Parker: 'I'm ... satisfied to let history judge me.'

Clay Parker (T-G file photo) [Click to enlarge]

Bedford County's Law Enforcement Committee is recommending plaques for departing county leaders after the Aug. 3 election, including one for the sheriff who reflected on his record late last week.

"I'm perfectly satisfied to let history judge me," outgoing Sheriff Clay Parker said in the courthouse during the committee meeting which concluded with Commissioner John Brown's comment to Parker; "God's speed to you."

Parker sought the Democratic Party's nomination on May 2 so he could run for re-election as sheriff. Randall Boyce was nominated. He faces the Republican nominee, Mike Brown, in the Aug. 3 election.

After the meeting, Parker said he does not yet know what he will do after he leaves office on Aug. 31, but he will leave the department in working order.

Commissioner Brown had asked the committee's secretary to include in the meeting minutes the recognition by the committee that Parker had served the county for 12 years and that he should be commended for that.

Brown noted "the money he has saved" the county through his operation of the department.

Savings were realized from county construction of the workhouse, instead of hiring a contractor, Parker has explained in recent months.

"We've rarely had to make a change to his budget," Brown said, calling for a recommendation by the committee to have the county commission purchase plaques of commendation for departing officials after the results of the Aug. 3 general election are known.

The committee agreed, unanimously.

"You've done an excellent job," said County Mayor Jimmy Woodson who decided to run for a seat on the county commission instead of running for re-election as mayor so he'd be available to care for relatives.

"You can look yourself in the mirror and can say you fought the fight and didn't take yourself out. The people did."

Parker replied; "One door closes; another opens."

Parker stopped at the north doors of the courthouse, looked across Shelbyville's public square and saw a portion of the old jail building, noting there had been changes over the years and that the office of sheriff is a vital institution, one that presents a difficult, perhaps unmanageable, task.

Shortly after the primary, Parker said he felt as if a heavy weight had been lifted off his shoulders. Late last week, he said much the same thing.

"I always said, 'I'd rather work for a good man than be sheriff,' and I still feel that way. Being sheriff is not a good job. You walk around with the weight of the world on you.

"It's not for the weak," Parker said. "It's a bad, terrible lifestyle, but somebody has to do it."

Asked if he knew now what his next job would be, Parker said, "Not really."

He's been attending classes at the Nashville School of Law, a college offering night classes for working people. Its campus is near 100 Oaks and Sidco Drive on the east side of Interstate 65. Parker is an upper class-man with graduation insight.

"The law morphs all the time," he said during the conversation in the courthouse lobby about changes in legal requirements faced by sheriffs. "If you don't stay current, you'll be in trouble...

"I guess I'll be a lawyer, but I really don't know," he said. "I don't plan to go anywhere."

Parker started working as a road deputy for the Bedford County Sheriff's Department in 1975. Many things have changed in three decades.

"If you had three calls a night, that was a busy night," Parker said. Now, it's not unusual to "have three calls going on at the same time."

His monthly report to the Law Enforcement Committee shows there were 912 calls dispatched during April when there were 305 cases classified as "investigation, etc."

Ten prowler calls, 66 crashes without injury, three with injury, 18 fires, 55 burglar alarms, 32 burglary reports, four fights, 22 domestic complaints and 317 so-called 911-hangup calls are part of the list of dispatched calls.

In the mid-1970s, Parker said, "You could pretty much pin a badge on anyone."

Before he became a patrol deputy, Parker had worked for General Felt, a company that made carpet cushion. Prior to that, he worked for Empire, a pencil manufacturer.

About 17 yeas into the job with the department, Parker left, only to return in 1994.

"I couldn't believe the change" in a couple of years, he said.

Changes included the state getting "out of the mental health business, and how the courts handled the juvenile cases," Parker said.

"Until the early 1990s, the state maintained its own facilities like Central Sate," he said of a psychiatric hospital that was near Nashville International Airport.

The Dell Computer Co. has the property now.

Mental health services were "privatized," Parker said. "And they took away the ability of a doctor at the emergency room to determine whether somebody is mentally incompetent, and doctors can't commit someone without the agreement of a crisis team ..."

Centerstone, a business in Tullahoma is one of the state contractors providing psychiatric services for the state now. It includes examination of defendants for a determination on whether they're capable of assisting in their own defense.

Parker's monthly report on jail operations lists 303 people booked into the jail. Of those, 252 were male and 51 were female. Of the 32 juveniles taken in, 22 were boys and 10 were girls.

There were 8,794 meals served in the jail at a cost of 59-cents per tray. Workhouse meals totaled 6,279 at a cost of 78-cents each. Juveniles were served 1,249 meals at a cost of 59-cents per tray.

The difference is what food is purchased and where, Parker said.

As for the jail's condition when Parker turns over the keys to the department to his successor, the sheriff said, "I'll leave it where it's as functional as I can leave it. It'll be as good as I can have it. I know what it was like to come into a crisis.

"It's too important a place to just leave it," he said. "Everything will be in shape and functioning.

"And I hope the other folks do well."