Gwinnett Sheriff Keybo Taylor Talks Prison, Challenges and the Future of Law Enforcement [Podcast]

Sheriff Keybo Taylor dives deep into the complex intersection of law enforcement, mental health, and community engagement. With decades of experience under his belt, Taylor provides valuable insights into the challenges facing the criminal justice system and the solutions being implemented in Gwinnett County, from addressing mental health issues within the prison system to fostering diversity and trust within the sheriff’s office. Listen to the UrbanEBB podcast, with host Rico Figliolini, and hear Sheriff Keybo Taylor’s vision for the future of law enforcement and community relations.

Resources:
Keybo Taylor for Sheriff: https://www.keyboforsheriff.com/
Gwinnett County Sheriff Website: https://www.gwinnettcountysheriff.org/sheriffkeybotaylor
Gwinnett County Voting: https://www.gwinnettcounty.com/web/gwinnett/departments/elections

“The biggest thing that we have to stay up on top of as the criminals evolve, our training has to evolve. That’s the most important step, because no matter what type of technology you have, you still have to have people out here that can interpret what’s going on. So with good training, we get good intel. The better your intel is, the better you can put things in place to be a little bit more proactive.” — Sheriff Keybo Taylor

Timestamp:
0:00:00 – Introduction by Rico Figliolini and gratitude to the sponsor
0:02:27 – Responsibilities and challenges of the County Sheriff
0:06:55 – Renovations and improvements in the county jail system
0:08:24 – Emphasis on mental health resources and programs
0:13:04 – Challenges in recruiting and retaining qualified law enforcement personnel
0:15:14 – Efforts to promote diversity within the Gwinnett County Sheriff’s office
0:20:55 – Challenges in public perception and the importance of changing law enforcement culture
0:25:54 – Handling cybersecurity-related calls and collaborating with appropriate agencies
0:26:20 – Ongoing training programs, including de-escalation and use-of-force training.
0:27:42 – Investments in upgrading taser situations, body cams, and technology for force recognition.
0:28:51 – Major initiatives addressing bullying and anti-gang efforts
0:31:31 – The evolving nature of law enforcement over the last 40 years
0:33:20 – Human trafficking in Gwinnett county
0:35:57 – Info on Keybo’s campaign and voting opportunities
0:36:48 – Closing

Podcast Transcript:

Rico Figliolini 0:00:00

Hi, everyone. This is Rico Figliolini, host of UrbanEBB, a new podcast we’ve been doing that talks about the urban environment, culture, public safety, and business. And today’s guest I’ll introduce shortly. But before we do that, I just want to say thank you to our sponsor, EV Remodeling, Inc. They’ve been a sponsor of ours for going on two or three years now. They’re based in Peachtree Corners. Eli owns the company, does great work, business that does from design to build. Check them out at EVRemodelingInc.com. And thank you for supporting us. Special guest today. Now, who I interviewed back 2020 during COVID actually, when we first started doing video podcasts remote. And that’s Keybo Taylor, Gwinnett county sheriff. Hey, Keybo, how are you?

Keybo Taylor 0:00:50

How are you doing? It’s good to see you, Rico.

Rico Figliolini 0:00:52

Good to see you, too. It’s been a long time. We’re in 2024 now, Covid seems to be a long time ago, and four years have passed quite a bit. But we learned quite a bit from you back then when you ran for office. Now it’s almost time for reelection again. Actually, it is time for re election again, but we’re going to be talking more about Gwinnett County Sheriff’s department, what it is, what’s its responsibilities. But before we get into that, I just want people to know a little bit about you. So if you, in brief, could tell us a little background about you, Keybo, that would be great.

Keybo Taylor 0:01:27

Okay, sure. Just a little bit of background about me. I was born and raised here in Lawrenceville, Georgia, so I’m a native “Gwinnician,” if you want to call it that. I raised my family here, just have been here. I started my law enforcement career very quickly back in 1983 with the Gwinnett County Police Department. Retired from there, and then, as we said, became sheriff in 2021. And so basically, like we talked about before, we just came in with a hodgepodge of ideas that we wanted to try to implement here at the sheriff’s office and be glad to discuss that with you.

