April 30, 2025 • 49 mins
Guest Bio and Links:
Victor Hill is the former Sheriff of Clayton County, Georgia, known for his tough-on-crime policies and bold leadership style. Despite facing multiple legal challenges, Hill remains a vocal critic of politicized justice and a passionate advocate for reform within the criminal justice system. He is the author of The Vigilante Sheriff and co-host of a podcast with his brother.
Vigilante Sheriff: The Truth about Corrupt Prosecutors Weaponizing the Legal System
Resources:
In this episode of Zone 7, Crime Scene Investigator, Sheryl McCollum sits down with Victor Hill, former Sheriff of Clayton County, Georgia, for a powerful and personal Zone 7 episode. They look back on some unforgettable moments from Hill’s career, like a high-stakes bank robbery, and explore how his early love for Batman shaped his approach to justice. Hill opens up about his time as Clayton County Sheriff, the tough decisions he made, the legal battles he fought, and the 18 months he spent in federal prison. Through it all, he found a way to keep learning, keep growing, and keep showing up for people, even from behind prison walls.
Show Notes:
- (0:00) Welcome back to Zone 7 with Crime Scene Investigator, Sheryl McCollum
- (0:30) Sheryl welcomes guest, Victor Hill to Zone 7
- (1:00) The memorable bank robbery
- (2:30) The significance of the Batman challenge coin
- (4:30) ”You know, murder is the ultimate theft. It's a theft of which there can be no restitution.”
- (7:00) The sheriff's election and assassination of Derwin Brown on Dec. 15, 2000
- (12:30) The indictment and media portrayal
- (15:00) Indictments, grand juries & lawfare tactics
- (21:30) Facing a 37-count RICO indictment
- (24:00) Political indictments and election timing
- (25:00) Understanding the RICO charges
- (29:00) Thoughts on community policing - real talk from the front lines
- (34:00) The misunderstanding of officer demeanor & crime control
- (40:30) Federal prison - brotherhood, books, and becoming the student
- (43:00) “If you send sheep to a lion’s den, they’ll be devoured. If you send a lion - it’s a brotherhood.”
- (49:00) “ Save yourself. You don't owe these people anymore. You've given them everything.” -Catwoman, Batman, Dark Knight Rises
- Thanks for listening to another episode! If you’re loving the show and want to help grow the show, please head over to Itunes and leave a rating and review!
---
Sheryl “Mac” McCollum is an Emmy Award winning CSI, a writer for CrimeOnLine, Forensic and Crime Scene Expert for Crime Stories with Nancy Grace, and a CSI for a metro Atlanta Police Department. She is the co-author of the textbook., Cold Case: Pathways to Justice. Sheryl is also the founder and director of the Cold Case Investigative Research Institute, a collaboration between universities and colleges that brings researchers, practitioners, students and the criminal justice community together to advance techniques in solving cold cases and assist families and law enforcement with solvability factors for unsolved homicides, missing persons, and kidnapping cases.
Social Links:
- Email: coldcase2004@gmail.com
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:08):
Welcome to Zone seven, y'all. Tonight is going to be
a conversation. You know, when I think of my Zone
seven and I think about people that I've known throughout
my career, it is not without some hiccups.
Speaker 2 (00:24):
It's not without some situations that we wish would have
never happened.
Speaker 1 (00:29):
But ultimately it is what you do within those situations,
and that's what tonight is about. Welcome to Zone seven.
Victor Hill, Sir, how are you.
Speaker 3 (00:43):
I'm doing great? How about you?
Speaker 1 (00:45):
Erh, I am doing good. This conversation is overdue for
Zone seven in my opinion, Yes, and I appreciate.
Speaker 3 (00:52):
You, appreciate you having me.
Speaker 1 (00:54):
The last time I saw you in person, I had
responded to a bank robbery and the suspect lived and
fled to Clayton County. And when we called you and
told you where he was and that we were going
to come get him, OI, did.
Speaker 2 (01:12):
You show up.
Speaker 1 (01:14):
You got your viper squad out, you got your fugitive
squad out, and you showed up personally. And I know
we were all so grateful by that show of support
and force because we didn't know what we might be
met with. So that's the last time I saw you.
Speaker 2 (01:33):
Do you remember that?
Speaker 3 (01:34):
I do? I do?
Speaker 1 (01:35):
You showed up in that slick tricked out Z twenty
eight baby, and I remember asking you if you wanted
to swap with my eighteen fifty.
Speaker 2 (01:47):
Whatever it was.
Speaker 3 (01:50):
Yeah, that was one of my favorites.
Speaker 1 (01:52):
That was a beautiful car. I remember thinking that car
looks so good. I wish I could come and dear it.
Speaker 4 (02:00):
Yep, one of my favorites. The Black Fantom was his name.
Speaker 2 (02:04):
I love that even more.
Speaker 1 (02:05):
I didn't know that, but I will tell you after
that response, you gave several of the folks in the
CID coins and on the coin was Thattman like the wings.
Speaker 2 (02:19):
And it looks so good.
Speaker 1 (02:21):
I mean that as a challenge coin goes, that's going
to get your attention.
Speaker 2 (02:25):
And I heard a.
Speaker 1 (02:28):
Lot of people had something to say about that coin
and saying it was connected to your.
Speaker 2 (02:34):
Ego, but I know that's not the case.
Speaker 1 (02:37):
Would you tell people why that man was significant to
you and it has something to do with a childhood friend.
Speaker 3 (02:45):
Sure?
Speaker 4 (02:45):
Well, First let me say this. My staff actually designed
that challenge coin. They told me, Sheriff, we'd like to
do a challenge coin, and I was like, yeah, we
don't have one, that's fine. And then when they came
up with the coin, it was a surprise and they
showed it to me and it had to batsymble on
it because I'm often associated with Batman, so I can't
take credit for that coin. It's a beautiful coin, but
(03:07):
I didn't design it, and it wasn't my idea. It
was actually my staff, and I think they really really
made one of the most unique challenge coins and law
enforcement I've ever seen, and I was proud that it
came from my agency and appreciated what they did.
Speaker 3 (03:22):
But you know, the Batman thing.
Speaker 4 (03:25):
As a child, I was an avid comic book reader.
When I became a teenager, I didn't really pay much
attention to Batman or The Dark Knight because, you know,
there was a show that Adam West had and that's
all I really knew about him. I thought it was
a kiddy character, and I thought it was a character,
you know, mostly for kids, and I think we all
(03:48):
remember that show, and it was a good show for kids,
but you know, especially if you're in kindergarten, it was
kind of corny. I didn't realize there was an actual
serious version of Batman, and one day, I was looking
through a comic book and I saw a comic book
that caught my attention. It was kind of grim and
it's kind of onymous, and it referred to him as
(04:08):
a dark Knight. And when I read it, it was very,
very fascinating, and it wasn't the best of stories. I mean,
he was a kid that saw his parents gun down
in front of his eyes. Would a botched robbery, and
that's something that kids shouldn't see. And of course that's
how he was born. That's how he decided that he
would fight crime, that he would not only find who
(04:31):
killed his parents, but that he would go after all
people who commit murder. And you know, murder is the
ultimate theft. It's the theft for which there can be
no restitution. There's no way you can give restitution to
the victims of a murder. So I always thought it
was interesting story that I became an avid reader of
that comic book from that moment on. Well, as we know,
(04:53):
sometimes art imitates life and life imitates art, and my
teenage cheers. There was a friend that I'd known ever
since elementary school and they disappeared, and ironically, their body
was found found behind that same store that I read
that comic book in. And it wasn't a it was
(05:16):
very grisly murdered. It was mutilation involved.
Speaker 3 (05:19):
I raped this.
Speaker 4 (05:20):
Memberment of one particular part of that person's body. And
where I'm from, that's just not the norm. That's nothing
you hear about often. I'm from Charleston, South Carolina, and
I grew up on a park called Jeans Island, which
is actually a real island, and that was just unheard
of in a grypted community with fear. And there was
(05:43):
this famous well I say he's famous.
Speaker 3 (05:44):
He was well known to us.
Speaker 4 (05:45):
He was a homicide detective, well decorated, and he saw
that murder and it meant a lot. He end up
becoming my mentor, and really that's how my crime fighting
career started. I knew then that I definitely was going
to become a cop, and I knew what kind of
cop I was going to be, and I knew that
I wanted to go after those type of people, people
(06:08):
who perform the ultimate theft, which is taking someone else's life.
Speaker 1 (06:13):
And you know, there's another connection that we have speaking
of that. I was in the DA's office and I
was the law enforcement trainer and I was pregnant with
my first child, and my real good friend, Deborah Burke
called me and she said, Hey, you're not going to
believe this. Our buddy is going to run for sheriff
(06:34):
and I think he's going to win it.
Speaker 2 (06:35):
And when he wins it, he.
Speaker 1 (06:36):
Wants you to come over and do training. And the
great part is you're going to be able to work
from home and only come in on the days that
we're hosting a training. And I remember thinking, that is
going to be unbelievable, you know, having your first child
and not having to leave home five days a week,
not having to be on call, not having to you know,
(06:58):
be away so much.
Speaker 2 (07:00):
I thought that is going to be fantastic.
Speaker 1 (07:02):
And you know, to Cab County Police Captain Derwin Brown
was going to run for sheriff. He was going to
win it, and he was going to make some changes
that were so necessary. And my in laws lived into
Cab County, so this was going to be great. I
was going to be closer to them, I was going
(07:22):
to be able to be home.
Speaker 2 (07:24):
It was just going to be perfect.
Speaker 1 (07:26):
And you were involved with watching that and you were
real interested what Dernaan was doing, So why don't you
talk a little bit about why you watched that race
with such just laser focus.
Speaker 4 (07:40):
At that time, I knew I was going to run
for sheriff in Clayton County, So of course I was
watching all shriff's races and studying the office of sheriff
very very closely and carefully, because I knew it was
what I wanted to do, and I had a particular version,
not very ship visian for that office.
Speaker 3 (08:00):
Well, he was of interest.
Speaker 4 (08:02):
In me because he seemed like he was interested in
taking the sheriff's office and restoring it to his original jurisdiction.
And what I mean by that is in the metro
area of Georgia, there's only eleven counties that have a
sheriff's office, and the county police used to be thirteen
(08:22):
and now it's whittled down to eleven. County police departments
are almost extinct, and for good reasons. And in those
particular counties, the sheriff, most of them have been reduced
to just civil papers and warrants and the jail in
the courthouse. Well, that's politics by law. You can't do
(08:46):
that with the sheriff's office. The sheriff's office by constitution
as the chief law enforcement agency of the county and
has the authority to engage in any type of law enforcement,
and they're supposed to actually the Constitution, which it makes
it clear that the sheriff has a duty to protect.
