The Coosa County Sheriff’s Office recently gained a new deputy to fill a vacancy on the force, and the new deputy is a familiar face for most of the staff. Deputy Frankie Jones began working at the Sheriff’s Office last week. He actually worked with the office last year as a dispatcher. “We lost a deputy that had been with us for 10 years,” Sheriff Terry Wilson said. “A while back, Deputy Josh Jones, who had served this county well, applied and moved to Sylacauga Police Department. We wish him well up there. Last time I talked to him, things were going really good.” Wilson continued, “He left us, and it created an opening. We advertised and were looking for the next right fit as a deputy sheriff of Coosa County.” They went through the process of interviewing qualified applicants, and one of those was Frankie Jones. “In the selection process, we felt like Frankie was our fit for our time and our need to fill Josh’s loss,” Wilson said. He said there were about 10 qualified applicants that were reviewed. He added that Jones was one of the few that earned the interview process.
Jones’ first day on the job was last Wednesday, September 5. Wilson explained that Jones has been getting equipped and that he has begun his field training. Jones has approximately 11 years of law enforcement experience, having begun his law enforcement career in 2007. He has been APOSTC certified since 2011, or certified through the Alabama Peace Officers’ Standards and Training Commission. Jones said he started with the Montgomery Police Department, where he went through their academy. He said this academy was 23 weeks long, or 672 hours. From there, he went on to do narcotics work at Maplesville Police Department in Chilton County. He then came to the Coosa County Sheriff’s Office and worked as a dispatcher for approximately seven to eight months.
However, at that time the Coosa County Sheriff’s Office did not have an opening for a deputy, so he applied with Selma Police Department and accepted a job there. He said he worked there for a short period of time until the deputy job became available in Coosa County. “I’m really grateful that the sheriff gave me a job back as a deputy,” Jones said. Wilson said that Jones was in the county as a dispatcher long enough to learn the county layout pretty well. “This helped in his desire to come back to serve and protect the roads of Coosa County,” Wilson added.
Jones said that when he was dispatching, he loved it in Coosa County. He added that it was a great place to work, speaking of his love for the office and his coworkers and saying that “everybody was super nice.” He explained that the primary reason he left to go to Selma Police Department was to keep his APOSTC certification current since there was not a deputy job opening at Coosa County. “In the beginning, I remember when I hired him as a dispatcher, his desire was to go on the road and be a patrolling deputy, but we didn’t have an opening at the time,” Wilson recalled. “So he wanted to get on the road, back in patrolling and policing. He stayed here for a while, but nothing opened up. So he went to Selma because there was an opening there.” Jones said that at Selma he went to the Northeast Academy in Jacksonville and took a 2-week refresher course that is required by APOSTC. While at Selma, he was a patrol officer and special operations. He said he worked there about 10 months.
Jones had begun work as a dispatcher at Coosa County early last summer and left at the end of the year to go to Selma. Therefore, he has mostly the same coworkers as he did last year, and he said they have been welcoming and accommodating.“ They’re about the best supervisors I ever worked for,” he said. Jones said that he is enjoying being back with Coosa County. “It’s a big change, but it’s for the better,” he said. He spoke of Coosa County being an overall better and safer work environment. While in Selma, he said he had been shot at and that he had been pinned down six times since working there.
Jones currently lives in Chilton County, where he has lived his whole life, which will be a total of 41 years as of tomorrow. However, he said he is now looking to buy a place in Coosa County. He explained that he had previously planned to move to the county when he was working as a dispatcher. However, when he went to Selma, he said he held off on moving for a while. Jones comes by his law enforcement career honestly, almost seeming to inherit the career as it is in his blood. His parents are both now retired from law enforcement. However, his mother was the first female deputy Chilton County had, and his father was a lieutenant for the State of Alabama Corrections in Elmore.
Over the course of his career, Jones has earned some awards and recognition for his time in law enforcement. He received the Lifesaving Award, as well as a Commendation Award in Montgomery. Additionally, he was one of 11 who received the 2014 House of Representatives Law Enforcement Medal of Honor nomination. He received a plaque for this nomination.
Wilson is pleased to welcome Jones back to the Coosa County Sheriff’s Office and to have him employed as a deputy. “We are happy to have a highly-qualified, great-experienced, new deputy sheriff with Frankie Jones,” Wilson said. “We’re looking forward to him serving and protecting our great citizens of Coosa County.”
