He has probably attended more social and civic events than Miss Mississippi. Indeed, the annual pageant is just one of the places most law-abiding citizens see him. But Leroy Williams has also experienced his share of close calls in his more than 30 years in law enforcement, for his life is on the line every day.

Of those events, however, the easy-going deputy sheriff said, “I don’t care to elaborate,” adding only that “I’ve gone home at 2 in the morning and tried to drink a cup of coffee and spilled every drop.”

Williams grew up in Madison County, where he was born 58 years ago into a family with law enforcement in the blood. His interest was natural, for his father and cousins were in law enforcement, his grandfather was assistant chief of police in Canton and his uncle was a judge. His only brother, Kenny, who died last year, was a policeman here, later working for U.S. Customs in El Paso, Texas.

Typing was another connection to what became Williams’ profession. He learned to type in the 10th grade, and every afternoon after school he went to the office of his uncle, the judge, and typed warrants and other legal documents for him.

Williams might also have pursued an agrarian future. His relatives who weren’t in law enforcement were usually farmers, and he had an uncle who was a veterinarian. His uncle had a similar ambition for Williams, but he remembers, “I had stood on the southbound end of a northbound cow too many nights helping him while rain and sleet were pouring down my back.” Instead, he enrolled at Holmes Community College in Goodman with plans to major in wildlife biology, but dropped out to help take care of the family when his father became ill.

Williams wound up in Vicksburg when the family moved here. He worked for a while at International Paper, “Then I branched out. I thought I wanted to chase construction and like to have starved to death.” He applied for a job as patrolman with the Vicksburg Police Department in 1976. Twenty years later he retired, and in 1998 he went to work for Sheriff Martin Pace.

Being in law enforcement is a continuing education  — not just in the refresher courses officers take, but in the daily episodes they face and the people they meet. Though Williams enjoys his job and likes people, he learned early on to “avoid a man who doesn’t get scared. There’s something wrong in his psychological makeup or nature.”

He said he doesn’t meet too many strangers and tries “not to leave somebody with a sour taste in my mouth, or theirs either.”

Time, chance and circumstance play a big part in his job. “You get a feel for things. I’ve been involved in high-speed pursuits, have captured some bank robbers and murder suspects. You name it. You run the gamut. It’s just part of a normal day of life for me.”

Williams remembers the times when, if he wasn’t in a rush, he would stop his patrol car in a neighborhood where a group of kids was playing and let them inspect the car and explain the equipment and try to answer the questions that “came at you like a machine gun going off. Most will grow up and look at policemen as friends. I can’t stand it for a parent to ‘boogerman’ me in front of kids.”

Williams has also experienced episodes that still make him laugh. He told of a couple he knew who were expecting their first child. Late one night he was out on an accident callback, where he returned to the scene of a wreck to lock it down better in his mind. He was on 61 South “when I saw a car coming at a high rate of speed, hitting it, so I turned around and got the car stopped on the edge of town.”

When he approached the driver’s side, he recognized him, eased up to the window and said, “Boy, what are you doing out at this time of the morning, driving like that?”

He replied, “Leroy, you got to get me to the hospital, you got to get me to the hospital.”

“For what?” Williams asked. “Slow down. What happened?”

“My wife, she’s having a baby,” he said.

“Well, where is she, son?” Williams asked. “And he looked over in the passenger seat and said, ‘Oh, my God, I left her!’”

Williams told him to slow down and go on to the emergency room and wait, that he would pick up the wife and be there soon.

“I knew where they lived, so I drove on down to the house and she was sitting on the steps on her suitcase,” Williams said. She assured him she was all right, then she asked, “Did that durn fool kill himself?”

Williams told her no, that he stopped him before he could do it.

They made it to the hospital just fine. On another occasion the timing wasn’t so good, and Williams had to deliver a baby and said, emphatically, “No more. That was enough for me.”

On another night he saw some guys setting up, preparing to make a hit. Williams had arrived just in time for the burglary, and “I eased up right beside ’em there, and one of ’em finally realized I was standing there.”

“Where’d you come from?” he blurted out, and Williams replied, “It doesn’t matter where I came from. It’s where you’re going next. He told the judge, I didn’t do him right. Guess I was supposed to have warned ’em.”

He has seen a lot of changes in his profession, including the Miranda ruling (reading a suspect his legal rights), and the Garcia ruling that put a stop to policemen working “from can to can’t.” Computers have also brought about dramatic changes. One that a few decades ago took up a city block can’t do today what a laptop can offer.

A lot can’t be computerized, though, and Williams said, “You learn to read people real quick. If you don’t, you don’t stay in this business very long.” He admits he probably has the equivalent of a degree in psychology, “it’s just not on paper.”

Williams said he once thought of keeping a diary, but decided, “Naw, better not do that” as some things are better unsaid and unwritten. A friend suggested that he write his memoirs of the things he’s seen and done, “but I said, if I did, you’d have seven or eight people jumping off the bridge every hour.”

He loves providing security for community events, for he loves people, particularly children and likes “seeing them having a good time, out where they are unfettered, where they can romp and stomp. I guess, sometimes, I’m still a big kid at heart. He also takes pride in providing professional escorts for funeral processions. He almost always knew the person who has died and, if not, their family or friends.

“To protect and serve has a different meaning to me than it does for a lot of people,” he said. “Those in a hurry lose contact with the community. It has helped me solve a lot of cases over the years, such as someone saying, ‘Mr. Leroy, that guy you’re looking for, he’s over at such-and-such a place.’”

Williams has a reputation among his fellow law enforcement friends for being consoling during times of tragedy, a trait he said he thinks he inherited from both his father and mother.

“My dad was a considerate person. It troubled him when he saw people suffer. My mother was the same way,” he said. “Sometimes some of the younger guys look at me like I’ve lost my mind because I tend to spend a little more time with people, but they need it. It’s an essential part of my job.”

It is no wonder that he was once named Officer of the Year, and that people ask for Leroy Williams.

Gordon Cotton is an author and historian who lives in Vicksburg.