It doesn't say that about any other law enforcement agency,
but it's very very clear about that with the office
(09:07):
of sheriff. So when the sheriff doesn't enforce the law,
he's actually violating a constitution if he just sits on
the sidelines and say, well, let the police do this
or do that. Well, he seemed to be a person
that was interested in restoring the sheriff's officer's original jurisdiction
and using it which is for which it was intended
to be used. So I was going to watch not
(09:29):
just his election. I wanted to see what he was
going to do once he got into office and see
how that worked out, because I figured maybe it could
be a model for what I had already had planned. Well,
unfortunately we know that never came to be because unfortunately
he was robbed of his life, and ironically, he was
robbed of his life from a deputy that was employed
(09:51):
at the sheriff's office. And you know, I'll probably let
you get into that a little bit. But a lot
of people may not know it or may not remember.
But during sent out thirty seven letters of thirty seven
people that he felt should no longer be employed when
he became sheriff. That's not uncommon. That's the sheriff's right,
and that's a wise thing to do. No elected person
(10:11):
goes in office, no president goes in office and keeps
the same cabinet. It's nothing personal, but you bring in
your own cabinet, and then there are some people who
simply don't need to be there. And obviously Durren Brown
was right and his choices because his choices of people
he didn't want there was a murderer and that person that,
of course we found out was involved in a whole
(10:31):
lot of other things like overtime fraud.
Speaker 2 (10:34):
And that's one thing I wanted to kind of get into.
Speaker 1 (10:37):
Because Sidney Dorsey, a former Atlanta Police Department homicide detective.
He made his name off the Wayne Williams serial killer case.
He became the first African American sheriff into cabin County.
Speaker 2 (10:54):
Yes, he was running against Derwin.
Speaker 1 (10:58):
Brown, Yes, when one and you know I did I
believed in my friend.
Speaker 2 (11:04):
I knew he was going to make some changes.
Speaker 1 (11:06):
I knew it was going to be just a different day,
a new day into Cab County, and I was hopeful.
Speaker 2 (11:13):
I was excited.
Speaker 1 (11:15):
And then December fifteenth, two thousand, he is assassinated in
his front yard. He had just arrived home from celebrating
his graduation from the Sheriff's Academy, which you're well schooled in.
And the thing that struck me is you're the one
(11:36):
that said the trigger man is in that pile of letters,
those letters that went out, the trigger man is in there.
Speaker 3 (11:45):
You knew it, Yes, you know.
Speaker 4 (11:48):
I had spent a decade in homicide and so that
that was my specialty. Of course, you know law enforcement
everyone has is something for everyone in law enforcement. This
traffic cops, there's drug cops, there's homicide cops. There's so
many areas to specialize in, and you know, there's something
for everyone, and there's a level of expertise. Just like lawyers,
(12:11):
some are civil, some are criminal, some deal with medical
mal packages for the same thing in law enforcement. So
homicide has always and will always be my thing. I
always have a love for that, and it was very
obvious that that was going to be the case in
that and thus when you fast forward you get my
infamous case where in my first day in office, I
(12:35):
too fired well I fired twenty seven or thirty seven people,
but because of what happened to Duram Brown, I took precautions.
You know, it's very very interesting how that was portrayed,
because my mine was portrayed as snipers on the roof.
And you know how to media, the state, Yeah, they
have right, they they Unfortunately, the media is not you know,
(12:59):
when it comes to honesty and telling the truth, those
are probably the last people we can go to and
you can lie by Old Mission as well as CO Mission.
And what's interesting about them and a lot of my cases,
they did a lot of line by Old Mission as
opposed to CO Mission. But let's go to the co missioneer.
You know, the CO Mission is saying that we pointed
(13:20):
weapons at people. That's not true. If that was true,
there would be a photograph of it, because there was
a leak about what I was going to do in
the media actually took photograph and the footage of the
guys I had on the roof. So if they actually
had rifles, pointing at people. I'm sure they would have
had footage of that. But here's what is true. I
did have been up there, and well trained men up there,
(13:41):
and for good reason. When we saw what happen with
Durren Brown, it's not outside the rim of reason to
believe that that couldn't happen in Clayton County or couldn't
happen in anything else. When people the sheriff's office is
are very sought after seat, and history has proven that
people would do anything to get that office up to
(14:03):
including an assassination would happen with Darren Brown. There was
another case like that in Kentucky. And another thing, if
they don't assassinate you, then they do a law fair
assassination and they'll find a reason to indict you. And
of course lawfare is something that we're starting to see
across the country. We've seen it happen with the President
and various other elected officials, where if people feel you
(14:26):
can win an election and they want to stop you
from winning the election. We unfortunately have prosecutors that think
that it's okay to use the grand jury system, which
is something else we will have to talk about and
use that as assist as a way to indict political
opponents of people they don't want to see when and
(14:47):
I think anyone familiar with our grand jury system knows
how our cake, okay is, excuse my language, excuse my
pronunciation of that, but I believe that our country and
Liberia in only two countries left with a grand jury.
And you know that's kind of close to a star chamber.
You can walk in a room with twelve people and
tell them anything you want to tell them, and the
(15:09):
person that you're indicting is not there to defend themselves,
and they can't even have a defense attorney to defend themselves,
and you can tell them anything and there's no checks
or balances, and they take that as an opportunity to
lot of grand jury's And that's why they call it
hamp Sandwich indictments, because with a system like that, you
literally can indict a ham Sandwich. And I've been the
(15:31):
victim of those type of grand juries, not once, not twice,
but three times.
Speaker 1 (15:40):
Well, let's talk about the snipers on the roof, because
I want to get to something. Because we mentioned that
a deputy was involved in the assassination of Dulan Brown,
but somebody else went to prison. Sidney Dorsey went to
prison the former sheriff.
Speaker 4 (15:56):
Prosecutors are interested more so and what can get them
a press conference or headlines, and they are sometimes getting
the actual criminal. It was more important for them to
get Dorsey than it was to get the trigger man.
Now we know years later Dorsey actually confess to being
(16:17):
involved and confess to the murder, but for a long
time he didn't, and the only evidence was these particular people.
So it's sad that the just the testimony of murderers
or criminals is enough to convict somebody on his own
(16:38):
because they're not really credible. And that's something we'll probably
talk about one day what happened, and not only in
my first case, with my second case, but I believe
that the trigger man, the person that actually pulled the trigger,
should never be allowed to walk free with something like that.
But they wasn't going to get the type of press
(16:58):
they wanted or to glory they wanted if they got him.
But if they got the actual sheriff who didn't pull
the trigger, then then that's what you That's what happened.
If you look at my case with the restraint chair,
I never physically placed anybody in a restraint chair. Now
I did authorize them to be a restraint here and
with good reason and within policy and within the law.
(17:19):
But the people who actually put them in a restraint
chair were never prosecuted. And if you look at the
videos of it, you see them placing them into the
restraint here. You don't see any physical violence, any force,
and you don't see anybody looking like they're afraid or
paul to do it. Those folks that actually use those
chairs sixty six hundred times without me being there or
(17:40):
my author authorization, and that's how they've.
Speaker 3 (17:42):
Always used it.
Speaker 4 (17:43):
But again, the target was made, it wasn't them, and
it really had nothing to do with the restraint chair.
It had to do this, It had to do it
the same thing that the Duram Brown assassination was based
on on who's going to be the sheriff. People will
do anything to get that seat. They will kill you,
or they will indict you any way to get an
(18:05):
opponent out of the way.
Speaker 3 (18:06):
That's what they'll do.
Speaker 1 (18:07):
That's the reason I want people to understand. When all
they hear is the story about snipers on the roof,
they never mention Derwin Brown.
Speaker 2 (18:19):
He was an elected sheriff, he.
Speaker 1 (18:22):
Was fixing to take office, and they killed him in
his front yard. So you did not react based on
something that happened twenty years ago. You did not respond
and react based on something that you heard might have
occurred somewhere else. This was a neighboring county in your state.
(18:46):
So to me, when you said, hey, I'm fixing to
send out some letters myself, I am not going to
be caught off guard if somebody.
Speaker 2 (18:55):
That I know has a weapon.
Speaker 1 (18:58):
You know, I'm going to make sure that myself and
everybody else in this building is going to be safe.
Speaker 4 (19:03):
Absolutely, And I'm glad you brought that up. And let's
play Devil's advocate for a second. Let's just say that
did not happen in the Cab county. But that is
the reason I made that decision, and that was the
case that I made that decision off off of the
use of extra security. But let's just say hypothetically that
didn't happen in the county just that sits directly next
(19:23):
to my county. It's not outside the realm of reason
in the day's world that when you terminate people this
can happen. We you know, for a long time there
was this They used to refer to it as going
postal because there was a lot of postal workers that
were starting to shoot their supervisors or whoever. And that's
(19:44):
why you had this thing, don't go postal. So we
saw in the civilian world where people who don't carry
weapons to work as a part of their job, we're
actually doing things like this. And of course, you know
active shooting situation, so how can it be out. I had
the rumor of reason that when you fire people who
are carrying guns, that you don't need to take some
(20:06):
type of precaution. Anytime a chief of police or share
fire someone, he's firing a person that's armed, and if
certain precautions are taking the person's arm at the time
they're being fired. And that's why it was very, very
important that we came up with security ways to fire people.
(20:27):
Even after that incident. It didn't make sense to tell
a person they're fired and they got a gun on them.
You don't know what mental condition they might be in
on how they react to it. So anytime you take
preemptive action, critics will will criticize you for taking those actions.
Up until the point something actually happens, and then they're
(20:51):
the same people will say, well, why didn't they do anything?
Case an example, I was criticized for firing twenty seven
people on my first day in office. Three months later,
Brian Nichols shoots up the courthouse, kills a deputy, kills
a judge, kills a clerk, and unfortunately even killed another
(21:11):
innocent person, which I think just happened to be a
federal agent. And the same media that was criticizing me
for firing people the first day started criticizing that share
of saying why didn't he fire people and why didn't
he bring in a better staff when he came in office?
And thus you have the maxim Damn if you do,
Damn if you don't, well.
Speaker 1 (21:30):
You got elected, you lost reelection, and then you won again.
But I got to tell something, and I'm fitzing to
tell you the truth.
Speaker 3 (21:40):
You ready, I'm ready, that's gonna be good.
Speaker 2 (21:44):
I am driving down the road.
Speaker 1 (21:46):
Comes over the radio breaking news you have been indicted.
