Warren County covers 619 square miles and all but 35.3 miles of it is outside the city of Vicksburg.  ///  And on this Saturday night, Jesse Tilley was one of the Warren County sheriff’s deputies patrolling the northern end.

It was midnight and halfway into his 12-hour shift that began at 6 p.m. as Tilley moved along a rather vacant Interstate 20 to U.S. 61 North to patrol the neighborhoods off Oak Ridge and Culkin Roads.
“We’re out looking for any unusual activity,” he said. “When you patrol these neighborhoods, you get to know the people, so when you see someone in the area who doesn’t look familiar or is out of place, you stop and ask them what they’re doing. If they give you a wrong answer like, ‘My mother lives in that house,’ and you know the person living in the house has no children, you get suspicious.
“And we have the clubs, which will be closing at 2 (a.m.), which means we’ll have some DUIs and DUIs with speeding.”
Tilley has been with the sheriff’s office for seven years, starting in the jail, and later working court house security before moving into patrol. He said he’s still learning some of the county’s nooks and crannies. His car has GPS with a virtual map, but even that fails to locate some rural roads.
“Sometimes, we’ll get a call and the road’s not even in the system,” he said.
“When we’re out on patrol, we watch each other’s backs,” he said. “We try to come to each other’s aid. I may be patrolling up north, but if a deputy needs help in the south, I’ll move that way.”
He also passes through the businesses along 61 North, checking on the clerks doing late night duty. “I try to see inside and see how the clerks are doing,” he said. “You see a lot of new faces.”
Tilley’s patrol this Saturday night first took him to Openwood Plantation to check on a previous noise complaint involving a party. In the dark, the trees along Oak Ridge Road seem to close in, creating a tunnel. The subdivision is almost as dark.
“The dark can really confuse you,” he said. “If somebody describes something to you, you see what he describes, even if it isn’t there. You have to take a minute to get your thoughts together.”
As he enters the street, where he previously answered the noise call, the party had broken up, so Tilley continues through the neighborhood, giving special attention to vacant homes — especially those with a “for sale” sign in front.
“We’ve got to watch those homes for sale, because there’s always the chance that someone who’s got no business there may try to get into the house,” he said.
He also checks out an open gate at a business.
At one point on his rounds, he approaches a car parked on the side of the road that suddenly turns on it lights. As he pulls up next to the car, the driver tries to pull away and is stopped by the flashing blue lights.
“Do you need some help?” he asks the driver, who says she’s fine and drives off.
“Sometimes, you don’t need a lot of interaction with people,” he said. “Sometimes, just being there can stop somebody from doing something. A lot of people will do something they don’t want to do out of peer pressure. I may have stopped her from doing something she didn’t want to do.”
He later moves to U.S. 80 to check on a car dealership and later runs a vehicle identification number on a vacant car parked outside a business.
“You never know what’s going to happen,” Tilley said as he headed back to U.S. 61 North. “You do your job and just stay ready.”