2 Republican sheriff candidates seek York County’s top law enforcement spot

When it comes to experience, there’s no shortage in the Republican race for York County sheriff – John H. Williams and Kevin Tolson have nearly 60 years of law enforcement between them.

York County voters will decide on June 14 whose experience they like more.

Born and raised in Rock Hill, Williams went straight to the S.C. Criminal Justice Academy after graduating from Northwestern High School. He started as a deputy at the York County Sheriff’s Office in 1982 and ascended the ranks to detective, later becoming a crime scene investigator, a position he held for 23 years.

“I left that position for a period of time to go back in uniform as a duty officer at the Moss Justice Center,” he said. “I also filled in out on the road all over the county whenever they were short on officers or somebody got hurt and needed help. I went to help them.”

Born in Indiana, Tolson has been in York County for 32 years. He took a pay cut from his security position at Carowinds to join the sheriff’s office as a deputy in 1992, after graduating with a criminal justice degree from the University of South Carolina.

“My dream was to work for the sheriff’s office,” he said. “I knew all through college I wanted to come back to York County and work for the sheriff’s office.”

With Sheriff Bruce Bryant announcing he will not seek re-election in the fall, Williams and Tolson are both vying to become York County’s next top law enforcement officer. The candidates share some agreement on the threats posed to the county by gangs and drugs, but have different ideas on changes they would make to operations within the sheriff’s office.

The winner of next month’s primary likely will face former York County deputy Michael Scurlock, who has filed and is collecting signatures to put his name on the ballot as an independent.

Williams and Tolson each sat down with The Herald this week:

John H. Williams

Age: 57

Occupation: Former crime scene investigator with the York County Sheriff’s Office

Family: Wife Phyllis, son Sam and daughter Danielle

Background: First full-time crime scene investigator with the sheriff’s office; first York County deputy to become an expert witness in latent print identification; first deputy to become an expert witness in both state and federal court qualified to testify to the identity of a recovered latent print; member, deacon, assistant scout master and mission team participant at Tirzah Associate Reformed Presbyterian Church in Rock Hill

Q: What are the biggest law enforcement issues facing the sheriff’s office and York County that you would tackle first if elected sheriff?

The top crime issues impacting York County at this time are drug and street gang-related crime. I’ll increase patrols in our neighborhoods and communities while targeting these problems with the uniform and specialized units.

Q: At a time when law enforcement around the country is under heightened public scrutiny, how would you describe the relationship between the sheriff’s office and the community, and do you see ways to improve that?

I think right now our relationship with our community is very good. That has to do with the quality of our officers and the quality of the citizens that we have in York County. I think York County citizens are just fantastic people, and I think that’s why we don’t have a lot of the issues they have in other places. When I make my changes once I’m elected to office, I would like to make sure the officers are more involved in the communities by spending more time patrolling our communities and our neighborhoods, our businesses and our schools. That will portray us in a better light with the public.

Q: What are some things you would like to change about the current operations of the sheriff’s office?

First of all, I want to put less emphasis on traffic enforcement, freeing up the deputies so that they have more time to patrol our neighborhoods, communities, businesses and schools. The second thing I would like to do is look at our advancement program within the department, see what we can make it do to make it easier for officers to be promoted. I’d also like to look at the pay scale; we have a problem with retaining officers – we need to correct that.

Q: How would you attract or continue to attract new people to this profession?

I would look at York County citizens, to begin with, as applicants for the sheriff’s office, and I would also look at armed forces veterans as candidates for the sheriff’s office. I think in York County we have a little bit better image than a lot of law enforcement agencies, and I think that would be a plus at attracting new employees.

Website: http://www.johnhwilliamsforsheriff.com/

Kevin Tolson

Age: 46

Occupation: Senior investigator, 16th Circuit Solicitor’s Office

Family: Wife Beth, daughters Morgan and Liza

Background: worked narcotics cases and later violent crimes on a federal violent crimes task force as a York County detective; regional agent for the State Law Enforcement Division from 1999 to 2001; formed the York County Multijurisdictional Forensic Services Unit and supervised for 8.5 years as an investigator with the solicitor’s office; graduate and planning council member, Leadership York County; member, United Way of York County Board of Directors; member, Trinity United Methodist Church in York

Q: What are the biggest law enforcement issues facing the sheriff’s office and York County that you would tackle first if elected sheriff?

