Tony Lossiah was a good man, a quiet guy with a caring heart. He loved his family and worked hard on the job, say the friends and family still mourning his loss in the tightknit Cherokee community. 

As allegations of police brutality continue to dominate the news all across the country, many law enforcement agencies have turned to body cameras as a possible solution.

A bid to make the Cherokee police chief’s position an elected one isn’t dead, but Tribal Council has voted to complete a study examining the pros and cons of such a move before making a choice. Following a lengthy discussion at their July meeting and a two-and-a-half-hour work session later that month, the council voted to embark on a feasibility study examining the possible effects of the idea and needs in the police department.

There’s talk in Cherokee of making the chief of police’s job an elected position following a resolution introduced by Travis Smith, a Birdtown resident who’s also a candidate for Tribal Council.

Two officers with the Franklin Police Department are back on duty while the N.C. State Bureau of Investigations continues to look into a deadly shooting involving the officers.

The North Carolina State Bureau of Investigations is conducting an investigation after a man was killed during a June 30 altercation with two Franklin police officers.

Sylva Commissioner Danny Allen had a question. He’d been watching what was happening with the incidents in Ferguson, Missouri, and New York, where police-involved fatalities of black men have led to civil unrest, and wondered about his own home. 

“I wonder,” Allen asked during a recent Sylva Town board meeting, “if the police have gone through any kind of ethnic sensitivity training to handle such things?”

Jackson County sheriff candidate Curtis Lambert no longer has a job with the Sylva Police Department, but he says his firing last week isn’t throwing cold water on his campaign. 

Equipment replacement schedules were some of the first line items on the chopping block for local governments when the economy tanked.

The town of Waynesville plans to buy 15 new police cars in the coming year for $500,000, a move that will assign each officer their own vehicle instead of having to share.