From successful grant notifications to donations to the Fire Department and preparing for major winter weather, Union County Sheriff Shawn Dyer has kept busy seemingly every minute of the roughly two weeks he has been in his new role leading the Sheriff’s Office.
Of course, there’s the law enforcement side of things, and Dyer’s office has already overseen a significant drug bust in 2025.
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On Tuesday, Jan. 7, detectives with the UCSO Narcotics Division initiated an investigation into Barry “Brock” Harper, 50, of Towns County, Dyer said.
Harper has had multiple past run-ins with local law enforcement, and this time, the Sheriff’s Office was looking to take him into custody on felony probation warrants from another county, Dyer said.
Around 7 p.m. that evening, detectives staked out Harper’s known travel route on Gum Log Road, which he lives off in Young Harris, Dyer said.
When detectives spotted Harper and attempted to stop his vehicle, he fled to a nearby residence he is known to frequent, and there, he wrecked his vehicle and disappeared into the night, Dyer said.
The Sheriff’s Office called in a K-9 apprehension team with the Georgia Department of Natural Resources Law Enforcement Division, which successfully located Harper in the crawlspace of the residence, and he surrendered.
In the crawlspace, detectives located about 23 grams of methamphetamine where Harper had been hiding, adding to his list of charges, which are: felony probation violation, felony meth possession with intent to distribute and reckless driving.
Sheriff Dyer thanks DNR for assisting the Sheriff’s Office in arresting Harper, noting that “no law enforcement personnel or K-9 were injured in this arrest.”
In an unrelated incident on Jan. 7, the Narcotics Division seized approximately an ounce and a half of meth. This case is active and ongoing, and further information will be released once the case is concluded.
As for the law enforcement grants mentioned above, Dyer learned last week that two grants he had applied for last year as third in command of the Sheriff’s Office had been given the greenlight to be awarded.
The grants total $60,000, to be used to buy new computers and software primarily for patrol cars. Dyer was selective in applying for these particular grants, one through the Governor’s Office of Highway Safety and the other with the Georgia Association of Chiefs of Police.
As such, there are no strings attached to the funds; it’s just free money that allows UCSO to stay technologically up to date without impacting taxpayers – a practice Dyer looks forward to continuing from his predecessor Mack Mason, who retired as sheriff at the end of 2024.
Dyer said many of the UCSO fleet’s computers are becoming obsolete, and the new equipment will both upgrade reporting capabilities and allow deputies to stay in the field longer instead of having to come back to the Sheriff’s Office to complete their reports.
And this week, Dyer will be finalizing the donation of about a dozen bulletproof vests for the Fire Department to augment the few vests already possessed by firefighters.
People don’t usually think of the Fire Department as having a need for bulletproof vests. They fight fires, after all, not bad guys. But Fire Chief David Dyer said the donation would certainly come in handy in cases of extreme emergencies.
“Mainly what we could use them for is any kind of response to an active shooter incident, where we would set up a rescue task force,” said Chief Dyer, grateful for the donation. “There would be a group of law enforcement going in with the job of eliminating or isolating the shooter.
“Our job as a rescue task force would be to go in behind them and start triaging and treating people. That’s why they call it a task force – we would set up with law enforcement to go into these situations.
“So, they have their protection, and we have some vests, but they’re donating more vests for us that we can use for responding on one of these rescue task force teams.”
The fire chief said the extra vests will expand the range of sizes available to the department so firefighters have more fitting options to offer better protection should the need – God forbid – ever arise: “Plus, we can send in more people,” he added.
Sheriff Dyer noted that while the vests may be “expired” from a manufacturer’s – and therefore law enforcement – standpoint, they still have plenty of protective value and should last a long time yet because the vests will not be subject to regular wear and tear at the Fire Department.
And he’s happy to make the donation to another local agency, especially since the added layer of protection for firefighters would just be discarded otherwise.
Also last week, Sheriff Dyer coordinated with other county offices and attended two National Weather Service briefings at Fire Station No. 1 regarding the winter weather that moved in Friday, making sure the UCSO emergency response was all hands on deck during the storm.
“The transition has been seamless,” the new sheriff said of his first days in office. “We’ve been really busy getting contracts and accounts transferred over from Sheriff Mack’s name to my name. We’re starting out working hard and will continue to do so.”
