Since becoming the chief law enforcement officer of the parish in 1980, Caddo Parish (La.) Sheriff Don Hathaway has moved his Office from a small, narrowly focused department of 150 deputies to a modern, innovative, professional agency of more than 600 deputies touching every Caddo Parish citizen.

Seeking ways to better serve the public and make his deputies more effective, he instituted a higher education tuition assistance program. He restructured recruiting and hiring, incorporating polygraph tests, psychological interviews and background checks into a comprehensive selection process. He established standardized pay and rank structures and incentive pay for firearms proficiency, superior physical fitness and higher education achievements. He created an agencywide open-door policy, an employee assistance program and an employee-financed Benevolent Fund to assist employees and families when a deputy or spouse dies.

Recognizing the importance of community partnerships, he organized a Sheriff's Summer Youth Camp with the Boy Scouts in 1989 for underprivileged 10- to 14-year-old boys in the parish and personally raises private-sector funding each year to run the camp. Seven years earlier, he started a Summer Youth Recreation Program for economically disadvantaged youth. Run by coaches at public schools, the recreation program has grown from a single school in 1982 to seven schools throughout the parish this year.

He pioneered Drug Abuse Resistance Education (D.A.R.E.) and School Resource Officer programs in Caddo Parish and was the second Louisiana Sheriff to establish a senior citizen Triad Program.

He has headed the United Way, Shreveport Jaycees, his church board of trustees, Brentwood Hospital board of trustees, the Louisiana Tech University Alumni Association and the Louisiana Tech Alumni Foundation. His memberships include the Boy Scouts Council trust committee, and boards of the Girl Scouts Chapter, Association for the Blind, Goodwill Industries, YMCA, Better Business Bureau, Samaritan Counseling Center, Shreveport Sports Foundation and Kiwanis Club.

Upon taking office in 1980, Sheriff Hathaway immediately began a reorganization of the agency to group all departments under one of three functional bureaus: Administration, Detention and Operations.

He doubled the number of deputies on patrol, dramatically reduced response time and established or modernized special units such as a Search and Rescue Team, Airborne Law Enforcement Unit, Special Response Teams and a Hazardous Material Unit. He acquired three boats that are used by his Search and Rescue Unit in life-saving and victim-location operations on the parish's lakes and waterways, as well as to patrol area lakes and the Red River.

He upgraded and modernized equipment throughout the agency, including vehicles, semi-automatic weapons and bullet-resistant vests for all line deputies. He decentralized the Operations Bureau by implementing the Community Oriented Policing concept and creating geographic Patrol Sectors and strategically located Substations.

He assumed operational control of the parish's detention center in 1982 and spearheaded an at-times politically unpopular long-range movement to build the first new-generation jail in the state. After he successfully beat back an effort to privatize the new facility, the new jail opened under his supervision in early 1995.

By establishing "direct supervision" as the facility's management philosophy, he doubled inmate capacity with only a 30-percent increase in staff. Relying on a combination of paid staff and volunteers from the community, he has established extensive computer-based education, drug- and substance-abuse programs, literacy training, rehabilitation and job-placement programs for inmates.

An innovator in Louisiana law enforcement, Sheriff Hathaway established communication among and organized monthly meetings for the heads of local, state and federal law enforcement agencies in Northwest Louisiana. While the practices are now common, he was the first Louisiana Sheriff to make Corrections the entry point for all line deputies, requiring them to be P.O.S.T. (Police Officer Standards and Training) certified and complete on-the-job field training. He was also the first Louisiana Sheriff to establish an Assessment Center for promotions and transfers, the first Sheriff in the state to require education for promotions and the first to adopt a substance abuse policy and require random drug testing.

A Louisiana Sheriffs' Association past president, he chairs the LSA's Insurance Advisory Committee and is immediatepast chairman of the Northwest Louisiana Law Enforcement Planning Agency. He is also a member of the Louisiana Commission on Law Enforcement.

He is a past president of the National Sheriff's Association, having assumed that postion on June 19, 1996, at the NSA's annual meeting in Portland, Oregon. The NSA serves more than 3,000 Sheriff's and 22,000 members. As an NSA officer, he and the NSA staff provided the leadership for NSA to establish an affiliate organization comprising court officers, process servers and transport officers. Its mission is to provide specialized training and instructions for those officers.

Sheriff Hathaway is deeply involved in his community. Among the honors he has received for that community involvement are the State of Israel Peace Medal; Scouting's Silver Beaver Award; DeMolay Legion of Merit Award and Life Membership; the Clyde E. Fant Memorial Award for Community Service; Employer of the Year for hiring the handicapped; Community Service Award from the Caddo Community Council of Parents and Educators; Life Membership in the Shreveport Jaycees, and Honorary Life Membership in the Shreveport Exchange Club.

Sheriff Hathaway and his wife, Betty Lou, have three children and seven grandchildren.