Houston County Sheriff candidates discuss gang and drug violence, cybercrime in open forum

PERRY – The Perry Rotary Club hosted an open forum for the candidates for Houston County Sheriff on Monday, May 13. 

The Republican candidates in the race are Lt. Matt Moulton, Jimmy Dunn, former Sgt. Slate Simons, and District Attorney William Kendall. The only Democratic candidate is Arthur Lee Harris.

“After a historic 52-year term with Sheriff Talton, this election marks a significant change for our community,” Perry Rotary Club president Marietta Lomboy said. 

Each candidate gave an introduction and expressed why they are running for Sheriff. 

“We have got to do something about the violent crime that is involving our youth and we got to do something about it,” Harris said. “I plan on putting deputies back in the residential sections and we’re going to form a neighborhood watch program. I will also have a once-a-month meeting for the citizens of Houston County to come and talk to me and tell me what’s going on.” 

Harris also wants to teach gun safety and have youth outreach programs. 

“We are going to get them involved and get them jobs to keep them from committing crime and doing things that they should not be doing,” he said. “I am concerned about this community and want to serve this community.”

Moulton started his law enforcement career with the Warner Robins Police Department in 2000. There, he was a patrol officer, training officer and narcotics investigator. 

“While I was there, I went back to college and obtained a Master’s degree in Public Administration which is directly relevant to the job that I’m seeking now,” Moulton said. 

Moulton is also a master instructor of the Georgia Resiliency Program which works with officers’ mental health. 

“Law enforcement officers’ mental health is very important,” he said. “I’m proud to be a master instructor with that organization and I enjoy teaching that class to help our individual officers with the trauma that they experience.” 

Moulton said that most of his law enforcement career has been focused on training officers to do the job properly. 

Dunn is the only Republican candidate with no background in law enforcement, but he said that his credentials include being a resident of Houston County for 47 years. 

“This is what God led me to do,” he said. Dunn said the day after the tragic shooting at Galleria Mall on February 8, he decided to announce his campaign for Houston County Sheriff. 

“What drove me is the youth and that’s our future,” he said. “It’s the footprints we leave over what built me and what I continue on is serving what God’s commandment was for me. On May 22, I am going to be the same man of what God commanded me to do, however, my vision may end on May 22.” 

Dunn also suggests that all the agencies in Houston County must work together to make a greater Houston County. 

According to Slate Simons, his heart and soul has always been for law enforcement. Simons started working for the Houston County Sheriff’s Office in 2000. 

“I worked there 17 years full-time then Sheriff Talton asked me to be on his reserve unit and I was on that for three years,” he said. 

Simons was the first to announce his campaign. However, he turned down a job offer for the position that Moulton has now, which led to Talton backing Moulton. 

“I absolutely respect Matt [Moulton] for being backed by Cullen Talton because I think Cullen Talton is the greatest lawman in the country today and whatever anybody else’s beliefs are, I want you to know what mine are,” Simons said. 

According to Simons, he was the first person to ever graduate the Drug Recognition Expert Program from the patrol division. 

“Basically, it is the highest level of DUI detection you can receive in the nation and it is accepted across the nation,” he said. 

Simons expressed his visions and is the only one with a grassroots campaign. 

“I was the first to talk about the Citizens Police Academy,” he said. “If you want to come up through the Sheriff’s Office and you want to be a deputy, we will promote based on merit, however, you will have to start working in the jail to start.” 

Simons is also an advocate of starting drug and alcohol rehabilitation within the jails. 

“I don’t think there’s a man or woman in this room today that can testify in some form or fashion that alcohol or drugs affected you in some way,” he said. “ We need to get our young kids and adults help and if anybody wants help we have to at least offer it.” 

There were questions revolving around why current District Attorney William Kendall is running for Houston County Sheriff. 

“It’s either because God led me to do it or I’m absolutely crazy, and I don’t think there’s no in-between, but God led me to do it so here we are,” Kendall said. 

He spent about eight years in the Marine Corps and spent two consecutive campaigns in Iraq.  

“I learned in the Marine Corps a long-time ago that people don’t care about what you’ve done, they want to know what you can do,” he said. 

After Kendall got back from Iraq, he was selected to become a criminal investigator for the Marine Corps. 

“I have done a wide range of things when it comes to investigation,” he said. 

In the first 18 months as a CID agent, Kendall worked on over 200 felony investigations with a 72% resolution rate; the FBI national rate is about 33%.”

