As the top law enforcement officer in the county, the Fulton County sheriff plays a vital role by operating the county’s jails, providing security to the courts and superior court judges, and managing a $146 million budget, among other duties. However, polling done by the American Civil Liberties Union of Georgia shows that Fulton voters are not exactly clear on what the sheriff’s role is.
To address this lack of understanding, the ACLU hosted a town hall forum on Tuesday for residents to get to know the five candidates who are running in the Democratic primary for sheriff on May 21. No Republican or independent candidate qualified for the primary.
The five candidates are: incumbent Patrick Labat, Kirt Beasley, James “JT” Brown, Joyce Farmer, and write-in candidate Charles Rambo.
Candidates answered questions from moderator Rohit Malhotra, executive director of the Center for Civic Innovation, and questions submitted by members of the audience.
Here are three takeaways from the forum.
Incumbent Sheriff Labat is the only candidate who supports building a new jail
Last December, Labat’s office pitched a new jail to the Fulton County Commissioners, to the tune of nearly $2 billion. The new facility would be nearly four times the size of the current jail and would cost almost 25% more to maintain.
The moderator asked the candidates to write down on whiteboards whether they support building a new jail. All except Labat wrote no. Beasley did mention that she would prioritize repairs on the existing facility, which would come with a much lower price tag.
Farmer added that she would consider adding a new wing before prioritizing the construction of a new jail.
Opposition to the new facility centers around the massive price tag for county residents. While the new jail would have a significantly larger unit for inmates with mental illness, critics say the focus should be on providing mental health care outside of prisons, not waiting until a person is incarcerated to get them help.
Labat says a new jail is necessary due to the crumbling infrastructure at the current jail, and the increased number of beds would alleviate overcrowding, which has long plagued the Rice Street facility.
All candidates want to hire more staff to address jail deaths
In 2023, 10 people died while incarcerated in Fulton County. Three people have died in the Rice Street jail, the biggest in the county, this year. The candidates were united in their commitment to increasing jail staff.
Rambo, a retired lieutenant commander in the sheriff’s office, said he will prioritize accountability for sheriff’s deputies.
“From 2009 to 2016, I introduced a system called CompStat, and there were no deaths, there were no type of incidents you’re seeing today,” he said.
Rambo said he would reintroduce CompStat, a police management system that uses data to analyze crime trends, to better allocate resources. Fulton County Jail was under federal supervision from 2006 to 2015 after the county was sued by the Southern Center for Human Rights on behalf of the jail’s inmates.
Brown, a retired 20-year veteran of the sheriff’s office who served in the jail, court, and law enforcement divisions, said he wants to make sure every sheriff’s deputy working in the jail is jail certified and require deputies to do rounds every 30 minutes.
Beasley, a retired lieutenant colonel in the sheriff’s office, said that if she is elected, she will initiate mass hiring and ensure staff are receiving proper training.
“We need [higher] levels of management in place, so for the deputies — detention officers — on the floor, we need to have a sergeant that oversees to make sure that rounds and everything is being done to keep those detainees alive,” Beasley said.
Labat said he wants to continue hiring more staff, including from third-party vendors, and change the culture in the jail from herding people to and from court to providing more care.
“This is a decade-upon-decade-long issue. There’s 60 people that have died inside in the last 20 years,” Labat said, adding that building a new facility is crucial to protecting the lives of incarcerated people.
Farmer, a 25-year veteran of the sheriff’s office who served as a field training officer, said she would focus on treating the staff better to increase morale and prioritize making sure the security rounds are being done effectively each time.
“Why is staffing so short? Why are the staff leaving? Due to the fact they’re not being treated right. If you treat staff right and understand their needs, they will come to work and we wouldn’t be short-staffed,” Farmer said.
All the candidates support partnering with Atlanta on a new public safety training center
In June 2023, the Fulton County Commissioners announced plans to build a new training facility for police officers separate from the one being built by the city of Atlanta in DeKalb County that critics have nicknamed “Cop City.”
When asked, all five candidates said they supported merging the two efforts to save taxpayer dollars.
Brown and Beasley said Atlanta should combine its efforts with the Fulton County facility.
“The city has already broken ground, they’re scheduled to be on track by December, or the end of the year — why build another facility when their facility is large enough to encompass two agencies,” said Labat.
Farmer agreed that the facility, which is already under construction, should be built under an equal partnership between the city and the county.
“What I would love to see is that the state comes in and adds a metro division of the Georgia Public Safety Training Center. Let it fall under the state so that everyone in the metro area [can train there],” Rambo said.
The sheriff’s race primary will be on May 21. Early voting is between April 29 and May 17.
