Mark Elrod, who is currently serving as interim sheriff of Williamson County amid former Sheriff Dusty Rhoades’ retirement, said the biggest issues affecting the county in regards to crime are drugs and fentanyl.
“I would say that probably one of our biggest issues is drugs, narcotics, fentanyl. We’ve had an uptick in that as well as heroin over the last several years. With Williamson County, we’re a transient community where a lot of the drugs and other crimes come in from other areas into Williamson County. It’s not so much your next door neighbor or the people down the street, although there is some of that, but most of it is coming from other places…Davidson County, out of Nashville, out of the city of Columbia. We have four interstates that come through the county, so it could be, you know, really coming from anywhere, everywhere,” Elrod (pictured above) said on Tuesday’s edition of The Tennessee Star Report with Michael Patrick Leahy.
Elrod, noting how officers in Williamson County typically encounter individuals possessing drugs laced with fentanyl as opposed to busting fentanyl dealers, said the synthetic opioid is “coming across the border.”
“It’s coming out of Mexico…We have had a few cases where maybe not directly coming from Mexico, but we’ve been able to trace it back to that origin,” Elrod said.
The interim sheriff also noted that fentanyl is in demand simply due to it being “something new and improved” that produces a “bigger high” when used.
Elrod, who has been with the Williamson County Sheriff’s Office for 26 years, also touched on how law enforcement has changed over the years, describing how the “perception” of the profession has shifted among the public.
“A lot of things have changed…The public perception of law enforcement has changed,” Elrod explained. “When I was growing up and when I started as a law enforcement officer, there was a lot more respect for law enforcement…We notice it some that there’s not the you know, there’s not that same amount of respect.”
“I don’t think that our law enforcement in Williamson County has changed. I think it’s just the clientele that we’re dealing with, their mindsets have changed a little bit,” Elrod added.
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Kaitlin Housler is a reporter at The Tennessee Star and The Star News Network. Follow Kaitlin on X / Twitter.
