Meet LaRue
Twenty years inside this office
LaRue Windham has spent his working life in law enforcement in Cumberland County. He joined the Cumberland County Sheriff's Office in 1988 and served there for twenty years, rising from deputy to deputy operations commander — the job that runs the day-to-day operations of the agency.
Law enforcement is the family trade. His father served as a chief deputy in Cumberland County and later as assistant director of the North Carolina State Bureau of Investigation. Windham is a graduate of the FBI National Academy, where his coursework covered leadership, ethics, media and police management, and he holds a bachelor's degree in criminal justice administration from the University of Mount Olive. He lives in Gray's Creek with his son, Cuyler.
Since leaving the sheriff's office he has stayed in the field, working inside North Carolina's corrections system — in special operations, as a training coordinator at Morrison Correctional Institution, and in probation and parole.
He is running because he believes the deputies of this county need a sheriff they can bring a problem to without weighing what it will cost them, and because the people of Cumberland County are owed a plain account of what their sheriff's office is doing — in the schools, on the drug cases, and inside the detention center. That is the whole of it: trust inside the building, and transparency outside it.
- Twenty years in this office Cumberland County Sheriff’s Office, 1988–2008 — deputy through deputy operations commander
- Since 2008 N.C. corrections — special operations, training coordinator at Morrison Correctional Institution, probation and parole
- Trained FBI National Academy · B.S. criminal justice administration, University of Mount Olive
- Family Son, Cuyler. His father was a Cumberland County chief deputy and later assistant director of the N.C. SBI
- Home Gray’s Creek
