After serving 16 years as the sheriff of Rhea County, Leon Sneed is setting down the radio and taking off his badge.

Though Sneed will no longer be in law enforcement, the 53-year-old has no intentions of retiring.

"I am going to do Leon Sneed's business instead of Rhea County business," he said.
He said he will miss being constantly busy and not getting calls from the time he wakes up in the morning until he goes to bed at night.
"It'll take me some time to stop worring about where my radio is," he said.

Though he is not interested in running for sheriff again, Sneed has kept the door to politics open for now.

"I don't know what's down the road for me in the next few years," he said.

During his tenure at the sheriff's department, Sneed took a hard approach to keeping Rhea County's neighborhoods safe.

He promised four things to the residents of Rhea County when he first took office in 1986: to keep drunk drivers off the road, keep burglaries down, and keep child molesters and drug dealers out of Rhea County neighborhoods.

"I did my best to work hard for the people of Rhea County," Sneed said. "Law enforcement is an honorable profession if you make it that way, and I've done my best to make my [profession] honorable."

His major accomplishment at the sheriff's department was not having to take a life and not losing a life.

A Rhea County officer was called to back up a Bledsoe County officer which resulted in the death of a suspect several years ago. "We managed to send everyone home at the end of their shift," Sneed said.

On Sept. 1, Sneed will hand over the keys to the sheriff's department to incoming Sheriff Mike Neal.

"I think Mike is focused on what is important to the citizens of Rhea County," Sneed said.

"I've done my best to work for Rhea County. Not just the people who put me in here, but all the people. Once election day was over I tried to work just as hard for everybody. I appreciate the opportunity of working with the people of Rhea County. They gave me a shot at it, and I did my best to do a good job, and I feel like I have."

Sarah B. Hodge can be reached at shodge@xtn.net.