The Fentress County Commission voted eight to two Monday night to appoint Hunter Fowler as the new sheriff.
Fowler will serve the remainder of the term until the August election. He defeated Rodney Insco and Gary Ledbetter in the selection process. Fowler had been serving as the chief deputy since the resignation of Michael Reagon.
“Well, since since May I’ve been doing the job,” Fowler said. “I stepped in whenever the county needed me. I’ve worked in every position from corrections to deputy to K-9 to investigator. I’ve seen what we’ve we’ve lagged in the past. And I know the improvements that I wanted whenever I was in those positions.”
The commission interviewed three nominated candidates, asking each the same five questions. The names of the final nominees were drawn from a jar to determine the order of the voting. Fowler will be officially sworn in Tuesday.
“The Fentress County has been done wrong in the past,” Fowler said. “And we’ve had incident after incident with the Sheriff’s office. And I know that I am young. And that’s what a lot of people see. They say, ‘Oh you’re, you know, 30 years old. What experience can you have?’ Well, life teaches hard lessons.”
Fowler said he plans to continue the Winter Wood program for the elderly and expand the inmate garden to provide food for local schools. He said he wants to improve communication between the department and the public by utilizing social media and local news outlets.
“And whenever you don’t have that level of transparency, it just it breeds community distrust,” Fowler said. “And then if you let, you know, the public make their own own decisions, own their own story, sometimes it’s not the it’s not the full truth.”
Fowler said he also would support the county’s rules on pets running free. He said the Sheriff’s Department tries to enforce the rules, but is not as consistent as it should be.