The race for Berrien County Sheriff is more than a year away, but already there are two people in the race.
Earlier this year, Sheriff Paul Bailey announced plans to retire at the end of 2023. That’s a year before his term is up and it’s expected his Undersheriff Chuck Heit will be appointed to serve out the remainder of Bailey’s term. Earlier this month, Heit announced he will run for sheriff in 2024, and now he has some competition. Rick Briand of Niles announced his candidacy for sheriff. He says community policing is a large part of his platform.
“One of the things I ran on last time was community policing and that’s still big in my heart. There should be a good relationship between the sheriff’s department and the community and the community should have a good relationship with one another. So that rather than call the police because the neighbors are arguing, maybe we could just say, ‘hey let’s stop that arguing and police ourselves,’” said Briand.
Briand ran for the post as an independent candidate in 2016 and garnered 16 percent of the vote. He believes his chances are better this time around because he is running as a Republican. He also intends to apply for the position of interim sheriff.
