The Monroe County Sheriff’s Office (MCSO) said goodbye last month to one of its most distinguished and longest-serving deputies.
Cpt. Jeff Thompson officially retired on June 11 after a 25-year career in law enforcement, including 20 with MCSO. At the time of Cpt. Thompson’s retirement, he was the commander over Field Operations, which encompasses patrol, school resource officers, criminal interdiction, etc.
Thompson said, “My last assignment as the commander over the Field Operations division, that’s probably the cherry-picked job at the Sheriff’s Office. That’s the job that people dream of doing at the end of their career. And I had a great time doing that.”
Thompson, the son of Carl and Mildred Thompson, grew up just outside of Albany as the youngest of three children. Thompson said being just one generation removed from a sharecropper family gave him an outstanding work ethic that he carried with him throughout his law enforcement career. He said he had a lot of extended family members in law enforcement, which is when his interest in becoming a deputy first took shape.
“All of my family lived in the same area down in South Georgia and every Sunday we went to my grandmother’s house,” Thompson recalled. “And these boys (cousins, uncles, etc.) would show up in these (police) uniforms. And I can remember as a little bitty guy looking up at them and seeing the uniform and just being really impressed.
After finishing college, Thompson took a year off and worked out west before returning to his Georgia roots. He said while he was visiting his sister in Macon, a friend from high school contacted him about meeting up for lunch. Thompson said his friend took him to Juliette’s Whistle Stop Café, and he decided he wanted to stay in Middle Georgia.
“I just fell in love with the area and decided over lunch to stay here, to make my home here,” Thompson said. “It was just kind of a random decision to stay. I just kind of felt like this is where I needed to be.”
Thompson took a job with MCSO, heading to police academy in September 1996 and graduating less than three months later on Dec. 1, 1996. Thompson said he kept his expectations low when he first started, planning to be a deputy for just two years.
“This was never going to be a career for me,” Thompson said. “My goal when I took the job was to make an impact on one person’s life. Just one. And I thought if I could make an impact on one person’s life doing this job, it’s a job well done.”
Thompson said he actually fulfilled his modest goal less than an hour after he graduated from the police academy. While still in uniform, Thompson was eating dinner with family at an Atlanta-area restaurant when a small boy, seven or eight years of age, ran up to him because he was lost. The boy told Thompson he ran away from his parents but had second thoughts and needed to find his mother. Thompson said the boy had been missing for several hours but had been scared to approach anyone until he saw the newly-minted officer in uniform.
“When he saw my uniform, he knew it was safe to come up to me,” Thompson said. “So he comes up to me and I was able to get a local deputy sheriff in that jurisdiction to help. I recovered him and turned him over, and he was reunited with his parents. Years went by and I was eating lunch when it hit me that I could have walked away from this job 45 minutes after I graduated and achieved the goal that I set for myself. So everything that I’ve done beyond that, or that I’ve been fortunate enough to be involved with, is just icing on the cake.”
Thompson said his initial two-year exit plan ended on the night when he was recognized as the “1999 Monroe County Law Enforcement Officer of the Year.” Thompson said his father had always imparted upon him the importance of education, and his father was initially hesitant about his son’s “blue collar” career choice.
“He felt like I could have done something different. And he wasn’t happy with me that I joined the Sheriff’s Office,” Thompson said. “After the ceremony my dad pulled me aside and said, ‘I was wrong.’ I said, ‘What do you mean you were wrong?’ He said, ‘This is what you’re supposed to be doing.’ For me, that was the answer I was looking for. I was looking for someone to tell me at that point that I was doing what I was supposed to be doing. Because I felt like I was. . . But when he gave me the affirmation that I was doing the right thing, I knew that was my career from that moment on.”
Thompson said it was Chip Dunn who most mentored him as a young deputy. Dunn, who was over MCSO’s hiring process at the time Thompson was hired, said even without a prior law enforcement background, Thompson stood out as a good candidate.
“He (Thompson) was always cooperative, polite,” Dunn said. “He was a real good role model for a lot of younger guys that were coming along. He got established and knew what he was doing.”
Then-Sheriff John Cary Bittick said Thompson even at a young age always seemed wise beyond his years.
“You could just tell Jeff was a guy who had his feet on the ground, had a lot of common sense, knew how to treat people, knew how to talk to people, and Jeff was just a sharp young professional,” Bittick said. “So it was an easy decision to hire Jeff. And it’s been a heckuva ride. He’s been a great employee. He’s done a good job. Anybody that starts out in the jail and works their way up to being a captain before they retire has done a heckuva job.”
Thompson worked eight months as a radio deputy before being transferred to the jail for an eight-month stint. He then worked mostly as a patrol deputy before leaving MCSO in 2001 and heading to the big city for a five-year stint at the DeKalb County Police Department. While in DeKalb County in 2002, Thompson was responsible for the largest cash/drug seizure by a single patrol officer in department history when he seized 500 pounds of marijuana and $1.5 million in cash.
Then, in 2006, Thompson, having endured an injury and lengthy recovery process, called Bittick and asked for the chance to return to MCSO. Bittick said he hired Thompson back with no hesitation.
“Over the years every now and then we would have somebody that would leave us and would go somewhere else,” Bittick said. “The grass is always greener on the other side of the fence. And invariably almost all of them figure out they were missing something and wanted to come back. And that’s probably one of the things that lets you know what is really special about the Sheriff’s Office in Monroe County is that people that leave all want to come back.”
Thompson said of his stint in DeKalb: “When I was sitting in little Forsyth, Ga, I wasn’t sure I was making an impact at the time. And I thought, ‘I need to go to the big city where there’s big crime and do big criminal work.’ That’s all it was. I wanted to go and do something that I thought was bigger. But after this is all over with, I realize that this was bigger and this was where I needed to be.”
