LITTLE ROCK, Ark — If you were to walk into the Pulaski County County Regional Detention Center (PCCRD) you would find a lot of women working in and around the facility as detention deputies. Many of those women are also African American.
71% of the detention deputies are Black. The overall for the sheriff's department is 48% women in total.
PCCRD has its first African American woman major among the ranks.
Major Toni Rose was appointed the new position in October of 2020. Her career started at the facility in 1996 and she's rose through the ranks from a detention deputy in housing and security.
"To me it's just a step up but I feel like with stepping up I get a little bit more opportunity to root for the personnel more-so for changes," said Rose.
She's leading the detention's operations and housing. She said she knows what it's like for those in the lower ranks and ensures she hears their thoughts and concerns for the facility. She praised them as the reason for her promotion.
"We're a team around here. If you come here and have a mindset of being fair, firm, and consistent your personnel is here and if you work good together, your inmates will follow you. Of course you're going to have some that push back," said Rose.
She said one of the hardest challenges has been trying to find a way to make the facility better.
They're currently struggling with retention, and COVID hasn't made things any easier, with some deputies getting sick and officials having to quarantine inmates.
It's the passion from Rose that Pulaski County sheriff, Eric Higgins said is the reason she was promoted.
"What she does: she cares about the people that work with her or for her and she also cares about the individuals that are housed in these facilities," said Higgins.
Rose has solutions for the problems and is always taking new ideas and wanting to support her team. She could have retired, but she decided not to.
"With that comes a lot of responsibility on your personnel that's down there, which weighs a lot on them and when it's weighing heavy on them, even when I'm not down there it's weighing heavy on me," said Rose.