By Melanie Patterson

The North Jefferson News



Shirley D. Vandiver has policing in his blood.

He has given 43 years of his life to being a law enforcement officer, and is still going strong.

“It’s my heart and soul. It’s what I love to do,” he said.

Vandiver works part-time as an officer for the Kimberly Police Department.

He also serves as bailiff for Kimberly Municipal Court two evenings a week.

Last month, Vandiver used his own money to buy a $200 metal detector for the Kimberly court room.

“I did it because of the danger I could see possibly walking into the court room,” said Vandiver. “I just didn’t feel like it was safe, with the hostile country we’re living in, to have people walking into the courtroom like that.”

Vandiver said he has seen people come to court with knives in their pockets, with knitting needles and other items that could be used as weapons.

He even bought plastic trays into which he requires people to empty their pockets before he scans them with the wand-type metal detector.

That way, he said, he can check what people have in their pockets before they enter the court room.

Vandiver said he expected some “cute comments” from people when he first began using the metal detector at court. But it didn’t happen.

“They react to it just like it’s a normal procedure,” he said. “They really expect it. They’re very receptive to it.”

Vandiver said the safety precaution is not just for himself, the judge or other court workers.

“It’s for the general public,” he said. “It’s for everyone’s protection.”

Vandiver said he really began thinking about making Kimberly’s court safer last month, when a gunman opened fire during a council meeting in Kirkwood, Mo., killing six people.

“That brought my attention to it, that we need to do something to protect the citizens,” he said.

Vandiver has been Kimberly’s bailiff for more than two years.

He first got into law enforcement in 1965, working as a reserve Alabama State Trooper.

From there, he has worked with several police departments in Cullman and Jefferson counties. He said he has been every rank except captain.

“I may have gotten out of it for a few months, but I couldn’t live that way, I was in law enforcement so deep,” he said. “I’d always wanted to be in law enforcement since I was a little bitty guy. I wish I could live to be 150 just so I could be in law enforcement. It’s the best job on earth.”

Vandiver said his favorite part of the job is simply helping people.

“There’s always a problem, and I try to help them in any way I can. There’s nothing like it,” he said. “You have to do it from your heart.”

The main change Vandiver has seen in law enforcement over the past four decades is with drug-related crimes.

“Back then, we didn’t even know what marijuana smelled like,” he said.

He said a fellow officer ran across a small amount of marijuana one day, and the officers burned a small amount just so they could all recognize the odor.

Another time, he and another officer stopped to check out an abandoned car. They found a small white bottle on the dash with white residue inside. A small metal spoon was lying next to it.

“We had heard of cocaine,” he said, but they didn’t know whether they had run across it.

The other officer was going to taste it, but Vandiver stopped him.

“We had heard that if it was 100-percent cocaine, it would kill you,” he said.

“We were acting basically primitive because we didn’t have many drugs in Alabama,” he said. “That’s how things have changed over the years.”