Thirty seven count rico indictment.
Speaker 2 (21:58):
And I thought, child, he did it. Thirty seven counts.
He did it.
Speaker 1 (22:06):
That's what I thought, because I thought, you know, one
or two lies maybe it's like Bill Cosby, One or
two women can get together and lie, but not thirty seven.
So when I hear Rico, and I'm thinking the FEDS,
who have all the time and money and resources, thirty
(22:26):
seven count this man that I've known.
Speaker 2 (22:33):
Respected, he's had a fall from grace. That's it. That's
what I thought.
Speaker 4 (22:39):
Yeah, you think he must have done something, and you know,
and you know I can give you that I know
was a prominent preacher in Clayton County. I've known for years,
and you know, this is a guy I've known on
a personal level. And I had an honest conversation with her,
told how disappointed I was in him in that incident.
And he said, basically what you said. But I can't
(23:01):
give him the same grace I gave you because I've
known him on a personal level. And he said, well,
you know what, all those charges, I thought you had
to have done something. So I understand where you're coming
from on that. Well, let me tell you what was
a lesson learned for me and a lot of people
on that particular case. You know, you just don't think
of prosecutors as lying, and you don't think it am
(23:22):
as plotting and trying to do something on a political case.
You just think that these are honest people, I think,
you know, when you find out, like I found out
over the years, that that's not the case with all
of them. You got some thieves and some murderers in there,
and unfortunately, you got a lot of liars in there.
Speaker 2 (23:40):
I worked Zone three. We lost some good people to
some really bad.
Speaker 4 (23:46):
Action, absolutely, and so it was hard to believe that, Wow,
there has to be something to this.
Speaker 3 (23:53):
But you know, here's in a nutshell what we got.
Speaker 4 (23:59):
If you look at the time I was indicted three
years after I'm out of office, when I announced I'm
going to run again, and the people behind the indictment
was the guy who was shared at that time, kimbro
and the DA who and another one, Tasha Mosley.
Speaker 3 (24:18):
They all ran as a political slate.
Speaker 4 (24:21):
So when he barely won last time and he went
on a technicality, that's another story. You know, you got
to be careful questioning elections now because you got these
other attorneys prosecutors that want to prosecute you for that.
Speaker 3 (24:35):
But it was a technicality.
Speaker 4 (24:37):
He went on on a trick that they tried that worked,
and there was really nothing we could do about it.
So when I came back, they pretty much knew I
was going to win and they had to find a
way to stop it. But the first thing when you
look at these indictments is it, both of them, including
the one with the restraints here, they all came around
reelection time. So if you want to know if a
(24:59):
prosecuteations politically motivated or not, look at the timing of it.
Here's what a lot of other people don't realize. It
says thirty seven twenty seven count indictment or whatever, but
people didn't realize what those indictments were. When you say
recod of course you think I'm a mobster. You think
of people like John Gotti, etc. But what those changes
(25:21):
actually were was I was accused of stealing the same
police car multiple times. The DAS and their infinite wisdom
and creativity of novel cases, said that every time I
drove that car out of town, it was theft of
a motor vehicle, and as a result, when I put
(25:42):
gas in the vehicle, that was a subsequent theft. And
you know, rico means that you take an organization and
use it as a criminal enterprise. So their theory in
order to get me in dited was every time I
drove that car out of town and every time I
put gas into it. All of those charges became felonies,
(26:03):
even if the amount of gas in the car at
that time was twenty or thirty dollars, because they lumped
it all together under Rico, so every charge was a felony.
So every time I put gas in the car was
a felony. That was twenty seven of the counts. So
that meant I took the same car, stole it took,
stole it, brought it back to myself, stole it brought
(26:23):
it back to myself.
Speaker 3 (26:24):
And it's ridiculous.
Speaker 4 (26:25):
Every sheriff has twenty four hour use of his car,
and the person that creates a policy for the car
is the sheriff. If anything happens in the county, a
deputy gets killed or god for God forbid or killed
takes a life, or there's a situation that comes out
of that, I have to respond back. No matter where
I'm at, I have a credit card where if I'm
(26:48):
too far away, I have to get the first flight back.
It's a whole lot cheaper to get back in the
car than calling the airport and saying, hey, I need
a ticket right away. So it's not uncommon, it's not illegal.
It was another novel theory of prosecution, like the one
that they were able to get a conviction on that time.
(27:08):
Fortunately the jury saw through it and we were able
to present everything to this jury that we needed to.
We weren't able to do that because we were stopped
by the judge. And it's a case where I'm dealing
with a conviction on now that we're appealing. But that
goes to show you the length that people will go
to to get a prosecution.
Speaker 3 (27:28):
Well, the media, you know media, you got.
Speaker 4 (27:30):
These so called item reporters that're supposed to look into things.
I know for a fact they were aware of it
because I made sure all of that got sent to them.
They refused to do it because one thing you got
to understand about media, especially our local media, they will
see to it that you don't get a fair part crial.
They'll play just enough to turn the public opinion to
(27:51):
make people think you're actually guilty of something you're not.
And even when they're aware are facts that can help you,
they won't put that out in the meeting because they
want to see you get indicted too, so they can
have something to report, kind of like they like inciting riots,
so they can have something to report, because most riots
are started by the media. So these are the type
(28:12):
of things you're looking at. And most people don't know
what those indictments were about. So when those charges were
when I was acquitted, it gave me this type of
John Gotti aura that I was untouchable. But I don't
think the public realized just how asinine, for lack of
a better term, the charges were and the people who
(28:34):
brought the charges.
Speaker 1 (28:39):
In just the last three days in Georgia, we have
had two police officers killed in the line of duty.
Speaker 2 (28:48):
And two more shot just hours ago.
Speaker 1 (28:52):
I want you to tell people your thoughts on community policing.
Speaker 4 (28:59):
I think that community police and, while it has some value,
is overrated and a waste of time. And I think
that it's contributing to what you just describe what we're
having in Atlanta.
Speaker 3 (29:14):
Now let me tell you why.
Speaker 4 (29:16):
First of all, before this term community police and was coined,
all the good cops did that anyway, you built rapport
with different people in the community so that when things happen,
they would tell you. All the good homicide detectors. We
had rapports with prostitutes, barbers, cab drivers, pimps. We built
(29:38):
rapports with these people because when dead bodies started popping up,
they usually knew who did it. And there are a
lot of times my phone would ring on my way
to homicide and they would say, hey, look this is
who did it. I don't want to be involved, So
my job was to get there and depend on good
people like you to connect that person to the scene
(30:00):
with some type of physical evidence. So that's really what
community policing was designed for.
Speaker 3 (30:07):
You know.
Speaker 4 (30:07):
I was once sitting at a symposia and a local
rapper was there, Killer Mike, and I was sitting there
with who is a police chief at that time, and
he started talking about his vision of community police and
I'll never forget this.
Speaker 3 (30:22):
Killer Mike looked at him and he said, you.
Speaker 4 (30:25):
Know, on the streets we laugh at officer friendly, right,
And the room got silent that he was right. When
you send officers out to deal with rapers, rapists, robbers, murderers,
but you want them to go out there and play
nice guy and get on the ground and play with
(30:46):
dolls and stuff like that. Those type of killers will
not take those officers seriously, and neither were most of
the public. And there's this group of people out there
that makes it sound like, you know, anytime you see
an officer in the uniform dancing with everybody, it's a
good thing. But I don't see it that way. It's
not a good thing. First of all, he's dancing with
(31:06):
the public. He can't really have situational awareness. So if
you get an active shooter that comes into the crowd,
he's not going to be aware of it because he's
too busy dancing. His job is to protect the people
so they can enjoy dancing and have a good time.
So he has to be vigilant. He has to be
like the sheep dog looking for the wolves to come in.
(31:27):
I don't have any biological kids, but if I did,
I wouldn't want an officer friendly at their school. I
wouldn't want anybody there that they felt comfortable playing with
anything like that. I wouldn't want somebody there. I'm not
saying that he would mistreat people. I'm not saying he
would talk down to people unnecessarily. But I want to
know that there's somebody strong and competent, so someone walks
(31:50):
in and starts shooting at kids. I know he's going
to take care of it. I would want to know
that somebody there strong enough that criminals actually feared coming
to that school and showing out because they know that
particular office is there. I want my kids to be safe.
I don't need any clowns. They're playing with them. And
if they're afraid of them, good. I mean they should
be afraid of the police, because if they're afraid, then
(32:11):
maybe they won't come there and kill our kids or
take advantage of them.
Speaker 1 (32:15):
And you know Leslie Bailey, you know Leslie from Clayton County.
She used to say yes, no, please, and thank you
ain't going to get it done that.
Speaker 2 (32:25):
You can't always be polite.
Speaker 4 (32:28):
Absolutely, when in Rome you have to do as Romans do,
and when you're in different countries you have to learn
to speak that particular language. When you're dealing with killers,
when you're dealing with robbers, when you're dealing with a
certain group of people who they live their lives based
(32:49):
on praying on others. They're not going to understand the
Barney song if you start singing it to them.
Speaker 3 (32:56):
They're just not And you know, if you.
Speaker 4 (32:58):
Look at this case with the restraint chair case, now
that we're dealing with, you'll see this big deal in
the media. There's a guy I'm talking to and I'm
telling him not in Mike County and stay out of
my county. And I refer to him and I tell him,
I said, hey, you sound like a jackass. Well he
did sound like a jackets. And I don't apologize. If
(33:18):
you take an eighty year old woman out of a
wheelchair and pull her here out and throw her on
the ground, and your reason for doing that is because
you said that you felt that she cut in front
of you in line, and you beat up her sixty
year old daughter, you are a jackass. And if we're
going to indict out offices for talking tough when we
(33:40):
need to talk tough, and for being tough when we
need to be tough, then this is what you see
we get because when you do stuff like that, you
in bold in criminals. And that's what you've seen happen
here in Atlanta. You've seen criminals become very, very bold.
If you look at the jail that I used to run,
they're in bolded in there. There's now stabbings, there's drugs,
(34:04):
there's cell phones.
Speaker 3 (34:05):
There's been four murders.
Speaker 4 (34:07):
None of that occurred under my watch, and a lot
of that didn't occur because of the conversations I had
with them. And when we saw people who showed the
potential for violence, we did what officers are trained to
do all over the state. We do it on search warrants,
we do it on traffic stops. People we think that
could have the potential for violence, they're restrained for safety.
(34:28):
And that stopped all of that from occurring. And you
take that one tool away because you want to do
a political prosecution in order to get someone elected. And
now we have and I said four is actually five
dead bodies in that jail since then.
