On November 8, Zena Stephens, the chief of police at Prairie View A&M University, was elected sheriff of Jefferson County, in Southeast Texas, making the 51-year-old Democrat the state’s first female African American sheriff. Stephens, who was born and raised in the county seat of Beaumont, was previously an officer with the Beaumont Police Department and spent eleven years as the sheriff’s deputy chief. In December she assumed control of a department that has more than four hundred employees and a budget of $40 million.Michael Hardy: Why did you decide to go into law enforcement?Zena Stephens: I had just graduated from Lamar University and needed a job. I was going to go to law school, but the Beaumont Police Department was hiring. So I put…The post She’s the Sheriff appeared first on Texas Monthly.