Alamance County sheriff promotes first Black, first woman major in reshuffle

Alamance County Sheriff Terry S. Johnson has promoted Montrese Dodson to major, placing her in charge of the office’s training, standards, certification, hiring, payroll and other personnel work while Captain Mark Dockery joined the leadership reshuffle.

The move matters because the sheriff’s office does far more than patrol. It also handles detention, courtroom security, service of civil papers and animal control, so the people overseeing staffing and standards help shape how quickly the agency can fill openings, train deputies and keep day-to-day operations moving across the county.

Dodson, 47, is from Danville, Virginia, and rose through the agency from detention officer to major. Her promotion made her the first woman and the first Black person to reach that rank in the Alamance County Sheriff’s Office, a milestone that also signals a changing command structure inside one of the county’s most visible law-enforcement agencies.

Her background fits the job. Dodson has spent years on the front lines of recruitment and retention, work that has become increasingly important as law-enforcement agencies have struggled to staff up. The administrative portfolio she now oversees gives her direct influence over who gets hired, how employees are trained and whether personnel standards are consistently enforced across the office.

Dockery’s rise adds another layer to the shift. The 36-year-old Reidsville native dropped out of high school at 16, later enrolled at Rockingham Community College and worked his way into law enforcement through a less traditional path. His promotion, alongside Dodson’s, suggests Johnson is refreshing the upper ranks while keeping control of the office inside a familiar chain of command.

Johnson has led the sheriff’s office since 2002 and the agency says he began his law-enforcement career in 1972, later retiring from the North Carolina State Bureau of Investigation in 2001 before being elected sheriff. He is now seeking a seventh term, having secured the Republican nomination after the March 3 primary and heading into the November ballot against unaffiliated candidate Shannon Long. In that election-year setting, the promotions read as more than a personnel announcement: they show who is being positioned to run the office if voters return Johnson to another term.