Speaker 3 (34:42):
And I'm not talking about people dying in.
Speaker 4 (34:44):
Natural causes, because we have no control when the Lord
calls them ie home. But we do have control over
people being killed. Five murders in the jail, five four murderers, release, stabbing,
cell phones, drug over doses, riot situations of people refusing
(35:06):
the lockdown. That's the result of that, And that's the
result of prosecutors criticizing and making up novel prosecutions, and
they make officers afraid to do their job and That's
why we see criminals sewing bodes into to challenge law
enforcement because officers are afraid. Now they say something, they
(35:26):
do something, next thing you look at being prosecuted.
Speaker 1 (35:29):
Well, you know, this was on my mind today because
when we got word of the South Fulton officer that
was shot and we learned about him first, I was
literally at a community event where my department was passing
out little rabbits for adopt a rabbit program in the park.
Speaker 2 (35:51):
You know, but hold on, now, hold on, hold on,
hold on. In our defense, listen, I'm one of the folks.
Speaker 1 (36:00):
I worked a Zone three, I was involved with weed
and seed, and I was bought in, And I thought,
you know, if we can get them young enough where
they learn about us, they know our first name, they
know our face, they know that we're not there to
hurt anybody that we just want to protect.
Speaker 2 (36:18):
I really do believe in that.
Speaker 1 (36:20):
However, I also know exactly what you're saying, that there's
no way a killer or a rapist is watching a
community child get a rabbit for Easter and that's going
to change their minds at all. But I would like
to see almost a parallel way of enforcing meaning deal
(36:44):
with the children in this way, deal with the criminals
in this way. So you have your community outreach people
as well as Hey, we're going to engage the community
and the children and the teenagers and the elderly. But
on this other hand, I will release he's the Viber
team anytime I need them.
Speaker 4 (37:05):
I agree that there should be a balance, But let
me tell you who I think the balance should be.
In the normal course of my day to day job,
I come across children all the time, and some of
these kids love cops anyway, and they come up and
they ask questions. I always had a bag full of badges,
and I would pin the badges on them and swear
(37:26):
them in and tell them come work for me as
soon as they get a particular age. Sometimes we're on
search wants we see kids out there, look at once.
It's seeing the secure and we got everyone handcuff and restrain.
Then we can pass out some badges or whatever. But
I think a concerted effort to go out and do
that as a waste of taxpayer's money. And let me
(37:47):
tell you, let me tell you why I say that.
You know, anytime you got to prove you're a good guy,
it doesn't come off genuine.
Speaker 3 (37:56):
If you're a good.
Speaker 4 (37:56):
Guy, people will know you're a good guy. And there
are things that you do in the course, you know,
community police. It was something we were already doing anyway.
It just wasn't coined and we didn't assign anybody to it.
I can remember a young cop going on a house
fire and the house was burned down, the family has
nowhere to go, and one cop would take the lead
(38:18):
and say, hey, y'all got any money, Let's put something
together for them and get them a room.
Speaker 3 (38:22):
We just did it.
Speaker 4 (38:23):
We wasn't trying to do a TikTok video or say hey,
look what we did today. It was just the right
thing to do, and we did it, and we had
relationships because we were in there and we were solving
crimes and if we can help people along the way,
we did. But to take four or five offices and say, okay,
your only job is to go out and be nicer
(38:46):
people and make them think we're human too, Okay, first
of all, it's ridiculous. Okay, if we're not human, what
are we are? We aliens? I think people already know that.
I think in your day to day work, everybody can
be a community cop when they need to. When I'm
driving down the street and I see a lady with
a flat tire, I'm going to stop and change it.
And I mean, my deputies do that. And that's not
(39:07):
just being a nice guy, it's just good police work.
If she's there on the side of the road, she
could get hit or somebody could come and take advantage
of her, which I worked at case like that when
I was a detective. A woman broke down on the
side of the road and the wrong people stopped, and
unfortunately she was sexually assaulted and we had to spend
all night hunting those guys down. But at the same time,
(39:32):
people appreciate that. I can remember running for sheriff one
time and I knocked on the door to ask for
a vote, and I didn't recognize the person, but they said, hey,
I always vote for you. Stop to help me change
my tire. Well, it was the right thing to do,
but I wasn't doing it because I was hoping I
was going to get a vote.
Speaker 3 (39:48):
That's just what I do.
Speaker 4 (39:50):
And I think the whole department, if they just do
the right thing, that's community policing. But to kit six
or eight people and they don't ride calls, they don't
check the door, and they're not protected. They're not doing
active patrol work. But their only job is to go
out and act like, hey, we're nice people, and we
cry and all that kind of stuff like that. That's
(40:10):
not what law enforcement was intended to do. I would
rather the seven or eight people that was on the
community policing team at the police when I was there.
I would rather know they're riding in my neighborhood making
show my house don't get broken into. And I would
rather know that the toughest one of them all, if
I had kids, was at that school making sure no
(40:32):
one came in and shot my child.
Speaker 2 (40:38):
I want to just mention briefly.
Speaker 1 (40:41):
You were convicted May fifteenth, twenty twenty three of violating
the civil rights of six inmates. I don't want to
talk about that. I want to talk about the fact
that you went to federal prison for eighteen months and
what you're doing with it. So you went to Forest
City Federal pen MB the lines then tell us a
(41:04):
little bit about that, because I was so just knocked
out the way you write in your book, the Vigilanti
Sheriff about what the inmates taught you, and I just
think it's real important for young officers that listen to
this podcast or veteran detectives. No matter your circumstance, you
(41:27):
can still serve, you can still help people, and that's
what you're doing.
Speaker 2 (41:33):
But I just want you to talk about that a
little bit.
Speaker 3 (41:36):
Well.
Speaker 4 (41:36):
To talk about that, first, we got to understand this.
Most elected officials, when they're sent to federal prison, they're
sent to what was called a camp, and that's just
a fact they are. I wasn't sent to a camp.
I was sent to a real prison, and I was
put in the worst housing unit with the most violent inmates,
(42:00):
particular facility that no doubt was done by design, because
it really didn't make any other sense, any other reason
why that would be. And there was certain things that
were said and done by the staff that I knew
that was by design because when I first got there
and I was placing that particular unit, maybe two hours later,
(42:22):
I get called back up front to meet with the
lieutenant and he asked me if the people in there
knew who I was, and he asked if I was scared,
And of course why would I be. I mean that's
I used to run a jail. I used to walk
to jail by myself. And what was interesting is after
he asked that question, he said, well, you know, if
(42:45):
anybody bothers you, let us know. You can't stay up
here with us, but we'll find something. Well, the only
thing they could find for me is isolation. That's the
only thing they could do with people would get scared
because a lot of people came in there and we're
afraid or got beaten and was forced to go in
to isolation. And no doubt that's what they thought was
going to happen to me. Well, to their surprise and
(43:06):
the people who planned that surprise, it did not. You know,
if you send sheep to a lion's den, they'll get devoured.
If you send a line to the lions, then it's
a brotherhood.
Speaker 3 (43:18):
So that's what happened.
Speaker 4 (43:19):
A brotherhood formed in there, and we had some good,
honest conversations, and they got to hear my side and
I got to hear their side, and I learned more
from them than they learned from me. And they became
my teachers. Not only did they become my teachers, they
became my advocate. You know a lot of them researched
(43:41):
my case and helped write briefs that they wouldn't to
send my attorney for my appeal because they didn't agree
with my case. One of them was a man that
actually spent sixteen hours in a restraint chair, and when
he read the actual case, he said he'd never heard
of anything like that before, and if they were locking
(44:02):
up people for something like that, why didn't the people
put me in a chair for sixteen hours go to prison?
So it's very interesting that they not only became my
teachers on a lot of things, but they became my
legal advocates because there's a lot of jail house lawyers
there and I learned a lot from them.
Speaker 3 (44:18):
I hope they learned something from me.
Speaker 4 (44:20):
But I think that became my university, and I think
I became the student, and I believe that I earned
a degree from them, and not vice versa. I write
in that book that they really wrote that book. As
a matter of fact, they did. That was their idea
that I write that book. It would have never got
written if it wasn't for them, And I sincerely hope
(44:41):
that the things in that book bring the light the
points that they made, and I hope it will be
a proverbial rope for them to climb out of that
pit as well.
Speaker 2 (44:55):
And you know, you and I have talked about this
a little bit.
Speaker 1 (44:58):
But I don't know why some people are gonna have
alcoholism or drug addiction, or a child with special needs
or cancer, or why a child would get kidnapped.
Speaker 2 (45:12):
But I do know what has come from it.
Speaker 1 (45:14):
We now have things like alcoholics Anonymous and alan On
and special Olympics and Saint Jude and the Amber Alert.
Speaker 2 (45:22):
I don't know why you had this fall from grace,
but I.
Speaker 1 (45:25):
Know what you're doing with it now through your podcast
with your brother, and you know, I see that you're
trying to help the folks that are still in that
federal prison that you did befriend, that you openly in
the book say that they're your brothers. There's a brotherhood
there too, just like your law enforcement family. So I
(45:47):
don't know why it happened, but I know some good
will come from it from you helping other people, You
reaching back, you tossing that rope back so they can
climb out of that pit.
Speaker 4 (45:59):
Absolutely, you know, So no matter what happens, as a rule,
you've got to find a good in it, and you've
got to make something good happen out of it. And
you know, there's all types of theories out there that
everything happens for a reason, and maybe it does, and
maybe it's you know, and do we know what that
reason is at this time?
Speaker 3 (46:19):
We don't. But that's what you have to do.
Speaker 4 (46:22):
Any situation that befalls you, you got to take it,
and you got to take lemon and turn it into lemonade.
Speaker 2 (46:29):
Amen.
Speaker 1 (46:31):
But I got to say one more thing before we conclude.
I've read a lot of stories, I've witnessed a lot.
I worked in corrections for eight years. Never ever have
I heard of anything more gangster than the way you
showed up.
Speaker 3 (46:50):
Sir.
Speaker 4 (46:52):
Let me hear what you're about to say.
Speaker 1 (46:54):
Only he shows up and turns himself into the Federal
penitentiary in a private jet. Now, I'm not going to
ask you to name any names. I'm just saying that
is a gangster move. So if I'm already in there
and I think, oh, this sheriff, he's gonna come in here,
(47:14):
he's gonna have to humble himself, We're gonna show him
what's what.
Speaker 2 (47:18):
Most law enforcement there.
Speaker 1 (47:19):
In great danger of the minute they hit this thing
and I look out there and I see a private
jet lamp.
Speaker 3 (47:28):
Well, let me tell you this.
