Law enforcement lost a class act this week
Columnist
One of the most colorful law enforcement officers I’ve ever known died this week.
I.C. Sutton passed away at home at the age of 83. His life marked a special era in law enforcement, a time when an officers’ kids would ride in the patrol car, when you didn’t always have to carry a gun — and I.C. Sutton often didn’t — and people listened to you not only because of what your badge represented, but also because of the character behind it.
I was a young and new reporter for The Mountaineer, covering the town of Maggie Valley, when I got to know Chief Sutton. He was very kind to me, even slipping me into places that “proper procedure” would dictate I shouldn’t go — like up the side of Sheepback Mountain during a forest fire. At the time he was winding down a long and, for the most part, voluntary career in law enforcement.
He’d been a constable, back when the state had such a position. Then he became a special deputy for the Maggie Valley area — there wasn’t an official town at that time. To make ends meet, he worked at Dayco. For 32 years he worked the day job, then spent his nights riding with deputies or the highway patrol or answering calls around Maggie. When Maggie Valley became a town in 1972, it paid for Sutton’s car insurance and gas — but that was it. He was sworn in as the town’s police chief in 1976 — the town started paying him for the job in 1980.
“There’s no telling how much money he spent on his own to enforce the law out there,” former Maggie Valley town manager Al Matthews once commented. “He bought his own uniforms, hardware, holsters, guns, blue lights, sirens.”
At times Sutton would also carry toys in the back seat of the patrol car to give to children. When Sutton knew people were prone to drink, he would often check on them at their vulnerable times, to make sure they wouldn’t drink and drive — and sometimes give them a ride to keep such a thing from happening. He was a prankster who was known to slip a child’s booster seat into the driver’s seat of a short lady’s Cadillac, or show up at a restaurant with bread in his pocket and ask the staff to toast it for him.
Don’t assume I.C. Sutton’s work was unappreciated, even when it was not unpaid. Stories about him abound — as I found out when he retired as police chief in 1988. Here are a few of them, taken from his retirement story.
— When minister and rescue squad volunteer David Reeves answered an emergency call from a trailer near Maggie one night, the occupant was waving a gun and screaming.
“A deputy sheriff jumped in front of the guy, who kept screaming, and I was thinking about jumping through the window,” Reeves said. “Then I.C. stuck his head in the door.
“He called him by name and said, ‘You go sit on the couch and I’ll be there in a minute.’ And the guy just put the gun down on the washing machine and sat down. It was absolutely amazing.’
— One night, town manager Matthews picked up a radio call from Stuckey’s, a Maggie convenience store. Three men were vandalizing the store. Matthews decided to help Sutton answer the call.
“There were three of them,” Matthews said. “One was an average-sized guy, one was a big guy, and one was a monster. They had taken a garden hose and were spraying water into the store.
Sutton had just arrived.
“I.C. turns to me and says, ‘You ain’t got a gun on ya, do ya?’” Matthews recalled. “I said, ‘No, don’t you have a gun?’ And he said, ‘I left it in the car or at the house.’ “The store owner said, ‘I’ve got a gun you can borrow,’ but before she could go get it, I.C. started yelling at the biggest guy first. He went up to him, and his nose hit the monster right in the chest. He eventually borrowed the pistol from the Stuckey’s owner, but by then he already had the three of them under control.”
— “I don’t get scared too bad,” Sutton himself said. “But I do remember one time .…”
The sheriff’s department had been seeking some suspects, and Sutton spotted them headed up Soco Mountain. He radioed the sheriff.
“I told them I didn’t have my gun with me, and the sheriff’s department said not to pull them over, just to stay behind them until the deputies could back me up. “Well, I run them to Rough Branch and stopped ‘em. I was afraid they were going to get away. But it wasn’t but a few minutes until the sheriff’s car got there.”
In the meantime, Sutton stood by the suspects’ car door and ordered them to stay in the vehicle — so they couldn’t see that he had no gun.
I didn’t know Chief Sutton until near the end of his career, but I didn’t have to, to appreciate the legacy he left in Maggie Valley. You could talk to almost anyone who’d lived in the valley for at time, and they would have an I.C. Sutton story. Not that the stories ended upon his retirement. The next day, Sutton retuned to town hall, in uniform, as a part-time officer. And though he is now gone, the legacy continues — his son, Scott, is now Maggie’s police chief.
Kathy N. Ross is a former Mountaineer reporter and news editor. She can be reached at kathymross@bellsouth.net.
