Eggleton returns to Putnam County to become sheriff

WINFIELD, W.Va. — Putnam County native Bobby Eggleton has dedicated his entire life to a law enforcement career. He is a retired member of the Charleston Police Department, served as the Police Chief in the city of Nitro, and on Monday started his duty as Putnam County Sheriff.

“I’m very honored to be the Sheriff of my home county. I graduated from Hurricane High School. The people of Putnam County are my people and I’m honored to represent people of Putnam County,” Eggleton told WCHS Radio.

As he starts the job, one of his first priorities is how to make the sheriff’s department better serve the public on it’s existing budget. There are currently two vacancies for deputies in the county. Eggleton said those will be filled as soon as they can get two candidates through the training process. At full strength the county is budged for 44 deputies. He’d like to see that number increase to an even 50.

“We can always use more, but we have to look at the money. We don’t want to raise taxes on people to put more officers on the road. There’s a fine line between too many and not enough. I think we need more, but we have to find the money to get them,” he said.

Immediately he wants to look at creating a district policing plan for his deputies, one which keeps deputies patrolling a certain sector of the county exclusively. According to Eggleton, such a policy would serve a couple of factors. First it would enable deputies to better know the people of their particular service area and second, it would help with response times. Despite being a small county, Putnam County has a lot of obstacles which make it difficulty to navigate.

“If a deputy responds from the Lincoln County line over to Poca, that’s a long way,” Eggleton explained. “It’s a safety issue to. If we have somebody down in Hurricane and they need to get to the Nitro area of Putnam County, they’re running a code three response, that’s very dangerous for our deputy and the public.”

Like many of his predecessors, Eggleton knows the drug trade never stops and continues to be one of the county’s biggest challenges.

“The Covid may have put it on the back burner for the news, but it hasn’t slowed down at all. We’re going to try to address it the best we can,” he said.