Speaker 4 (47:29):
The prison they sent me to was a thousand miles away,
and that's not an easy drive. So you know, by
playing you could be there in an hour by car.
That's like a twelve hour drive. So it made more
sense to go there that way to make sure I'm
on time and to make sure it's an easier trip.
(47:51):
I don't know if I can add us abtract that,
but I can tell you this. By time I walked
into prison, that story was told a million times, million
ways before I left. The story was that the plane
landed in the backfield and I came in through the
back gate of the jail. And I tell you, it's
been a lot of fun with it. You know, it's
amazing how folklore can get started off of something that
(48:15):
is really simple.
Speaker 3 (48:17):
And that's one of them.
Speaker 4 (48:18):
I probably never lived down because I know that was
a talk of the whole prison.
Speaker 2 (48:22):
Oh I'm certain, I am certain.
Speaker 1 (48:25):
Listen, Victor Hill, I appreciate you coming on and talking
to me.
Speaker 2 (48:30):
I appreciate your openness, your willingness to share.
Speaker 1 (48:36):
You know, not such a great eighteen months out of
your life and career. But I think it's important for
people to hear and again, thank.
Speaker 3 (48:46):
You, thanks for having me. The pleasure's truly mine, y'all.
Speaker 1 (48:49):
I'm going to end Zone seven the way that I
always do, with a quote, save yourself. You don't owe
these people anymore. You've given them everything. Catwoman, Batman, Dark
Night Rising. I'm Cheryl McCollum and this is Zone seven.
Welcome to Zone seven, y'all. Tonight is going to be
a conversation. You know, when I think of my Zone
seven and I think about people that I've known throughout
my career, it is not without some hiccups.
Speaker 2 (00:24):
It's not without some situations that we wish would have
never happened.
Speaker 1 (00:29):
But ultimately it is what you do within those situations,
and that's what tonight is about. Welcome to Zone seven.
Victor Hill, Sir, how are you.
Speaker 3 (00:43):
I'm doing great? How about you?
Speaker 1 (00:45):
Erh, I am doing good. This conversation is overdue for
Zone seven in my opinion, Yes, and I appreciate.
Speaker 3 (00:52):
You, appreciate you having me.
Speaker 1 (00:54):
The last time I saw you in person, I had
responded to a bank robbery and the suspect lived and
fled to Clayton County. And when we called you and
told you where he was and that we were going
to come get him, OI, did.
Speaker 2 (01:12):
You show up.
Speaker 1 (01:14):
You got your viper squad out, you got your fugitive
squad out, and you showed up personally. And I know
we were all so grateful by that show of support
and force because we didn't know what we might be
met with. So that's the last time I saw you.
Speaker 2 (01:33):
Do you remember that?
Speaker 3 (01:34):
I do? I do?
Speaker 1 (01:35):
You showed up in that slick tricked out Z twenty
eight baby, and I remember asking you if you wanted
to swap with my eighteen fifty.
Speaker 2 (01:47):
Whatever it was.
Speaker 3 (01:50):
Yeah, that was one of my favorites.
Speaker 1 (01:52):
That was a beautiful car. I remember thinking that car
looks so good. I wish I could come and dear it.
Speaker 4 (02:00):
Yep, one of my favorites. The Black Fantom was his name.
Speaker 2 (02:04):
I love that even more.
Speaker 1 (02:05):
I didn't know that, but I will tell you after
that response, you gave several of the folks in the
CID coins and on the coin was Thattman like the wings.
Speaker 2 (02:19):
And it looks so good.
Speaker 1 (02:21):
I mean that as a challenge coin goes, that's going
to get your attention.
Speaker 2 (02:25):
And I heard a.
Speaker 1 (02:28):
Lot of people had something to say about that coin
and saying it was connected to your.
Speaker 2 (02:34):
Ego, but I know that's not the case.
Speaker 1 (02:37):
Would you tell people why that man was significant to
you and it has something to do with a childhood friend.
Speaker 3 (02:45):
Sure?
Speaker 4 (02:45):
Well, First let me say this. My staff actually designed
that challenge coin. They told me, Sheriff, we'd like to
do a challenge coin, and I was like, yeah, we
don't have one, that's fine. And then when they came
up with the coin, it was a surprise and they
showed it to me and it had to batsymble on
it because I'm often associated with Batman, so I can't
take credit for that coin. It's a beautiful coin, but
(03:07):
I didn't design it, and it wasn't my idea. It
was actually my staff, and I think they really really
made one of the most unique challenge coins and law
enforcement I've ever seen, and I was proud that it
came from my agency and appreciated what they did.
Speaker 3 (03:22):
But you know, the Batman thing.
Speaker 4 (03:25):
As a child, I was an avid comic book reader.
When I became a teenager, I didn't really pay much
attention to Batman or The Dark Knight because, you know,
there was a show that Adam West had and that's
all I really knew about him. I thought it was
a kiddy character, and I thought it was a character,
you know, mostly for kids, and I think we all
(03:48):
remember that show, and it was a good show for kids,
but you know, especially if you're in kindergarten, it was
kind of corny. I didn't realize there was an actual
serious version of Batman, and one day, I was looking
through a comic book and I saw a comic book
that caught my attention. It was kind of grim and
it's kind of onymous, and it referred to him as
(04:08):
a dark Knight. And when I read it, it was very,
very fascinating, and it wasn't the best of stories. I mean,
he was a kid that saw his parents gun down
in front of his eyes. Would a botched robbery, and
that's something that kids shouldn't see. And of course that's
how he was born. That's how he decided that he
would fight crime, that he would not only find who
(04:31):
killed his parents, but that he would go after all
people who commit murder. And you know, murder is the
ultimate theft. It's the theft for which there can be
no restitution. There's no way you can give restitution to
the victims of a murder. So I always thought it
was interesting story that I became an avid reader of
that comic book from that moment on. Well, as we know,
(04:53):
sometimes art imitates life and life imitates art, and my
teenage cheers. There was a friend that I'd known ever
since elementary school and they disappeared, and ironically, their body
was found found behind that same store that I read
that comic book in. And it wasn't a it was
(05:16):
very grisly murdered. It was mutilation involved.
Speaker 3 (05:19):
I raped this.
Speaker 4 (05:20):
Memberment of one particular part of that person's body. And
where I'm from, that's just not the norm. That's nothing
you hear about often. I'm from Charleston, South Carolina, and
I grew up on a park called Jeans Island, which
is actually a real island, and that was just unheard
of in a grypted community with fear. And there was
(05:43):
this famous well I say he's famous.
Speaker 3 (05:44):
He was well known to us.
Speaker 4 (05:45):
He was a homicide detective, well decorated, and he saw
that murder and it meant a lot. He end up
becoming my mentor, and really that's how my crime fighting
career started. I knew then that I definitely was going
to become a cop, and I knew what kind of
cop I was going to be, and I knew that
I wanted to go after those type of people, people
(06:08):
who perform the ultimate theft, which is taking someone else's life.
Speaker 1 (06:13):
And you know, there's another connection that we have speaking
of that. I was in the DA's office and I
was the law enforcement trainer and I was pregnant with
my first child, and my real good friend, Deborah Burke
called me and she said, Hey, you're not going to
believe this. Our buddy is going to run for sheriff
(06:34):
and I think he's going to win it.
Speaker 2 (06:35):
And when he wins it, he.
Speaker 1 (06:36):
Wants you to come over and do training. And the
great part is you're going to be able to work
from home and only come in on the days that
we're hosting a training. And I remember thinking, that is
going to be unbelievable, you know, having your first child
and not having to leave home five days a week,
not having to be on call, not having to you know,
(06:58):
be away so much.
Speaker 2 (07:00):
I thought that is going to be fantastic.
Speaker 1 (07:02):
And you know, to Cab County Police Captain Derwin Brown
was going to run for sheriff. He was going to
win it, and he was going to make some changes
that were so necessary. And my in laws lived into
Cab County, so this was going to be great. I
was going to be closer to them, I was going
(07:22):
to be able to be home.
Speaker 2 (07:24):
It was just going to be perfect.
Speaker 1 (07:26):
And you were involved with watching that and you were
real interested what Dernaan was doing, So why don't you
talk a little bit about why you watched that race
with such just laser focus.
Speaker 4 (07:40):
At that time, I knew I was going to run
for sheriff in Clayton County, So of course I was
watching all shriff's races and studying the office of sheriff
very very closely and carefully, because I knew it was
what I wanted to do, and I had a particular version,
not very ship visian for that office.
Speaker 3 (08:00):
Well, he was of interest.
Speaker 4 (08:02):
In me because he seemed like he was interested in
taking the sheriff's office and restoring it to his original jurisdiction.
And what I mean by that is in the metro
area of Georgia, there's only eleven counties that have a
sheriff's office, and the county police used to be thirteen
(08:22):
and now it's whittled down to eleven. County police departments
are almost extinct, and for good reasons. And in those
particular counties, the sheriff, most of them have been reduced
to just civil papers and warrants and the jail in
the courthouse. Well, that's politics by law. You can't do
(08:46):
that with the sheriff's office. The sheriff's office by constitution
as the chief law enforcement agency of the county and
has the authority to engage in any type of law enforcement,
and they're supposed to actually the Constitution, which it makes
it clear that the sheriff has a duty to protect.
It doesn't say that about any other law enforcement agency,
but it's very very clear about that with the office
(09:07):
of sheriff. So when the sheriff doesn't enforce the law,
he's actually violating a constitution if he just sits on
the sidelines and say, well, let the police do this
or do that. Well, he seemed to be a person
that was interested in restoring the sheriff's officer's original jurisdiction
and using it which is for which it was intended
to be used. So I was going to watch not
(09:29):
just his election. I wanted to see what he was
going to do once he got into office and see
how that worked out, because I figured maybe it could
be a model for what I had already had planned. Well,
unfortunately we know that never came to be because unfortunately
he was robbed of his life, and ironically, he was
robbed of his life from a deputy that was employed
(09:51):
at the sheriff's office. And you know, I'll probably let
you get into that a little bit. But a lot
of people may not know it or may not remember.
But during sent out thirty seven letters of thirty seven
people that he felt should no longer be employed when
he became sheriff. That's not uncommon. That's the sheriff's right,
and that's a wise thing to do. No elected person
(10:11):
goes in office, no president goes in office and keeps
the same cabinet. It's nothing personal, but you bring in
your own cabinet, and then there are some people who
simply don't need to be there. And obviously Durren Brown
was right and his choices because his choices of people
he didn't want there was a murderer and that person that,
of course we found out was involved in a whole
(10:31):
lot of other things like overtime fraud.
