NSA President

 

Larry Amerson is in his fifth term as Sheriff of Calhoun County and has been in the law enforcement/public safety field for 37 years. He graduated from Jacksonville State University in 1975 where he earned a B.S. degree in law enforcement. 

 

He was hired at the Calhoun County Sheriff’s Office as a Deputy working in the jail, as a patrol Deputy, and Investigator. In 1988 he was hired to be Administrator of Calhoun County’s new Enhanced 9-1-1 system. Amerson was elected the second President of Alabama’s NENA and was a speaker at state, regional and national conferences.

 

In 1994 he became a candidate for Sheriff and campaigned on a platform of improving and modernizing all operations of the Sheriff’s Office. After being elected, he guided his staff through an agency-wide improvement process. Patrol operations, investigations, jail operations, training and records were completely evaluated and upgraded. The jail has grown from a 180 per day inmate population to 450 per day average. The jail was the first in Alabama to adopt legal-based guidelines for Policy and Procedures and was the first to commission an outside inspection of all jail operations. He is an American Jail Association Certified Jail Manager.  

 

In his tenure, he has many notable achievements including obtaining a custom written records management system. The Calhoun County Jail is a beta site for a video visitation system that will allow inmate/family visits via the Internet. The jail also serves as a beta testing site for Facial Recognition software and interagency sharing of data. 

 

Partnerships are an essential aspect of Sheriff Amerson’s leadership style. Working with the county board of education, SRO’s have been placed in the local schools to ensure the safety of the students and faculty. The Sheriff, Probate Judge and local mental health leadership worked as a team to establish the first Mental Health Officer position in the county. A Sheriff’s Deputy that is a licensed counselor responds to incidents involving the mentally ill. Working with the Crime Stoppers Board, the sheriff started a local television show, Calhoun County’s Most Wanted which has been credited with more than 2,000 arrests.     

                                                                                                                                          

Sheriff Amerson has served as President of the Alabama Sheriff’s Association and came up through the ranks with the National Sheriffs’ Association. For NSA, he serves as the Chairman of the NSI, Education and Training Committee, Vice Chairman of the Court Security Committee, a member of the Pegasus Advisory Board, the Endorsements/Marketing Committee, and Ethics, Standards and Accreditation Committee. He is a graduate of the National Sheriffs’ Institute and has served as a mentor for another class. 

 

He intends to focus his efforts as President of NSA making NSA the premier source for high quality jail officer and court security training and seeking new ways to share information among all law enforcement agencies.

 

Sheriff Amerson is married to Annalisa Diamond Amerson and together they have four children. Annalisa is the Technology Director for the Calhoun County Board of Education. They share a passion for the outdoors and traveling.