Southport Chief Tom Vaughn Joins!

**Nigel Jason Hammer** (0:00)
Yeah, my name is Nigel Jason Hammer right over there with a very special guest on the hotline.

**Hammer** (0:04)
Chief of Police for Southport's Police Department, Chief Tom Vaughn joins us.
Chief, thank you so much for taking the time here. You had a pretty big announcement recently. You've decided to throw your hat in the ring here to become the Sheriff of Marion County. Walk us through this decision process.

**Tom Vaughn** (0:24)
Yeah, thank you guys first of all for having me on. I do really appreciate that.
You know, I've been a life-long Marion County resident, born and raised here, went to school on the south side. And I've always felt like we should have more than one choice for our Sheriff's office. So yeah, you know, the GOP got with me. They asked me if I would throw my hat in the ring and thought about it for about a week or so, and here we are.

**Hammer** (0:52)
So I know it's easy to play, you know, Monday morning quarterback when you're looking at crime in Indianapolis when you're somewhere else. But Southport isn't that far away from Indy. It's a very short drive away. I'm sure you see a lot of offenders in Southport that have, you know, downtown Indianapolis addresses and whatnot.
What is your plan when you, if you do win this thing? Let's say the stars are aligned and you become the Marion County Sheriff. What can you do different? How can you make a difference?

**Tom Vaughn** (1:25)
Well, you know, I think first of all, we have to start with, you know, more cooperation between all the agencies working together. I know in Southport, yeah, we have US 31, Madison Avenue, 65 right there. So we see a lot of that, you know, traffic coming from Indianapolis, you know, further south, maybe to Greenwood.
So, you know, one of the things that we really need to look at is how we're using our resources in the Sheriff's Department.
You know, he's in charge of four different things, you know, the jail, the courts, warranty and the sex registry. But he also has a reserve division. And, you know, we're having these team takeovers or the curfew issues, that kind of stuff. You know, being able to work together and putting our resources together is the first start. The second thing, I think, with the Sheriff's Office is getting them the training and equipment they need. I think as leaders, it's our responsibility to train them properly, give them all the necessary tools, then to go out and do what we're asking them to do. So I think a lot of it is a joint effort. We need to get together with the other agencies, cooperate, work together, sit down and really come up with a plan on how we're going to fix this. How do we, you know, step by step, break this down and solve the issues that we're having?

**Hammer** (2:48)
You bring up issues and you use words like fix this.
It does seem like with the current sheriff in Marion County, at least for a little while, there was some bad blood, and maybe that's not the right term, with the IMPD officers, with Beech Grove Police, with Southport Police, Kerry Forrestal, not really wanting to do some of the responsibilities. Is that something that you're seeing right now?

**Tom Vaughn** (3:14)
Oh, yeah, definitely. You know, we had a resister the other day.
The officer was actually working part time in downtown at Indigo, and we had a resister. The plan we came up with once we all sat down at a table was that he would transport if we had a resister or violent felon, but he would not do that when they were working part time. Well, when these officers are working part time, it's allowing IMPD officers to stay on the street and not have to deal with that. So on our way to the jail, the suspect then took his feet and kicked the back window out of a squad car and stuff like that. So it's unsafe for all the excluded cities in towns.
You know, we don't have the transports anymore. You know, he says it's budget money, which I don't know that I agree with. I think once you take the role as the Marion County Sheriff, it is your job to figure those out and allocate your resources to the right places.

**Nigel Jason Hammer** (4:15)
Chief, back up for just a second here. Big picture and forgive my ignorance of this question. Maybe this is a dumb question, but we're speaking with Chief Tom Vaughn, Chief of Police of the Southport.