Headlines 6 May 2014

Barrera wins Highland County Sheriff primary race

By
Caitlin Forsha-crforsha@gmail.com

Donnie Barrera has won the Highland County Sheriff primary election.

Barrera, a Republican, unofficially won with 4,107 votes, defeating acting Sheriff Richard Warner, who had 2,349 votes. Warner had been appointed by the Highland County Republican Central Committee in November following the resignation of former Sheriff Ron Ward.

"I'd like to thank the people of Highland County for coming out today and supporting us," Barrera said. "I'd like to thank everyone on the Barrera for Sheriff team for working diligently week-in, every day. We had quite a few people every weekend who came out and sacrificed weekends to help us."

Barrera began his career with the Highland County Sheriff's Office in 1993 as a road patrol deputy. In 1999, he was promoted to road sergeant of the patrol division.

In 20-plus years as a deputy sheriff for Highland County, Barrera has served as "acting sheriff" during the absence of both the sheriff and chief deputy and has been a guiding force as lead officer on many cases throughout his career.

Barrera has served as officer in charge of the traffic crash division, overseeing crash reports distributed to state authorities and developing the traffic crash reporting system training program.

[[In-content Ad]]

Barrera has also worked as an Ohio Peace Officer Training Council instructor, gaining expertise in field sobriety testing and OVI enforcement, and as a Police Training Academy and Taser instructor. Barrera has obtained more than 1,000 hours of law enforcement and management training since 1992.

Barrera resigned Jan. 6, 2014 from the Highland County Sheriff's Office and announced his candidacy the following day. Barrera said he's "missed it every day" and is looking forward to returning to the department upon being sworn in as sheriff in January 2015.

 Among Barrera's career accomplishments are: Ohio Distinguished Law Enforcement Community Service Award by Ohio Attorney General Mike DeWine, 2013; Highland County OVI Award, 2001; Distinguished Service Award from the Buckeye State Sheriffs' Association, 1998; Lifesaving Recognition Award from Division of Parks and Recreation, 1998; and Highland County Sheriff's Office Deputy of the Year Award, 1996.

Barrera said Tuesday that working to combat the "drug epidemic" in Highland County is among his goals as sheriff.

"If we can go forward with the task force that I wanted to implement, then I look forward to doing that with other county agencies," Barrera said. "Hopefully the sheriff's department, other agencies and the state can get together and solve the problem or slow it down."

Barrera is currently employed with Ralph Bloom Trucking and said that he will continue working there until his swearing-in as Highland County Sheriff.

Add new comment

This is not for publication.
This is not for publication.
About text formats

Plain text

  • No HTML tags allowed.
  • Lines and paragraphs break automatically.
  • Web page addresses and email addresses turn into links automatically.
Article comments are not posted immediately to the Web site. Each submission must be approved by the Web site editor, who may edit content for appropriateness. There may be a delay of 24-48 hours for any submission while the web site editor reviews and approves it. Note: All information on this form is required. Your telephone number and email address is for our use only, and will not be attached to your comment.
CAPTCHA This question is for testing whether or not you are a human visitor and to prevent automated spam submissions. Image CAPTCHA
Enter the characters shown in the image.