neighborhood Watch programs more robust than they currently are.

“I am a kind of leader that, if you come in my door and say, ‘Sheriff, I think you made the wrong decision,’ I will say ‘Come in and explain.’ I am not infallible,” he said. “If we can reason it out, I will say, ‘You are right, I didn’t think about that aspect, let’s change that policy.’”

Scott said he also plans to use the grant-writing experience he has from working with Homeland Security to the benefit of the sheriff’s office.

The election is Oct. 24.