Life After Crimes, a Q&A with Detective Brad King
I interviewed Captain Brad King, the head of the Baldwin County Sheriff’s Department’s Criminal Investigations Division, on Tuesday, in his office. He is a large man, stands tall at 6-foot; he wore a shirt and vest as the detectives do not wear uniforms in the office.
I found he was like most police offices I have spoken with; he maintained a sort of lax professionalism, rather casual and joking but not without having the formality is job requires, and not without light accent.
His desk was littered with stacks of paperwork, even though he did not seem to be too busy. The walls were covered in awards and personal memorabilia from his over 20-year career ranging from firefighting to narcotics work; I decided to ask him about it.
So, I wouldn’t say that law enforcement is everyone’s first choice as a career but you seem to have a passion for it, given how many jobs you have held in the field. What drove you to law enforcement?
Brad King: Well, actually, public safety was the career I chose early on, I started out as a basic EMT and then I got my paramedic’s license. Kind of in the middle of that I became a certified firefighter. I did those in a part-time capacity as well as a volunteer until I became a full-time paramedic at Oconee Regional [Medical Center]. I do not think I really woke up and said “hey, I think I’ll go be a deputy sheriff,” but I had a lot of friends that were [sheriff’s deputies] and I was intrigued by that aspect of it. There is no doubt in my mind that I made the right choice by changing careers. I am in my 22nd year, I started as a detention officer here [at the Sheriffs Department] and worked my way up to the road as a deputy, I made sergeant, started the K-9 program, worked narcotics for a number of years and was promoted to lieutenant. Then in 2009, I was promoted to captain, in this position as head of detectives. It’s about helping people really, and all aspects of public safety, to me, were rewarding. There’s little thanks in it, but that’s not, in any form, why I do it or why I chose it. It is the personal satisfaction that I get from being in this job.
So, You have had a lot of different Jobs, why do you think that is? Is there any certain reason that you have had so many different roles?
King: Well, probably the most I ever had was being a firefighter, but at the time that I was coming up, being a paramedic was the best paid and I chose that route. I enjoyed that work very much. I honestly believe what happened to me was that I was young and single and I worked all the time, I just kind of burned out. I didn’t want to do that anymore, the business was changing… and it was just time for me to go.
When you look back on everything you have done, what would you say would be a moment that you are really proud of?
King: I’m extremely… proud of my K-9 days, I really enjoyed that work. It was extremely difficult, it was extremely time-consuming [and] it was very physical, but the bond I had with my partner is something I’ve never experienced. I have had pets all my life, but you spend more time at work than anywhere else and every step I took at work, my partner was there with me. So that part stands out the most, I have relationships at with other people that started when I became a deputy sheriff and we have together for years and have been good friends but as far as something that I accomplished, being able to get her to do basically everything I asked her to do with just a command was extremely rewarding. I got the most satisfaction out of that but it was also the hardest thing to actually accomplish, I think those two kind of go hand and hand…
You have worked [at the Sheriff’s Department] longer than I have been alive, since 1997. How has the recent technological revolution changed local policing?
King: Honestly, It’s a hindrance to us because we can’t afford the latest and greatest gadget that’s out there, you know? Unless you can afford to change every six months, what you have is obsolete in far less than a year. It has also changed crime a lot, when you can be on the computer in another country and run a scam on an elderly person in Milledgeville, Georgia, it is pretty tough to combat. We do not have the resources nor the know how to track that and even at that, if it goes outside the united states, we have no jurisdiction. I embrace the technology, I think it’s wonderful because there are so many steps now that can be accomplished right here at my desk that used to take days of street work to do. Nothing will ever replace boots on the ground, that will never go away. We used to have to go to the pawn shop and look through all the files, I can look up pawn shops nationwide now on my computer. You used to have to take pictures and get the film developed before you ever knew if your picture was good or not, now we just click away. Things like that, there are pros and cons on both sides.
“we’re extremely far advanced, I believe, for a department our size, but when you look into internet-based crime, we are light-years behind”
The main thing is if we could always afford the latest and greatest, of course, we would be better off. Now we’re extremely far advanced, I believe, for a department our size, but when you look into internet-based crime, we are light-years behind from being able to capture all that information. You have to have a mixture, I have to have a mixture of guys my age and guys your age because you speak a totally different language than I do. We have a typewriter that we still use, the only thing we use them for is the labels on our case file, I’ve got a couple [detectives] that work for me and they’ve never used a typewriter because they learned to type on a keyboard for a computer. The things that you can accomplish on a computer that escape me, make perfect sense to somebody your age, but that also has a reverse effect when you start talking about certain aspects of fighting crime like we used to use a phone-book to find somebody and I’ve got some folks that never look at a phone book and don’t even have a phone-book in there desk because they’ve got google. I’m not going to say I could not be taught to do it, but it is extremely harder to teach me than it is to teach you just because you speak a different language when it comes to that stuff.
You have held your current role, the captain of investigations, for nine years. Over time, has it become a formula to you, or is it still kind of different every case?
