Son follows father's footsteps into Sheriff's Department

For some people law enforcement is a job, for others it is a tradition.

Every shift Larry Johnson Jr., a patrol deputy with the Onslow County Sheriff's Department, works, he pins his father's name tag to his uniform.

"I am proud of my father," he said. "I am proud of what he accomplished."

Larry Johnson spent 16 years a deputy on the roads of Onslow County. He never sought a desk job or administrative position. He began his career as a patrol deputy in 1977; he retired a patrol captain in 1993.

"I have lived in Piney Green my whole life," he said. "I know the people and they know me."

Johnson was playing basketball in 1977 when then-Sheriff Thomas Marshall pulled up in a cruiser and asked him if he wanted to go to work as a deputy.

"The starting pay was $8,000 a year," Johnson said.

Johnson Jr. began at the Sheriff's Department in November 2006 making $23,000 a year.

He turned 21 in Iraq serving as Air Force security. Sheriff Ed Brown hired Johnson Jr. immediately when he was discharged, and following in his father' footsteps Johnson Jr. went to work in patrol as a K-9 handler. Johnson Jr. graduated basic law enforcement training Friday.

"I hear a lot from the older guys that I act like my dad," Johnson Jr. said. "I got really big shoes to fill. I always knew I'd be in law enforcement because of him. My father is my hero."

When Johnson started as a deputy he was given a badge, two uniforms and a hat.

"I had to buy my own gun," Johnson said. It was not until Billy Woodward became sheriff that handguns were issued to new deputies.

Johnson worked for three sheriffs: Marshall, Woodward, and Brown.

"All three men shared the same values, but they each had a unique way of doing their job," Johnson said.

He described Marshall as "quiet, but powerful," adding that Marshall was respected by everyone.

Woodward treated people the way he wanted to be treated, whether they were county commissioners or prostitutes on the way to jail, according to Johnson.

And Brown, Johnson said, "knows no stranger." If the current sheriff doesn't know you, and there are few people in Onslow County he doesn't know, Johnson said Brown would go out of his way to meet you.

"He is a real people's sheriff," Johnson said.

The elder Johnson retired in 1993 after breaking both feet while working a second job painting. He returned to county service in 1995 as a code enforcement officer.

Johnson said he is still haunted sometimes be some of the things he saw while on the job - the worst a murder-suicide with the children and parents in the same bed.

"The children looked like they were just sleeping, but then we realized they weren't," he said.

The case that bothers him the most is a 1992 shooting where a little girl was hit in the crossfire. He was the first to arrive at the shooting in a trailer park off Piney Green Road and found a man lying on the hood of a car and heard crying inside a nearby home.

"There was a baby lying on the couch and the father was screaming," Johnson testified in court during the shooter's murder trial. "I thought it was the baby that had been shot. I looked over and the 4-year-old was trying to pull herself up by holding the arms of the couch. I saw blood on her chest. She kept trying to get up. She appeared to be in shock."

Later Johnson and Brown went to the shooter's house on Piney Green Road and found two suspects hiding in the attic. The girl's killer was later sentenced to 40 years in prison.

Johnson also remembers working Second Front, a long stretch of rowdy bars from Jacksonville to New River Air Station.

"Sometimes there would be only two or three deputies for the whole county," he said. "You just did the best you could."

Not only has Onslow County changed, with Second Front falling apart and Court Street all but shut down, the Sheriff's Department has changed as well.

"The biggest change I see now is all the training," Johnson said. "When I started out there was very little training. We had to rely on common sense."

Johnson said Brown changed the training programs at the department dramatically when he became sheriff.

"It was a complete turn around," Johnson said, adding when he started out, all deputies did was ride along with another more experienced deputy. He said, ironically, Brown rode around with him when Brown first came to work at the department.

The tools of the trade have changed too.

Now deputies carry TASERs and pepper spray to subdue out-of-control subjects.

"I used a slap jack," Johnson said, hefting the six-inch flat lead rod padded with black leather.

Some situations called for the use of a "convoy," a leather encased steel spring that "felt like you've been hit with a convoy of trucks," Johnson said.

Phasing out when Johnson came on board in the late 1970s was the claw, a metal cuff that could be snapped on a subject's wrist and turned to make the subject comply.

"People went where you told them to go when the claw was on their wrist," he said. "It could snap bones if it had to."

Brown said Johnson was an incredible deputy who knew the community very well and was respected by the people he worked with.

The sheriff said Johnson Jr., likewise, is making strides to match his father's reputation.

"He is a good deputy," Brown said. "Working with both of them has been a blessing."

Contact crime reporter Liddell Kay at 910-219-8456. Read Lindell's blog at http://onslowcrime.encblogs.com.