Speaker 2 (10:34):
And that's one thing I wanted to kind of get into.
Speaker 1 (10:37):
Because Sidney Dorsey, a former Atlanta Police Department homicide detective.
He made his name off the Wayne Williams serial killer case.
He became the first African American sheriff into cabin County.
Speaker 2 (10:54):
Yes, he was running against Derwin.
Speaker 1 (10:58):
Brown, Yes, when one and you know I did I
believed in my friend.
Speaker 2 (11:04):
I knew he was going to make some changes.
Speaker 1 (11:06):
I knew it was going to be just a different day,
a new day into Cab County, and I was hopeful.
Speaker 2 (11:13):
I was excited.
Speaker 1 (11:15):
And then December fifteenth, two thousand, he is assassinated in
his front yard. He had just arrived home from celebrating
his graduation from the Sheriff's Academy, which you're well schooled in.
And the thing that struck me is you're the one
(11:36):
that said the trigger man is in that pile of letters,
those letters that went out, the trigger man is in there.
Speaker 3 (11:45):
You knew it, Yes, you know.
Speaker 4 (11:48):
I had spent a decade in homicide and so that
that was my specialty. Of course, you know law enforcement
everyone has is something for everyone in law enforcement. This
traffic cops, there's drug cops, there's homicide cops. There's so
many areas to specialize in, and you know, there's something
for everyone, and there's a level of expertise. Just like lawyers,
(12:11):
some are civil, some are criminal, some deal with medical
mal packages for the same thing in law enforcement. So
homicide has always and will always be my thing. I
always have a love for that, and it was very
obvious that that was going to be the case in
that and thus when you fast forward you get my
infamous case where in my first day in office, I
(12:35):
too fired well I fired twenty seven or thirty seven people,
but because of what happened to Duram Brown, I took precautions.
You know, it's very very interesting how that was portrayed,
because my mine was portrayed as snipers on the roof.
And you know how to media, the state, Yeah, they
have right, they they Unfortunately, the media is not you know,
(12:59):
when it comes to honesty and telling the truth, those
are probably the last people we can go to and
you can lie by Old Mission as well as CO Mission.
And what's interesting about them and a lot of my cases,
they did a lot of line by Old Mission as
opposed to CO Mission. But let's go to the co missioneer.
You know, the CO Mission is saying that we pointed
(13:20):
weapons at people. That's not true. If that was true,
there would be a photograph of it, because there was
a leak about what I was going to do in
the media actually took photograph and the footage of the
guys I had on the roof. So if they actually
had rifles, pointing at people. I'm sure they would have
had footage of that. But here's what is true. I
did have been up there, and well trained men up there,
(13:41):
and for good reason. When we saw what happen with
Durren Brown, it's not outside the rim of reason to
believe that that couldn't happen in Clayton County or couldn't
happen in anything else. When people the sheriff's office is
are very sought after seat, and history has proven that
people would do anything to get that office up to
(14:03):
including an assassination would happen with Darren Brown. There was
another case like that in Kentucky. And another thing, if
they don't assassinate you, then they do a law fair
assassination and they'll find a reason to indict you. And
of course lawfare is something that we're starting to see
across the country. We've seen it happen with the President
and various other elected officials, where if people feel you
(14:26):
can win an election and they want to stop you
from winning the election. We unfortunately have prosecutors that think
that it's okay to use the grand jury system, which
is something else we will have to talk about and
use that as assist as a way to indict political
opponents of people they don't want to see when and
(14:47):
I think anyone familiar with our grand jury system knows
how our cake, okay is, excuse my language, excuse my
pronunciation of that, but I believe that our country and
Liberia in only two countries left with a grand jury.
And you know that's kind of close to a star chamber.
You can walk in a room with twelve people and
tell them anything you want to tell them, and the
(15:09):
person that you're indicting is not there to defend themselves,
and they can't even have a defense attorney to defend themselves,
and you can tell them anything and there's no checks
or balances, and they take that as an opportunity to
lot of grand jury's And that's why they call it
hamp Sandwich indictments, because with a system like that, you
literally can indict a ham Sandwich. And I've been the
(15:31):
victim of those type of grand juries, not once, not twice,
but three times.
Speaker 1 (15:40):
Well, let's talk about the snipers on the roof, because
I want to get to something. Because we mentioned that
a deputy was involved in the assassination of Dulan Brown,
but somebody else went to prison. Sidney Dorsey went to
prison the former sheriff.
Speaker 4 (15:56):
Prosecutors are interested more so and what can get them
a press conference or headlines, and they are sometimes getting
the actual criminal. It was more important for them to
get Dorsey than it was to get the trigger man.
Now we know years later Dorsey actually confess to being
(16:17):
involved and confess to the murder, but for a long
time he didn't, and the only evidence was these particular people.
So it's sad that the just the testimony of murderers
or criminals is enough to convict somebody on his own
(16:38):
because they're not really credible. And that's something we'll probably
talk about one day what happened, and not only in
my first case, with my second case, but I believe
that the trigger man, the person that actually pulled the trigger,
should never be allowed to walk free with something like that.
But they wasn't going to get the type of press
(16:58):
they wanted or to glory they wanted if they got him.
But if they got the actual sheriff who didn't pull
the trigger, then then that's what you That's what happened.
If you look at my case with the restraint chair,
I never physically placed anybody in a restraint chair. Now
I did authorize them to be a restraint here and
with good reason and within policy and within the law.
(17:19):
But the people who actually put them in a restraint
chair were never prosecuted. And if you look at the
videos of it, you see them placing them into the
restraint here. You don't see any physical violence, any force,
and you don't see anybody looking like they're afraid or
paul to do it. Those folks that actually use those
chairs sixty six hundred times without me being there or
(17:40):
my author authorization, and that's how they've.
Speaker 3 (17:42):
Always used it.
Speaker 4 (17:43):
But again, the target was made, it wasn't them, and
it really had nothing to do with the restraint chair.
It had to do this, It had to do it
the same thing that the Duram Brown assassination was based
on on who's going to be the sheriff. People will
do anything to get that seat. They will kill you,
or they will indict you any way to get an
(18:05):
opponent out of the way.
Speaker 3 (18:06):
That's what they'll do.
Speaker 1 (18:07):
That's the reason I want people to understand. When all
they hear is the story about snipers on the roof,
they never mention Derwin Brown.
Speaker 2 (18:19):
He was an elected sheriff, he.
Speaker 1 (18:22):
Was fixing to take office, and they killed him in
his front yard. So you did not react based on
something that happened twenty years ago. You did not respond
and react based on something that you heard might have
occurred somewhere else. This was a neighboring county in your state.
(18:46):
So to me, when you said, hey, I'm fixing to
send out some letters myself, I am not going to
be caught off guard if somebody.
Speaker 2 (18:55):
That I know has a weapon.
Speaker 1 (18:58):
You know, I'm going to make sure that myself and
everybody else in this building is going to be safe.
Speaker 4 (19:03):
Absolutely, And I'm glad you brought that up. And let's
play Devil's advocate for a second. Let's just say that
did not happen in the Cab county. But that is
the reason I made that decision, and that was the
case that I made that decision off off of the
use of extra security. But let's just say hypothetically that
didn't happen in the county just that sits directly next
(19:23):
to my county. It's not outside the realm of reason
in the day's world that when you terminate people this
can happen. We you know, for a long time there
was this They used to refer to it as going
postal because there was a lot of postal workers that
were starting to shoot their supervisors or whoever. And that's
(19:44):
why you had this thing, don't go postal. So we
saw in the civilian world where people who don't carry
weapons to work as a part of their job, we're
actually doing things like this. And of course, you know
active shooting situation, so how can it be out. I had
the rumor of reason that when you fire people who
are carrying guns, that you don't need to take some
(20:06):
type of precaution. Anytime a chief of police or share
fire someone, he's firing a person that's armed, and if
certain precautions are taking the person's arm at the time
they're being fired. And that's why it was very, very
important that we came up with security ways to fire people.
(20:27):
Even after that incident. It didn't make sense to tell
a person they're fired and they got a gun on them.
You don't know what mental condition they might be in
on how they react to it. So anytime you take
preemptive action, critics will will criticize you for taking those actions.
Up until the point something actually happens, and then they're
(20:51):
the same people will say, well, why didn't they do anything?
Case an example, I was criticized for firing twenty seven
people on my first day in office. Three months later,
Brian Nichols shoots up the courthouse, kills a deputy, kills
a judge, kills a clerk, and unfortunately even killed another
(21:11):
innocent person, which I think just happened to be a
federal agent. And the same media that was criticizing me
for firing people the first day started criticizing that share
of saying why didn't he fire people and why didn't
he bring in a better staff when he came in office?
And thus you have the maxim Damn if you do,
Damn if you don't, well.
Speaker 1 (21:30):
You got elected, you lost reelection, and then you won again.
But I got to tell something, and I'm fitzing to
tell you the truth.
Speaker 3 (21:40):
You ready, I'm ready, that's gonna be good.
Speaker 2 (21:44):
I am driving down the road.
Speaker 1 (21:46):
Comes over the radio breaking news you have been indicted.
Thirty seven count rico indictment.
Speaker 2 (21:58):
And I thought, child, he did it. Thirty seven counts.
He did it.
Speaker 1 (22:06):
That's what I thought, because I thought, you know, one
or two lies maybe it's like Bill Cosby, One or
two women can get together and lie, but not thirty seven.
So when I hear Rico, and I'm thinking the FEDS,
who have all the time and money and resources, thirty
(22:26):
seven count this man that I've known.
Speaker 2 (22:33):
Respected, he's had a fall from grace. That's it. That's
what I thought.
Speaker 4 (22:39):
Yeah, you think he must have done something, and you know,
and you know I can give you that I know
was a prominent preacher in Clayton County. I've known for years,
and you know, this is a guy I've known on
a personal level. And I had an honest conversation with her,
told how disappointed I was in him in that incident.
And he said, basically what you said. But I can't
(23:01):
give him the same grace I gave you because I've
known him on a personal level. And he said, well,
you know what, all those charges, I thought you had
to have done something. So I understand where you're coming
from on that. Well, let me tell you what was
a lesson learned for me and a lot of people
on that particular case. You know, you just don't think
of prosecutors as lying, and you don't think it am
(23:22):
as plotting and trying to do something on a political case.
You just think that these are honest people, I think,
you know, when you find out, like I found out
over the years, that that's not the case with all
of them. You got some thieves and some murderers in there,
and unfortunately, you got a lot of liars in there.
Speaker 2 (23:40):
I worked Zone three. We lost some good people to
some really bad.