Now working as the District Attorney, Kendall said that the District Attorney’s Office has been the only fully staffed office in the entire State of Georgia for as long as he has been DA. 

“We’ve increased our staff, pay and took care of our people and they have produced record breaking year after year in closing cases and getting people off the prison that deserve to go to prison,” he said. 

Kendall’s vision for running for Sheriff is to do things without fear or favoritism and to serve the people of Houston County as public servants. 

“District attorneys and sheriffs, we’re not special people,” he said. “We are just like everybody else. Our jobs exist because the people say they exist, and I would like to bring that same mentality as I do as a District Attorney to the Sheriff’s Office.” 

One question posed to the candidates involved how they would work with other agencies on drug and gang-related issues. 

“What I would do is to get all the agencies here in Houston County and in the Middle Georgia area to form a drug task force,” Harris said. “Communication will make Middle Georgia safe again.” 

“Sheriff Talton has given every tool and resource to the sheriff’s office to be able to conduct intense major drug investigations in Houston County, Middle Georgia and elsewhere,” Moulton said. “I have been one of the leading investigators for the last six to eight years on that equipment we use and have led some of the biggest drug cases. I have been very proactive over the course of my career in targeting drug dealers and gang bangers, and I have a proven track record.” 

Dunn agreed with Harris that all of the agencies in Houston County should work together to provide a drug task force, but acknowledged the nationwide impact of drugs and gangs.

“God is the only thing that can fix this at a larger rate,” Dunn said. “We can do our job here in Houston County, but this is a national problem. We can limit it in Houston County, but we can’t fix it all together.” 

“I have the most years of service at the Houston County Sheriff’s Office and have the most training hours in law enforcement than everybody combined that you’ve been speaking with,” Simons said. “I have been proactive as I’ve already met with police chiefs and mayors and have told them how I want to spearhead investigations.” 

“The first thing you do as an elected official, which I’ve been, is to establish stability itself as well as stability in law enforcement, relationships between different law enforcement agencies and make sure that those bridges are stronger than ever,” Kendall said. 

Kendall states that we do have a gang and drug problem here in Houston County. 

“I’ve been proactive about those things the last few years as DA, however, it is not a normal function for a DA to do those things, but I saw the need and answered the call.  At the end of the day we are all tax-paid public servants and that’s our responsibility is to make Houston County a better place. As sheriff I would do the same thing,” he said. 

Another question posed to the candidates involved the increase in cybercrimes targeting the elderly and what the Sheriff’s office can do to protect these citizens. 

“I would work with everybody in the county to make sure that all this stuff that comes on the internet does not put your personal information on there,” Harris said. “We also have to work with the FBI because they have more resources than the Sheriff’s department.” 

“Cybercrime is a huge issue and we are doing our part at the Sheriff’s office now going around and educating civic groups and retired persons,” Moulton said. “We have three investigators within the Sheriff’s office that have a role in investigating cybercrime and also the technology ready to analyze cell phone data and computer hard drives. 

Moulton would also like to see a cybercrime division at the Sheriff’s office. 

“The Sheriff’s office is very proactive in cybercrime investigations, but we just need a full-time unit focusing on that 100% of the time,” he said. 

“I think we need to get with our department heads because it’s going to take a lot of work,” Dunn said. “Technology has come so far so it’s going to take the collective of everybody working together to attack the problem.” 

“My Chief Deputy is the program coordinator for cybercrime and for training of cybercrime in the State of Georgia,” Simons said. “I have experience with it and I’ve worked with it in criminal investigations. I have first hand knowledge on how to work these crimes and I am bringing in the proper people to surround myself with.”

“I have been working for probably about two months now to get the fraud investigators and representatives from all the banking institutions in Houston County together, so we can actually do some kind of public awareness program to talk about the different banking security feathers there are with the different institutions that you can actually prevent a lot of things,” Kendall said. 

Kendall predicts that in the next ten years, Houston County will most likely grow by 30%. 

“Per capita, crime may not increase, but there will be an increase in crime overall which will include fraud and cybercrime,” he said. “We as a law enforcement agency need to be able to keep up with that and be able to expand our services and train our law enforcement for those things that require specific training, like fraud and cybercrimes with advanced technologies and things like that. That forward-thinking mindset will keep us in a good pace with expansion and growth of our county and that’s how I intend to address it.” 

Early voting is underway and election day is around the corner on Tuesday, May 22.