The job of the county sheriff is important even though the county sheriff’s job is widely misunderstood.  

Haywood County commissioners took an important step forward on April 4 by selecting Moseley Architects of Charlotte as the preferred firm to handle architectural and engineering services for the county’s proposed jail expansion project.

It’s hard to believe there was ever a time when reports of stalking, sexual assault, domestic violence and dating violence weren’t taken seriously by law enforcement, courts or the general public, but there was – and it wasn’t even 30 years ago.

In Suzie Pressley’s 11 years on the job, she’s seen the agony people face trying to leave an abusive relationship and the freedom they feel when it happens.

Every so often — about 20 times a year — Western North Carolina’s social media networks flare up with impassioned pleas from friends and family members of a missing person, begging for any information that could help bring their loved one home. But the reasons for the disappearances, and the results of the investigations, are often as unique as the missing persons themselves.

Make no mistake, it would be a stretch to say a partnership between Western Carolina University and the town of Sylva’s Police Department  is the model for the future of policing in small-town America.

As one of Waynesville’s three “urban” cores, Frog Level holds an identity as distinct as any other. Of late, that identity has not been all that good. 

Last week’s Maggie Valley Board of Aldermen meeting was riddled with complaints from residents of a development on Jonathan Creek Road about an alleged encampment of people in the neighborhood. 

On May 21, 2000, a beloved Sevier County elementary school teacher named Glenda Ann Bradley took a walk on the Little River Trail in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park with her ex-husband Ralph Hill. Both Hill and Bradley, 50, were experienced hikers, so when Hill went off-trail to fish, Bradley did some solo hiking while she waited for him. 

He’d been on duty since 5 p.m. and it was already shaping up to be a busy night, but as Eric Batchelor sat in his patrol car writing up reports around 2 a.m. on July 28, 2020, he got another call about a disturbance.