Two things I think are really important and are affecting the county and crime: first and foremost, I think, are drugs. They affect every community in some degree, others worse than York County, others maybe better than York County. They’re prevalent, they’re problematic. Heroin is here, and if we’re going to follow the national trend, it’s going to get worse.

Drugs affect other areas of crime; and what I mean by that is, where there’s drug distribution and dealing going on, there’s violent crime. We know that. We had a span of five murders two years ago; four of the five were marijuana rip-offs. A lot of it was gang-related also. It also has an association with other non-violent crime — burglaries, shopliftings, forgeries, fraud — because the folks who are committing those crimes are drug addicted; they’re on the demand end of the drug spectrum. I am an advocate and I would work to definitely strengthen the efforts of the drug enforcement unit. York County Sheriff’s Office has not increased the number of drug agents for a narcotics unit since the unit began in 1997. We’re the multijurisdictional unit, so we have more drug agents working narcotics, but the sheriff’s office hasn’t had more numbers in the last 20 years.

Domestic violence — South Carolina leads the nation again for the second year in a row for domestic violence-related homicides. It’s an issue we’ve got to address not only from the enforcement end, which the sheriff’s office does and all the other local agencies do. The law has changed, it’s very complex. The legislature has taken notice about the problem, the governor has taken notice — she’s created a task force and issued a very comprehensive report.

I think we need to have officers specially trained in the form of, potentially, a unit, a domestic violence unit that are trained in this law. There is specialized training out there that officers can get that not just any deputy wants to get or has the time to get and has the time to spend on those cases. I propose and support a unit that is specialized in this, and they will work closely with the prosecutor’s office to not only prosecute these cases but look to other community partners to address the issue beyond enforcement so we’re not having domestic violence-second offense, domestic violence-third offense. Find resources and use the community’s resources to find help for the victims and find help for the batterer to make the batterer understand it’s a cycle and it needs to be broken.

Q: At a time when law enforcement around the country is under heightened public scrutiny, how would you describe the relationship between the sheriff’s office and the community, and do you see ways to improve it?

I think the relationship between the sheriff’s office and the community here is really good. No offense, but I think the national media over-extends a little bit in their view of isolated incidents where officers make bad judgment calls. I think the local media does a fairly good job of balancing that and reporting the good things that local law enforcement is involved in, also. So, I believe the sheriff’s office and the community, overall, have a good relationship.

What can we do to make the relationship better? I got out of my bubble of law enforcement – the vacuum – when I became involved with Leadership York County and I became involved with the United Way. It was enlightening to me to work with people who were not in my bubble, and who were — not that police aren’t — optimistic every day, doing altruistic really good things for people with no benefit expected in return. And so, I’d like to see from deputies on up the chain of command get involved in some sort of organization outside the office, a community organization, and let those organizations see those police officers for the people that they are, not the badge and uniform that they represent. I think that would be one way of improving community relations.

Q: What are some things you would like to change about the current operations at the sheriff’s office?

I’d like to see more technology in computer crimes. When I say “computer crimes,” that runs a gamut of every crime that’s committed. Show me somebody that doesn’t have (a cellphone) and I’ll tell you that they probably just woke up out of a cave. We use them for good, for the most part. Others use them for the advancement of crime. ... As we’ve advanced in technology, I’m not convinced the sheriff’s office doesn’t need to advance a little more. There’s a computer facet to almost every crime – when you arrest somebody, the nexus of phone and drug dealing is undeniable. I would look to improve our technological capabilities with cybertechnology and being able to forensically gather that evidence and apply it to the cases we make and the cases that we investigate.

Q: How would you attract or continue to attract people to this profession?

Folks are leaving in droves from law enforcement, and folks are turning away from applying to be in law enforcement right now. We’ve got to find a way to incentivize this job. We’ve got to, somehow, turn the national media around a little bit and make it more attractive.

We need to incentivize the job, make it attractive for these young folks. We need to, through the community relations I spoke of, get the community behind us more so that we’re more welcomed by folks and it’s a more attractive position for young folks to enter the profession.

No police officer ever gets in the profession to be a millionaire, but pay will be one thing that attracts local law enforcement. It’s very competitive here in this region, so there are a number of different ways.

Website: http://www.tolsonforsheriff.com/

This story was originally published May 21, 2016 at 3:02 PM with the headline "2 Republican sheriff candidates seek York County’s top law enforcement spot."