Randolph Co. Sheriff's race is on - WALB.com, Albany News, Weather, Sports

Randolph Co. Sheriff's race is on

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By Gianna Caserta - bio | email

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RANDOLPH CO., GA (WALB) -

Voters in Randolph County will soon cast ballots to decide who will replace longtime Gary Yochum. He died last month.

The Interim Sheriff, Deputy Chief Eddie Fairbanks, will go up against Harold Piper who ran against Yochum in the July primary and lost.

They're running on very different platforms. Fairbanks wants to keep things as they are and run the department just as Yochum did. But Piper wants change and thinks he can improve the way law enforcement is run.

The race for Randolph County Sheriff is on. After longtime Sheriff Gary Yochum died in January, his right hand man, Deputy Chief Eddie Fairbanks was appointed as Interim Sheriff.

"The community was pleased with a lot of things that he did in this community, and those things are not going to change, the things that he did in this community, we are going to try to continue to carry on," says Eddie Fairbanks, Interim Sheriff.

Yochum took office in 2001 and he had just won re-election for his fourth term in November. The man he beat out for reelection was Harold Piper, who is running for Sheriff again, this time against Fairbanks.

"This is totally unexpected when he passed away so it was only 6 months away from when I ran originally so I decided to run again" says Harold Piper.

Piper says he has a different way of providing law enforcement for the county which is why he wanted to run in the first place.

"I want to get the deputies in the training I feel like they need to have for investigative techniques, and crime scene procedures," says Piper.

Fairbanks doesn't want change. He wants to run things the same way Yochum did when he was Sheriff.

"He actually saved this county a lot of money financially, and I am looking to do the same thing for this county and not cost the county money to improve the Sheriff Office," says Fairbanks.

Both men have about 25 years in law enforcement. The special election will be held on March 19th.

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