With the special March 1 election date quickly approaching, the five candidates running for Chatham County sheriff met on stage for another forum Monday night.
This time, retired Col. McArthur Holmes, retired Col. John Wilcher, businessman Ken Williamson, Sheriff Roy Harris III and retired Maj. Kim Middleton presented their platforms at Armstrong State’s Ogeechee Theater.
The forum was sponsored by Armstrong’s Phi Kappa Alpha fraternity, and organized by the Young Democrats and Young Republicans of Savannah. Arianna Poindexter, a WJCL reporter, moderated the debate.
Audience members were given note cards at the start of the forum and were encouraged to submit questions for the candidates. One of the audience questions pertained to the recent rise of violence in Savannah, and what the candidates believed to be the primary cause of this spike in crime. The candidates’ answers are presented chronologically.
Harris: “The root of violence in most cities is a social issue. The police rarely respond to that. There are certain things that we can do to help try to alleviate it. If you look at factors such as population density, lack of education and poverty, these things contribute to crime — not the number of police officers who are actually on that street or that block. We are currently involved in several initiatives with the Metro Police Department, ATF and the FBI to try to take gun crimes off the street. We must work with these young people, but if they don’t work with us, we have to go after them with the hammer.”
Middleton:“I believe that the reason for so much crime is, No. 1., poverty in our community; No. 2, recidivism. We have the same people that are getting in and out of jail, in and out of prison, committing crimes. Lack of jobs as well, sometimes when you commit a crime it’s a get-rich-quick scheme. I want it now, I want my money, my opportunity now, and the best way to do that is to sell drugs on the corner. Lastly, education. A lot of our young people coming to jail, ending up in juvenile, don’t even have GEDs, they come to jail and get their GEDs. These things commit to crime in our community, and not just the city of Savannah, but all of the municipalities, as well as our largest city, which is unincorporated Chatham County.”
Williamson:“I think the problem with a lot of crime is the breakdown of the family, and the gangs and the drugs. What we need to do is stop the kids from looking up to the drug dealers, and to do that we’ve got to come up with programs for them to have after school. If they’ll look up to somebody else, like a deputy or a police officer or a pastor, then they’ll have somebody to go to and talk to. They go to the gangs because they want to be a part of something, and we’ve got to find ways to make them a part of other things besides gangs.”
Wilcher:“The worst things that I see, and it goes back to me being an associate DARE officer in 1989. I was teaching in the fifth grade, and I asked a student, ‘Son, where do you see yourself five years from now?’ and he said ‘I don’t know.’ I said, ‘What do you mean you don’t know? How are you going to raise a family?’ He said, ‘The check comes the first of the month.’ We’ve got to get kids out of that norm where, when a kid comes home he has nowhere to go. He goes in the front of the house, puts his books down, goes out the back door and down the street to sell drugs to get him a pair of $80 or $90 shoes. We’ve got to start in the home, and bring them up in the church. You can’t have kids raising kids to make anything in a society. You’re going to be a statistic, not somebody that’s responsible in our community.”
Holmes: “I think the problem with crime starts with our kids. You cannot wait until an individual becomes 15 or 16 years old to start placing some discipline in them. That must start while they are a child, and then if you raise them as they should be raised — everybody is putting the problem of crime on everything except where it needs to be. It starts at home. It starts with the parents. The parents are responsible for bringing up their children in the admiration of the Lord and the teachings of the scripture, and in those things that would cause them to be productive citizens. Others say it’s because of poverty, they don’t have enough money. I grew up poor. I didn’t know I was poor because everybody in the neighborhood was poor. I was one of 15 kids. We slept four to a bed. It’s not that you have to have everything. It’s how you are raised.”
Technology
Another audience member asked the candidates how they would keep Chatham County Sheriff’s Office current in terms of recent advancements in technology.
Holmes: “I think technology has come a long, long way. We didn’t have it when I first started. There’s still a lot of things about technology that I don’t understand. I have to get my grandson sometimes to help me change the remote control on the television. But I think the distance that we have come in terms of technology can really enhance law enforcement. A number of those things have been implemented at the Sheriff’s Office. I would like to see that every vehicle in the sheriff’s department have a computer inside in order to get constant communications with other law enforcement agencies. We can scan tags to see if there are any outstanding warrants on those tags. These things are vital in law enforcement.”
Wilcher: “I’m all for technology, but I’m like Mac (McArthur Holmes). I’ve got an iPhone 6, but I need my wife and my daughter and my son to help me use it. The jail does have close to 800 cameras. I implemented a gang system that let us know when gangs would come in, because when they come in the jail, they’ll tell you that they’re gang members. The Bloods don’t want to be with the Crips, the Crips don’t want to be with them. Technology is one of the finest things in the world, but I’m just still getting used to it. We have a tremendous amount of stuff at the jail. The more technology we get, the better it’s going to be.”
Williamson:“I’m all for technology. I think every car should have a computer in it. Every car should have a camera. I think every officer should wear a camera. There’s a huge amount of cameras in the jail, but I also think that anybody who works in the jail should wear a camera. I’m all for anything that will improve the officer’s job, and improve the security of the inmates, and improve the safety of the officer. I don’t think you can ever have too much technology.
Harris: “We do have computers in all of our patrol cars. Two of the cars have licence plate readers. We have our policy manuals computerized. Our watch commander log is now computerized. I can sit at home and read on my cellphone what’s going on inside the jail. If there’s a problem, I pick up on it. We have 728 cameras in the jail. We also have body cameras on certain officers. We have handheld cameras for when we do a use-of-force incident. All of our officers on the street have body cameras on them and in-car cameras. We are moving forward with our computerization.”
Middleton:“I think technology within organizations, especially one as large as the Sheriff’s Office is important, as far as communication. There’s one area that when I left I was concerned about, which is Telemedicine. This is where inmates can stand in front of a camera and tell a doctor what their symptoms were, and even when the doctor wasn’t there at 3 a.m. in the morning, the inmate could still get medical treatment. In terms of kiosks, the inmates actually have computers inside their living areas where they can make requests. They can request everything from seeing a nurse or a doctor to telling what they want to get from commissary. The inmates also get emails. You pay for them, but you can email them a message, and they receive it. They also are able to communicate, so if they think they’ve been sexually assaulted, or if they have a complaint on their computers within their living area. The jail has come a long way.”