Speaker 4 (23:46):
Action, absolutely, and so it was hard to believe that, Wow,
there has to be something to this.
Speaker 3 (23:53):
But you know, here's in a nutshell what we got.
Speaker 4 (23:59):
If you look at the time I was indicted three
years after I'm out of office, when I announced I'm
going to run again, and the people behind the indictment
was the guy who was shared at that time, kimbro
and the DA who and another one, Tasha Mosley.
Speaker 3 (24:18):
They all ran as a political slate.
Speaker 4 (24:21):
So when he barely won last time and he went
on a technicality, that's another story. You know, you got
to be careful questioning elections now because you got these
other attorneys prosecutors that want to prosecute you for that.
Speaker 3 (24:35):
But it was a technicality.
Speaker 4 (24:37):
He went on on a trick that they tried that worked,
and there was really nothing we could do about it.
So when I came back, they pretty much knew I
was going to win and they had to find a
way to stop it. But the first thing when you
look at these indictments is it, both of them, including
the one with the restraints here, they all came around
reelection time. So if you want to know if a
(24:59):
prosecuteations politically motivated or not, look at the timing of it.
Here's what a lot of other people don't realize. It
says thirty seven twenty seven count indictment or whatever, but
people didn't realize what those indictments were. When you say
recod of course you think I'm a mobster. You think
of people like John Gotti, etc. But what those changes
(25:21):
actually were was I was accused of stealing the same
police car multiple times. The DAS and their infinite wisdom
and creativity of novel cases, said that every time I
drove that car out of town, it was theft of
a motor vehicle, and as a result, when I put
(25:42):
gas in the vehicle, that was a subsequent theft. And
you know, rico means that you take an organization and
use it as a criminal enterprise. So their theory in
order to get me in dited was every time I
drove that car out of town and every time I
put gas into it. All of those charges became felonies,
(26:03):
even if the amount of gas in the car at
that time was twenty or thirty dollars, because they lumped
it all together under Rico, so every charge was a felony.
So every time I put gas in the car was
a felony. That was twenty seven of the counts. So
that meant I took the same car, stole it took,
stole it, brought it back to myself, stole it brought
(26:23):
it back to myself.
Speaker 3 (26:24):
And it's ridiculous.
Speaker 4 (26:25):
Every sheriff has twenty four hour use of his car,
and the person that creates a policy for the car
is the sheriff. If anything happens in the county, a
deputy gets killed or god for God forbid or killed
takes a life, or there's a situation that comes out
of that, I have to respond back. No matter where
I'm at, I have a credit card where if I'm
(26:48):
too far away, I have to get the first flight back.
It's a whole lot cheaper to get back in the
car than calling the airport and saying, hey, I need
a ticket right away. So it's not uncommon, it's not illegal.
It was another novel theory of prosecution, like the one
that they were able to get a conviction on that time.
(27:08):
Fortunately the jury saw through it and we were able
to present everything to this jury that we needed to.
We weren't able to do that because we were stopped
by the judge. And it's a case where I'm dealing
with a conviction on now that we're appealing. But that
goes to show you the length that people will go
to to get a prosecution.
Speaker 3 (27:28):
Well, the media, you know media, you got.
Speaker 4 (27:30):
These so called item reporters that're supposed to look into things.
I know for a fact they were aware of it
because I made sure all of that got sent to them.
They refused to do it because one thing you got
to understand about media, especially our local media, they will
see to it that you don't get a fair part crial.
They'll play just enough to turn the public opinion to
(27:51):
make people think you're actually guilty of something you're not.
And even when they're aware are facts that can help you,
they won't put that out in the meeting because they
want to see you get indicted too, so they can
have something to report, kind of like they like inciting riots,
so they can have something to report, because most riots
are started by the media. So these are the type
(28:12):
of things you're looking at. And most people don't know
what those indictments were about. So when those charges were
when I was acquitted, it gave me this type of
John Gotti aura that I was untouchable. But I don't
think the public realized just how asinine, for lack of
a better term, the charges were and the people who
(28:34):
brought the charges.
Speaker 1 (28:39):
In just the last three days in Georgia, we have
had two police officers killed in the line of duty.
Speaker 2 (28:48):
And two more shot just hours ago.
Speaker 1 (28:52):
I want you to tell people your thoughts on community policing.
Speaker 4 (28:59):
I think that community police and, while it has some value,
is overrated and a waste of time. And I think
that it's contributing to what you just describe what we're
having in Atlanta.
Speaker 3 (29:14):
Now let me tell you why.
Speaker 4 (29:16):
First of all, before this term community police and was coined,
all the good cops did that anyway, you built rapport
with different people in the community so that when things happen,
they would tell you. All the good homicide detectors. We
had rapports with prostitutes, barbers, cab drivers, pimps. We built
(29:38):
rapports with these people because when dead bodies started popping up,
they usually knew who did it. And there are a
lot of times my phone would ring on my way
to homicide and they would say, hey, look this is
who did it. I don't want to be involved, So
my job was to get there and depend on good
people like you to connect that person to the scene
(30:00):
with some type of physical evidence. So that's really what
community policing was designed for.
Speaker 3 (30:07):
You know.
Speaker 4 (30:07):
I was once sitting at a symposia and a local
rapper was there, Killer Mike, and I was sitting there
with who is a police chief at that time, and
he started talking about his vision of community police and
I'll never forget this.
Speaker 3 (30:22):
Killer Mike looked at him and he said, you.
Speaker 4 (30:25):
Know, on the streets we laugh at officer friendly, right,
And the room got silent that he was right. When
you send officers out to deal with rapers, rapists, robbers, murderers,
but you want them to go out there and play
nice guy and get on the ground and play with
(30:46):
dolls and stuff like that. Those type of killers will
not take those officers seriously, and neither were most of
the public. And there's this group of people out there
that makes it sound like, you know, anytime you see
an officer in the uniform dancing with everybody, it's a
good thing. But I don't see it that way. It's
not a good thing. First of all, he's dancing with
(31:06):
the public. He can't really have situational awareness. So if
you get an active shooter that comes into the crowd,
he's not going to be aware of it because he's
too busy dancing. His job is to protect the people
so they can enjoy dancing and have a good time.
So he has to be vigilant. He has to be
like the sheep dog looking for the wolves to come in.
(31:27):
I don't have any biological kids, but if I did,
I wouldn't want an officer friendly at their school. I
wouldn't want anybody there that they felt comfortable playing with
anything like that. I wouldn't want somebody there. I'm not
saying that he would mistreat people. I'm not saying he
would talk down to people unnecessarily. But I want to
know that there's somebody strong and competent, so someone walks
(31:50):
in and starts shooting at kids. I know he's going
to take care of it. I would want to know
that somebody there strong enough that criminals actually feared coming
to that school and showing out because they know that
particular office is there. I want my kids to be safe.
I don't need any clowns. They're playing with them. And
if they're afraid of them, good. I mean they should
be afraid of the police, because if they're afraid, then
(32:11):
maybe they won't come there and kill our kids or
take advantage of them.
Speaker 1 (32:15):
And you know Leslie Bailey, you know Leslie from Clayton County.
She used to say yes, no, please, and thank you
ain't going to get it done that.
Speaker 2 (32:25):
You can't always be polite.
Speaker 4 (32:28):
Absolutely, when in Rome you have to do as Romans do,
and when you're in different countries you have to learn
to speak that particular language. When you're dealing with killers,
when you're dealing with robbers, when you're dealing with a
certain group of people who they live their lives based
(32:49):
on praying on others. They're not going to understand the
Barney song if you start singing it to them.
Speaker 3 (32:56):
They're just not And you know, if you.
Speaker 4 (32:58):
Look at this case with the restraint chair case, now
that we're dealing with, you'll see this big deal in
the media. There's a guy I'm talking to and I'm
telling him not in Mike County and stay out of
my county. And I refer to him and I tell him,
I said, hey, you sound like a jackass. Well he
did sound like a jackets. And I don't apologize. If
(33:18):
you take an eighty year old woman out of a
wheelchair and pull her here out and throw her on
the ground, and your reason for doing that is because
you said that you felt that she cut in front
of you in line, and you beat up her sixty
year old daughter, you are a jackass. And if we're
going to indict out offices for talking tough when we
(33:40):
need to talk tough, and for being tough when we
need to be tough, then this is what you see
we get because when you do stuff like that, you
in bold in criminals. And that's what you've seen happen
here in Atlanta. You've seen criminals become very, very bold.
If you look at the jail that I used to run,
they're in bolded in there. There's now stabbings, there's drugs,
(34:04):
there's cell phones.
Speaker 3 (34:05):
There's been four murders.
Speaker 4 (34:07):
None of that occurred under my watch, and a lot
of that didn't occur because of the conversations I had
with them. And when we saw people who showed the
potential for violence, we did what officers are trained to
do all over the state. We do it on search warrants,
we do it on traffic stops. People we think that
could have the potential for violence, they're restrained for safety.
(34:28):
And that stopped all of that from occurring. And you
take that one tool away because you want to do
a political prosecution in order to get someone elected. And
now we have and I said four is actually five
dead bodies in that jail since then.
Speaker 3 (34:42):
And I'm not talking about people dying in.
Speaker 4 (34:44):
Natural causes, because we have no control when the Lord
calls them ie home. But we do have control over
people being killed. Five murders in the jail, five four murderers, release, stabbing,
cell phones, drug over doses, riot situations of people refusing
(35:06):
the lockdown. That's the result of that, And that's the
result of prosecutors criticizing and making up novel prosecutions, and
they make officers afraid to do their job and That's
why we see criminals sewing bodes into to challenge law
enforcement because officers are afraid. Now they say something, they
(35:26):
do something, next thing you look at being prosecuted.
Speaker 1 (35:29):
Well, you know, this was on my mind today because
when we got word of the South Fulton officer that
was shot and we learned about him first, I was
literally at a community event where my department was passing
out little rabbits for adopt a rabbit program in the park.
Speaker 2 (35:51):
You know, but hold on, now, hold on, hold on,
hold on. In our defense, listen, I'm one of the folks.
Speaker 1 (36:00):
I worked a Zone three, I was involved with weed
and seed, and I was bought in, And I thought,
you know, if we can get them young enough where
they learn about us, they know our first name, they
know our face, they know that we're not there to
hurt anybody that we just want to protect.
Speaker 2 (36:18):
I really do believe in that.
Speaker 1 (36:20):
However, I also know exactly what you're saying, that there's
no way a killer or a rapist is watching a
community child get a rabbit for Easter and that's going
to change their minds at all. But I would like
to see almost a parallel way of enforcing meaning deal
(36:44):
with the children in this way, deal with the criminals
in this way. So you have your community outreach people
as well as Hey, we're going to engage the community
and the children and the teenagers and the elderly. But
on this other hand, I will release he's the Viber
team anytime I need them.
