Two Republican candidates seek the next term as Oglethorpe County sheriff on May 21.
The incumbent, David Gabriel, is running for reelection. Gabriel was elected in 2016 and reelected in 2020, when he defeated challenger Don Waldroup with 55% of the vote.
His opponent, James “Junior” Jackson, announced his candidacy in December and has worked in law enforcement for 18 years.
They spoke to The Oglethorpe Echo about the office and their plans.
Comments have been edited for length and clarity.
Q: What do you think are the top three priorities of the office and how the deputies' time is being allocated?
Jackson: I’d say, the top priority for me is to protect and serve the citizens and maintain the jail. As far as the sheriff’s office side deputies, they should be out in the public, in the communities throughout the county, getting to know what each community is like. If you don't know what that community is like, you can’t serve them properly. Second, there are a lot of duties that come along for a deputy. There’s traffic enforcement, serving civil papers, serving warrants and serving temporary protective orders on family violence. So you’ve got to balance that time between all of those. None of it takes priority over others. Unfortunately, here there’s not a huge staff, so everybody needs to take part and spread that out so that every piece can get some sort of effort put into it.
Gabriel: On any given day, it’s not three things you do. It’s 10 things you do. It’s certain things you do at certain times, when the visibility’s high. There are other things you need to do at other times. You always have to take care of your calls and service. You also have to take care of your civil papers, so I think the biggest thing is just trying to keep that balance and stay proactive so that you reduce crime through proactivity, but also take care of your requirements. So I think the biggest priority is just to keep a good, balanced sheriff’s office that takes care of all of its duties and responsibilities, while at the same time, making sure that you’re deterring crime and making this a place that’s uncomfortable for criminals to do their business.
Q: What have you heard from the public about the traffic cameras and how would you address those issues?
Jackson: The residents do not like those traffic cameras at all. I’ve talked to hundreds of people, some that have received citations, some that have not. They feel that it’s a money-grab situation. When we get in, we'll look at that contract and see what the stipulations are, as far as times. I think we need to change those times to flashing light only, or if we need to continue it because of the financial burden of the system itself that’s in the contract, raise the speed limit that captures them out of the flash and light times. It’s getting rich off of our citizens, and I think that if we put deputies in the school zones to slow down that traffic, stop, write a warning, write a ticket, whatever needs to be done, you’ll get more reaction from the citizens by being face-to-face with their public servant that they’re already paying taxes for than just getting something out of the mail out of state.
Gabriel: The whole reason we got traffic cameras in the first place was because people were complaining about speeding in school zones. We did a test period where we went, saw what the size of the problem was, and they were correct. There were like 1,200 violations a day between the two school zones at 10 miles an hour over the speed limit. I think the other problem is people think, let’s put a deputy on it. And to put it quite simply, we don’t have the manpower to do that for the size of the problem it was. You know, grown folks don't like being corrected. It’s only on school days. It’s only while schools are in session. I think it’s reasonable. I think the other thing people don’t realize is if a deputy writes you the ticket, it’s a $300 fine for a point to your license and stays on the insurance for seven years. If a school camera writes you the ticket, the first time is a $100 fine. The second time, and every time after, it’s a $150 fine. No matter how fast you’re going, it never goes on your license and never affects your insurance. So I feel like it’s a pretty fair deal. It’s also very effective, we’ve had a 90% reduction within the first three months of using the system.
Q: What should the role of the Sheriff be in the abandoned dog ordinance?
Jackson: There’s not a lot in county ordinance to dictate who does what. To some, it’s very unclear. My opinion is that we can do whatever we need to do. Taxpayers are paying the budget and, in turn, paying our salaries at the sheriff’s office. We don’t have anybody in the county to pick up. There are some other sheriff’s offices in the state that have programs that will get their license from the Department of Agriculture to be an animal shelter, and then they’re able to take dogs in. Part of that, in my plan to reopen the jail, would utilize inmate workers that are going to be long-term there. Get them trained up and potentially be able to use them to help care for and feed these dogs until we get them out to a foster home or whatever it may be.
Gabriel: When you start dealing with animals and stuff like that, all of that comes with the price tag. You don’t see sheriffs really getting involved with that in most counties because, to put it bluntly, we have a whole lot of other stuff to do. That’s why you see animal control in a lot of places as a whole separate thing. I helped write the ordinance for the nuisance animals, so there were some consequences for people whose animals go out and actually do something wrong, not just free roaming, but actually going to tear people’s property up, hurt their livestock or their pet, or something like that. What we try to look at is when you have a problem animal, what are the problems and then put that in the ordinance so that way we can address it.
Q: How would you characterize the effectiveness of how the county handles inmates and what changes would you make?
Jackson: It’s not very effective right now. We’re paying a lot of money to these other agencies for them to house, when we have the room here to house it. We’re supposed to have been saving money by shipping them out, but we’re still spending a lot of money on other people’s housing, when we have the facilities. Crime is not going away. We're right on the edge of Athens-Clarke County, and it’s not going to be long before Oglethorpe County is in the same situation. If we’ve shut our jail down and it’s sitting by the wayside, not being properly maintained, we’re going to be in that same boat as Hart County, and in the next few years, we’re going to spend $20, $30 million dollars to add on and repair this jail. We can put this one back in operation and bring those inmates back, and then we can house other inmates for other counties and receive some of that.
Gabriel: It's basically a business decision. I think people want to house inmates in our jail because we spent $6 or $7 million to build the jail, but I think what people don't realize is out of 60 rooms in that facility, we’re only not using three of them. I tell folks it’s kind of like when your kids move out of your house, your house is still your house, you’re just not gonna use the kid’s room, and that’s kind of what it is with the long-term inmates. Inmates still go to jail in Oglethorpe County. You still bond out in Oglethorpe County. The only difference is when it comes time to be put in a long-term cell, we’ll just take you to another facility and hold you there. I think in people’s minds, they are thinking it’s the same cost, but it’s really not. We’d have to hire 11 jailers back, we’d have to get our own doctor, have to get our own food, have to do several other things. Just to get it back so that we could fully house inmates, it’s gonna cost us about half a million, nearly $1 million. We’re doing it for probably 40% less than what other people are doing it for and we’re giving good value to the citizens. It doesn’t make any sense to house inmates in your facility if it’s going to cost you that much more money, almost doubling your budget to do it.
Q: What steps do you feel would be most effective at retaining deputies?
Jackson: The top thing is leadership. Leadership goes a long way, not just a manager or an authority figure, but true leadership and how they interact with those deputies and jailers alike. If they feel like they’re needed and they’re appreciated, that goes a long way with a lot of people. Oglethorpe County doesn’t have a large budget to pay, and while the pay has drastically increased, some other benefits go along with it. If we get a standard pay across the board for each rank and set up an actual structure for pay, we can’t compete with Clarke County or any place like that, but if we put that little bit of money into it, in the long run, that’s going to help retain people.
Gabriel: Part of it is you got to be fair on the pay scale. When I originally took office, I think deputies made $28,000 a year. I’ve given raises every single day I've been in office, every single year and we’re still behind. My goal used to be to get to $40,000, and we’re at $40,000, but now everybody’s at $55,000. We don’t have money to burn, like other places do. We also have some other intangibles, and it comes down to deputies just wanting to do their jobs. We let people come down and do their jobs. We’re not really political about it. If you’re right, and you’re doing something ethical, legal and moral, I let them do it. It’s not like we don’t try to play the politics game. Right is right, wrong is wrong, and it seems simple, but in a lot of places, you don’t get to do your job that way.