King: …Certain different types of crimes are kind of cookie-cutter, you always know when you’re dealing with an armed robbery, we’re talking about some kind of weapon and something that actually got stolen. whatever that item is can possibly be traced with that serial number, it could possibly end up in a pawn shop. In cases like that, you pursue that case in very much the same way every single time, you go to school and through experience, learn how to actually work an armed robbery case. An armed robbery of a convenience store, you want to make sure you pull all the surveillance, you want to see if the clerk recognized the person and you want to check for any physical evidence that you might have. You want to make sure that you check out the footage of the getaway and even the approach to the store because somewhere in there, there may be the piece of evidence that you need. If you run through it systematically, you never miss anything. So you would do those basically all the same way. Now it may not actually look that way when we are doing it but we’re basically doing a checklist. Each detective I have approaches cases a little different, but in the end, its all the same set of facts that they are trying to learn. I let them do what they do, provided they give me what I need. That’s kind of how we do it.
“We had two different sides of town that basically started shooting each other and retaliating… We went about 16 months where it was a couple a week or more and it was just an unbelievable work-load”
Over the last few years, there has been an increase in crime rate locally, specifically murder. Why do you think that is?
King: It’s more specific to violent crime. We’ve had more gun crime, in this county in the last couple of year, than I ever recall [in] any period in my career. It is attributed to, for lack of a better word, a gang war. We had two different sides of town that basically started shooting each other and retaliating over a murder where a gang member was shot and killed. I can not give a rhyme or reason as to why, at this particular time in history, they decided to ramp it up like they did. We’ve had flashes like that before, but never a sustained [high violent crime rate]. We went about 16 months where it was a couple a week or more and it was just an unbelievable work-load. One of the big issues in that is drive-by shootings in nature are extremely difficult to prosecute because you take an action that lasts just seconds, but… with multiple shots fired, multiple residence and multiple vehicles struck, it will take us a couple days to simply process the scene. … Now, what we were able to establish was, of the places in the county that were shot, in probably about 90 percent of them, were able to identify who was most likely the target. So, that guy who we believe was the target was a known gang member. So, we produced a ton of data that told us that this was all gang-related, nearly every one of them… In the middle of that, we did have several shootings that we were actually able to deem domestic related not gang-related, so you have to be really careful when you put out a blanket statement.
Obviously, your job deals with a lot of tragedy and death. How do you handle that personally, does it affect you at all?
King: It does. I really don’t know, there are times it bothers me worse than others. there are a number of things I wish I could unsee, unfortunately, it doesn’t work that way. I do try to shield my people, if there’s something I have to look at but they don’t, I don’t let them. We had a very tragic situation here where a child got outside of the house, and they lived at the lake and he drowned. I took that case because… I don’t have any kids, the majority of the guys that work for me have kids, and most have small kids. The burden dealing with that, I just took that so they wouldn’t have to do it. … After a certain amount of time in the business, which now goes into 25, 26 years total in public safety, you compartmentalize. You learn that that’s work, you do your best to put it aside, but it takes an effect, there’s no doubt about that. Anybody that would ever say they’ve seen what I’ve seen and its never bothered them, they’re just not being truthful to themselves… If it didn’t bother me at all, that’s when I’d be worried but right now, yeah, it still bothers me.
“That type of mentality of grouping every police officer in with a bad apple is detrimental to our position within society. Without the public’s help, witnesses and so forth, we are ineffective.”
When you look at the news, you would think that there seems to be a lot of tension between the public and the police. Have you seen any of that personally, or have you ever felt you’ve been treated differently because of your profession?
King: I do think that, yes, that is at a height that I’ve never seen, not here, but the national response. There is a tension between the public and police… some of it rightfully so, but not all of it. I think that those incidents that get lauded in the news and on Yahoo and Facebook and all that, I really think that each individual incident has to be investigated or exposed in its entirety. Not just the part that looks bad, or not just the part that looks good, the entire incident is what needs to be judged. Now it is a fairly common theme that when police officers make mistakes is when they get all the media attention and not enough media attention is around or sought after when there are good things. Now, I will be the first to tell you that there are persons who bring bad light to their profession in every profession there is. You know there are bad mechanics, bad dry cleaners, bad waitresses, bad chefs. But if you run across a bad chef, it usually doesn’t make the newspaper, but if you run across a bad cop, it usually does. That type of mentality of grouping every police officer in with a bad apple is detrimental to our position within society. Without the public’s help, witnesses and so forth, we are ineffective. … Without that involvement we have very little hope in solving crimes, it is an essential part of police work in totality. … Anything that is detrimental to that, I am against because I know that this is a give-and-take relationship.
Do you think there are large misconceptions that people have about police officers?
King: I think so, you have to understand that there is a very small percentage of the population that ever even comes in contact with a police officer in the line of duty. The old saying that “well it was on the internet, it has to be true,” … a lot of times you see a headline that is disturbing to you, the headline might be “police officer shoots man 15 times,” … but they don’t go into the story where the guy he was in a gunfight with fired 15 times as well, that’s way down at the bottom of the story. A little creative writing gets your attention to either click on that article or read that newspaper article, that kind of thing. So, I think that there is a misconception about what is actually expected and actually what a normal day in the life of a police officer is.
Finally, do you have any personal goals that you want to accomplish before the end of your career?
King: I want to stay healthy for one, I very much do not want to be hurt. I want my people who work for me now, I want them to succeed. I have often told them that my job is to make them to where they don’t need me. So, I started out protecting them and teaching them, and I want to see them succeed. Honestly, I want them to do better than I ever did. I probably would like to move into doing some more training before my time is actually up to make sure I can share what I know and what I’ve seen with a crop of guys and girls that are going to be in this business long after I am gone. So, that’s kind of my goal, I would really like my career to end as right as I started it. So, that’s what I am after.