Speaker 4 (37:05):
I agree that there should be a balance, But let
me tell you who I think the balance should be.
In the normal course of my day to day job,
I come across children all the time, and some of
these kids love cops anyway, and they come up and
they ask questions. I always had a bag full of badges,
and I would pin the badges on them and swear
(37:26):
them in and tell them come work for me as
soon as they get a particular age. Sometimes we're on
search wants we see kids out there, look at once.
It's seeing the secure and we got everyone handcuff and restrain.
Then we can pass out some badges or whatever. But
I think a concerted effort to go out and do
that as a waste of taxpayer's money. And let me
(37:47):
tell you, let me tell you why I say that.
You know, anytime you got to prove you're a good guy,
it doesn't come off genuine.
Speaker 3 (37:56):
If you're a good.
Speaker 4 (37:56):
Guy, people will know you're a good guy. And there
are things that you do in the course, you know,
community police. It was something we were already doing anyway.
It just wasn't coined and we didn't assign anybody to it.
I can remember a young cop going on a house
fire and the house was burned down, the family has
nowhere to go, and one cop would take the lead
(38:18):
and say, hey, y'all got any money, Let's put something
together for them and get them a room.
Speaker 3 (38:22):
We just did it.
Speaker 4 (38:23):
We wasn't trying to do a TikTok video or say hey,
look what we did today. It was just the right
thing to do, and we did it, and we had
relationships because we were in there and we were solving
crimes and if we can help people along the way,
we did. But to take four or five offices and say, okay,
your only job is to go out and be nicer
(38:46):
people and make them think we're human too, Okay, first
of all, it's ridiculous. Okay, if we're not human, what
are we are? We aliens? I think people already know that.
I think in your day to day work, everybody can
be a community cop when they need to. When I'm
driving down the street and I see a lady with
a flat tire, I'm going to stop and change it.
And I mean, my deputies do that. And that's not
(39:07):
just being a nice guy, it's just good police work.
If she's there on the side of the road, she
could get hit or somebody could come and take advantage
of her, which I worked at case like that when
I was a detective. A woman broke down on the
side of the road and the wrong people stopped, and
unfortunately she was sexually assaulted and we had to spend
all night hunting those guys down. But at the same time,
(39:32):
people appreciate that. I can remember running for sheriff one
time and I knocked on the door to ask for
a vote, and I didn't recognize the person, but they said, hey,
I always vote for you. Stop to help me change
my tire. Well, it was the right thing to do,
but I wasn't doing it because I was hoping I
was going to get a vote.
Speaker 3 (39:48):
That's just what I do.
Speaker 4 (39:50):
And I think the whole department, if they just do
the right thing, that's community policing. But to kit six
or eight people and they don't ride calls, they don't
check the door, and they're not protected. They're not doing
active patrol work. But their only job is to go
out and act like, hey, we're nice people, and we
cry and all that kind of stuff like that. That's
(40:10):
not what law enforcement was intended to do. I would
rather the seven or eight people that was on the
community policing team at the police when I was there.
I would rather know they're riding in my neighborhood making
show my house don't get broken into. And I would
rather know that the toughest one of them all, if
I had kids, was at that school making sure no
(40:32):
one came in and shot my child.
Speaker 2 (40:38):
I want to just mention briefly.
Speaker 1 (40:41):
You were convicted May fifteenth, twenty twenty three of violating
the civil rights of six inmates. I don't want to
talk about that. I want to talk about the fact
that you went to federal prison for eighteen months and
what you're doing with it. So you went to Forest
City Federal pen MB the lines then tell us a
(41:04):
little bit about that, because I was so just knocked
out the way you write in your book, the Vigilanti
Sheriff about what the inmates taught you, and I just
think it's real important for young officers that listen to
this podcast or veteran detectives. No matter your circumstance, you
(41:27):
can still serve, you can still help people, and that's
what you're doing.
Speaker 2 (41:33):
But I just want you to talk about that a
little bit.
Speaker 3 (41:36):
Well.
Speaker 4 (41:36):
To talk about that, first, we got to understand this.
Most elected officials, when they're sent to federal prison, they're
sent to what was called a camp, and that's just
a fact they are. I wasn't sent to a camp.
I was sent to a real prison, and I was
put in the worst housing unit with the most violent inmates,
(42:00):
particular facility that no doubt was done by design, because
it really didn't make any other sense, any other reason
why that would be. And there was certain things that
were said and done by the staff that I knew
that was by design because when I first got there
and I was placing that particular unit, maybe two hours later,
(42:22):
I get called back up front to meet with the
lieutenant and he asked me if the people in there
knew who I was, and he asked if I was scared,
And of course why would I be. I mean that's
I used to run a jail. I used to walk
to jail by myself. And what was interesting is after
he asked that question, he said, well, you know, if
(42:45):
anybody bothers you, let us know. You can't stay up
here with us, but we'll find something. Well, the only
thing they could find for me is isolation. That's the
only thing they could do with people would get scared
because a lot of people came in there and we're
afraid or got beaten and was forced to go in
to isolation. And no doubt that's what they thought was
going to happen to me. Well, to their surprise and
(43:06):
the people who planned that surprise, it did not. You know,
if you send sheep to a lion's den, they'll get devoured.
If you send a line to the lions, then it's
a brotherhood.
Speaker 3 (43:18):
So that's what happened.
Speaker 4 (43:19):
A brotherhood formed in there, and we had some good,
honest conversations, and they got to hear my side and
I got to hear their side, and I learned more
from them than they learned from me. And they became
my teachers. Not only did they become my teachers, they
became my advocate. You know a lot of them researched
(43:41):
my case and helped write briefs that they wouldn't to
send my attorney for my appeal because they didn't agree
with my case. One of them was a man that
actually spent sixteen hours in a restraint chair, and when
he read the actual case, he said he'd never heard
of anything like that before, and if they were locking
(44:02):
up people for something like that, why didn't the people
put me in a chair for sixteen hours go to prison?
So it's very interesting that they not only became my
teachers on a lot of things, but they became my
legal advocates because there's a lot of jail house lawyers
there and I learned a lot from them.
Speaker 3 (44:18):
I hope they learned something from me.
Speaker 4 (44:20):
But I think that became my university, and I think
I became the student, and I believe that I earned
a degree from them, and not vice versa. I write
in that book that they really wrote that book. As
a matter of fact, they did. That was their idea
that I write that book. It would have never got
written if it wasn't for them, And I sincerely hope
(44:41):
that the things in that book bring the light the
points that they made, and I hope it will be
a proverbial rope for them to climb out of that
pit as well.
Speaker 2 (44:55):
And you know, you and I have talked about this
a little bit.
Speaker 1 (44:58):
But I don't know why some people are gonna have
alcoholism or drug addiction, or a child with special needs
or cancer, or why a child would get kidnapped.
Speaker 2 (45:12):
But I do know what has come from it.
Speaker 1 (45:14):
We now have things like alcoholics Anonymous and alan On
and special Olympics and Saint Jude and the Amber Alert.
Speaker 2 (45:22):
I don't know why you had this fall from grace,
but I.
Speaker 1 (45:25):
Know what you're doing with it now through your podcast
with your brother, and you know, I see that you're
trying to help the folks that are still in that
federal prison that you did befriend, that you openly in
the book say that they're your brothers. There's a brotherhood
there too, just like your law enforcement family. So I
(45:47):
don't know why it happened, but I know some good
will come from it from you helping other people, You
reaching back, you tossing that rope back so they can
climb out of that pit.
Speaker 4 (45:59):
Absolutely, you know, So no matter what happens, as a rule,
you've got to find a good in it, and you've
got to make something good happen out of it. And
you know, there's all types of theories out there that
everything happens for a reason, and maybe it does, and
maybe it's you know, and do we know what that
reason is at this time?
Speaker 3 (46:19):
We don't. But that's what you have to do.
Speaker 4 (46:22):
Any situation that befalls you, you got to take it,
and you got to take lemon and turn it into lemonade.
Speaker 2 (46:29):
Amen.
Speaker 1 (46:31):
But I got to say one more thing before we conclude.
I've read a lot of stories, I've witnessed a lot.
I worked in corrections for eight years. Never ever have
I heard of anything more gangster than the way you
showed up.
Speaker 3 (46:50):
Sir.
Speaker 4 (46:52):
Let me hear what you're about to say.
Speaker 1 (46:54):
Only he shows up and turns himself into the Federal
penitentiary in a private jet. Now, I'm not going to
ask you to name any names. I'm just saying that
is a gangster move. So if I'm already in there
and I think, oh, this sheriff, he's gonna come in here,
(47:14):
he's gonna have to humble himself, We're gonna show him
what's what.
Speaker 2 (47:18):
Most law enforcement there.
Speaker 1 (47:19):
In great danger of the minute they hit this thing
and I look out there and I see a private
jet lamp.
Speaker 3 (47:28):
Well, let me tell you this.
Speaker 4 (47:29):
The prison they sent me to was a thousand miles away,
and that's not an easy drive. So you know, by
playing you could be there in an hour by car.
That's like a twelve hour drive. So it made more
sense to go there that way to make sure I'm
on time and to make sure it's an easier trip.
(47:51):
I don't know if I can add us abtract that,
but I can tell you this. By time I walked
into prison, that story was told a million times, million
ways before I left. The story was that the plane
landed in the backfield and I came in through the
back gate of the jail. And I tell you, it's
been a lot of fun with it. You know, it's
amazing how folklore can get started off of something that
(48:15):
is really simple.
Speaker 3 (48:17):
And that's one of them.
Speaker 4 (48:18):
I probably never lived down because I know that was
a talk of the whole prison.
Speaker 2 (48:22):
Oh I'm certain, I am certain.
Speaker 1 (48:25):
Listen, Victor Hill, I appreciate you coming on and talking
to me.
Speaker 2 (48:30):
I appreciate your openness, your willingness to share.
Speaker 1 (48:36):
You know, not such a great eighteen months out of
your life and career. But I think it's important for
people to hear and again, thank.
Speaker 3 (48:46):
You, thanks for having me. The pleasure's truly mine, y'all.
Speaker 1 (48:49):
I'm going to end Zone seven the way that I
always do, with a quote, save yourself. You don't owe
these people anymore. You've given them everything. Catwoman, Batman, Dark
Night Rising. I'm Cheryl McCollum and this is Zone seven.
Host
Sheryl McCollum
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