Ironically, when Thompson returned to MCSO he assumed the position of jail commander, the role he feels he made the most community impact doing. During his stint as jail commander, Thompson took on an active role in the county’s education community, introducing a General Educational Development (GED) program to the jail population.
“The most fun I had was as a slick-sleeve deputy, where I was not a supervisor,” Thompson said. “But even though it was the most fun, it wasn’t the most rewarding. The most rewarding job that I’ve ever had is when I was the commander of the jail. I was able to introduce programs into the jail, the GED program, that type of stuff. I feel like I made more influence on this community honestly because I think that was multi-generational. I think we as a team probably affected generations of people by laying a seed of education through the GED program.”
In addition to his distinguished law enforcement career, Thompson has maintained a bustling family life, having been married to wife Dana for 22 years. The couple shares five children, ranging in age from 28 to 17. The oldest, Jordan McEachern, is Thompson’s lone daughter while his four sons are Hayden Eastis, Jacob Thompson, Noah Thompson and Aaron Thompson. Thompson has one granddaughter, Ryleigh, 5, and he’s already taken over babysitting duties for her in his first month of retirement.
Thompson’s youngest son, Aaron, a rising senior at Mary Persons, said he’s excited about having his dad around the house more often.
“It’s a lot better because he worked every day usually and would get home late,” Aaron Thompson said. “And when he’d get home late, we’d all be in bed and stuff. Sometimes I wouldn’t see him for three or four days. It’s a lot better having him around. We get to do stuff. He’s always in a great mood, and when he’s in a great mood the whole family’s in a great mood.”
Dana Thompson said her husband has never let his work life stop him from being a great husband and father. She said he regularly takes his sons on week-long bonding trips and has already headed to Wyoming with son Noah this summer.
“I’m really proud of his dedication to the community and his family,” Dana Thompson said. “Those two things have always been his priority. He has worked his tail off to provide for me and the kids.”
Dana Thompson, who describes her husband as “the most loyal person both personally and professionally that I’ve ever met,” said she met her husband while working as a paralegal for a local law firm in the late-1990s. Dana Thompson recalled how she’s always been impressed by her husband’s commitment to helping Monroe Countians and the way he treated people.
“Everyone always seemed to like him even if their paths had crossed when he was working in the jail,” Dana Thompson said. “I would have people stop us in Walmart and say, ‘Cpt. Thompson, he sure is a nice man. He always treated me with respect.’ And then once he became a captain, the way that he was dedicated to the people who worked for him. He wasn’t going to be a man short out on the road even if that meant he had to work until 11 or 12 at night.”
Thompson’s middle child, Jacob, who plans to study criminology, said he was never worried about how people at school would respond when he talked about his father’s career because his dad is always so friendly to everyone he meets.
“At Mary Persons I could talk about him and not be afraid of how people were gonna react,” Jacob Thompson said. “Because that’s my dad and he helps these people. He helps their families and their friends. And I knew a couple of people growing up who have had interactions with him. And it was always nice hearing about the difference between their interaction with him and with other cops where they felt threatened by the situation or they felt very nervous. But they felt okay talking to my dad because he wanted to keep the situation as calm as he could.”
While all five of Thompson’s children said they worried about their father’s safety given his dangerous line of work, Jacob Thompson probably worried the most.
“I stressed about that until the day he retired,” Jacob Thompson said. “I thought about him every day when he got in that car. We all really did. . . It really was a struggle for me. I knew what he was doing was good and it was for the betterment of the community, so that always was reassuring to me. But I always just worried about the people out there. You can’t control the people out there. And he’s always willing to do whatever he can to give someone the benefit of the doubt and that always put him in danger.”
Dana Thompson said she began worrying more about her husband’s safety in recent years.
“Early on I wasn’t as concerned,” Dana Thompson said. “Maybe it was being young and a little bit naïve. But these last five to 10 years, it’s been different. I’m glad he’s not a young officer starting out. You never know what’s going to be on the other side of that door. I can remember when we first got married, I said something about getting a radio at home. And he said, ‘Not in our house.’ And I said, ‘I guess I’ll buy one if I want to.’ He said, ‘I’ll break it.’ He said, ‘I don’t want you sitting at home and hearing my number being called out and you don’t know what’s going on.’ And he was right. He was absolutely right.”
All of Thompson’s children said their dad would prefer they make a different career choice than he did.
“I think he would absolutely beat all of us with a 2 x 4 if we went into law enforcement,” said Thompson’s daughter Jordan. “I think he would be absolutely terrified for all of us. He never wanted it for any of us. He wanted us to do what makes us happy but to do something else.”
Thompson said he’s gonna take some time off to travel before deciding what’s next, but his sister Cathy Pope thinks her brother might have a teaching career in his future.
Pope said, “I’m all about education and I think he has a lot to teach, so I really am encouraging him in every way that I can to teach what he knows at the training level, college level, law enforcement level, whatever that level might be.”
On his last day at work on June 11, MSCO gave Thompson a party at the Sheriff’s Office, where he received a pistol as a parting gift. Monroe County Sheriff Brad Freeman said even beyond Thompson’s success as a deputy, Thompson’s good nature and sense of humor will be greatly missed at MCSO, where he could always be counted on for a timely one-liner.
Freeman said of Thompson: “He always kept things light, and he was always able to communicate with people.”
Then, on July 17, Thompson officially ended his career in style with a low country boil retirement party at The Barn in Culloden. About 100 family members, former co-workers and friends attended the bash, including sisters Susan Whitmer and Pope and all five of his children and their families.
“I just want the community in Monroe County to realize that I appreciate them picking me to serve them,” Thompson said with his typical modesty. “It’s been a great opportunity and my privilege.”
