HAMMOND - The Tangipahoa Parish Sheriff's Office will see a new sheriff sworn in for the first time in 20 years. 

Saturday morning, Sheriff Elect Gerald Sticker was sworn in ahead of his term start date, scheduled for July 1. 

According to Sticker, he believes change is vital for the parish. 

"It's incumbent upon me as the leader of this organization that starting July 1, I make sure my employees are well-equipped, mentored, and educated in the tenets of doing the job," Sticker said.

Part of this is setting standards in place that ensure law enforcement is efficiently processing victims' cases in civil and criminal matters. 

"Whether it's the DA, the judges, or law enforcement, we're all in this for the victims," Sticker said. "We're serving them, and we need to make sure that when they fall victim of a crime, or they have an incident that's of a community-sensitive nature, that we're doing our best to solve that problem with that citizen."

Sticker says this includes following up with each victim and making sure every employee of the sheriff's office puts their best foot forward.

Another area of concern for the sheriff elect are taxes and the department budget, where he says they will be making some cuts.

"What my team and I have been doing over these last several months is just going through the budget, looking at things that are not necessarily bad spends, but they are not mission critical," Sticker said. "We are going to be proactively showing the public the cuts that we are making and how their money is being spent."