Rico Figliolini 0:02:08

Sure. So tell us also for those that don’t know, because sheriffs lease officers, marshals, the city of Peachtree Corners now has a marshal system in place. So a lot of different responsibilities. Tell us for those that don’t know what a county sheriff does and is responsible.

Keybo Taylor 0:02:27

Sure. What a lot of people don’t know is that the sheriff is the chief law enforcement official in the county. Okay. Regardless if you’re a police chief or whatever, the sheriff is the official head law enforcement officer there, and the duties parallel, and sometimes, but then most of the duties of the sheriffs are exclusive to the sheriff. One, we’re the chief law enforcement officer in the county, as I said. And our job, our first responsibility is law enforcement. Now, here in Gwinnett county, we have a full service police department, Gwinnett County Police Department. So a lot of the law enforcement functions of that is handed over to the sheriff’s, excuse me, to the police department. But we’re also responsible for securing the jails, any type of civil paperwork to be served, serving warrants, felony warrants, securing the court systems, and a handful of other duties I didn’t even know that the sheriff was responsible for until I got into sheriff’s school and I realized that it was a bigger job than I first thought.

Rico Figliolini 0:03:34

Really.

Keybo Taylor 0:03:35

We do have a lot of responsibilities. Yes.

Rico Figliolini 0:03:37

Okay. One of the main responsibilities that I remember is obviously running the jail system, the county jail, and the budgets. So it’s not just an enforcement position, but it’s an administrative position in that sense. Right. Running budget, making sure you have the monies to do things, the employees to implement the policies that you put in place. How has that been over the years? Obviously, you first started, weren’t privy to, I guess, the way the jail system worked.

Keybo Taylor 0:04:08

Let me tell you. We came in and Rico, as you know, we came in right in the middle of COVID as Covid was starting to wind down. But what I found coming in is that nobody really knew what to do with the pandemic with COVID and some of the challenges that we were facing in the jail systems itself. And that wasn’t just here in Gwinnett county, that was across the country. And there was a lot of things that was trial and error that we had to try to figure out as we were moving along. So there was a lot of policies in place that when we came into office, we realized that we had to make some changes on some of those policies as we moved forward, especially as it came to, and as it pertained to personnel people. And you also know that we had just came off the heels of George Floyd, and we came off the heels of Ahmaud Arbery. And so, I mean, it was an eventful time coming in, trying to figure, know, how do we maintain and keep everybody safe in what we’re doing, and not just staff. That was also keeping, I don’t call them inmates, I call them residents here. Keeping them safe here, too, as well as dealing with people leaving the profession and trying to get people back into the profession.

Rico Figliolini 0:05:39

There were definitely challenges back then. Anyone that watched tv, the news understood that, like you said, that’s just keeping your own personal safe. But in prison, your residents, if they were infected with COVID how do you quarantine them? How do you treat them? Right? So I’m sure you had to go through that.

Keybo Taylor 0:06:00

Yeah, we had a pretty good system. Basically, when anybody came in to the jail, of course we asked them, we checked, we did the medical screening of them. But we isolated all of the new detainees coming in. Okay. And we isolated because we were going by the guidelines that we had gotten from the CDC between twelve and 14 days. So we would put them in. Into an area. Everybody that came in on a day, we kept them in that area, kept them separated from the general population. And then at the end of that time, if they were still testing negative for Covid or wasn’t showing any symptoms, symptoms, then we will put them into what we call Genprop, which is general population. But anybody that we found that was sick, we continue to keep them separate from that general population until they were.

Rico Figliolini 0:06:55

Cleared of COVID Have you done any major improvements to the actual physical jail system since you took office?

Keybo Taylor 0:07:04

Yes, very good question. Yes, we have. The majority of the renovation that we have done is in the area that we call the Plunkett building, which is the oldest section of the jail that we have. And basically, we had locks that needed to be replaced. The residents had figured out how to defeat those locks. The sensors was wore out, panels was wore out. So we went in and we retooled that particular portion of it, and we turned that into not just the medical side of it, but also for mental health. So basically what we did is we took that space and we consolidated mental health and medical all in one area.

Rico Figliolini 0:07:49

That was one of the issues that you were running on as well. And I think, even currently, about mental health resources within the prison system, dealing with detainees and residences that have mental illness was never really a priority at some years ago. And that has shifted now, I think, in the way responses are made by first responders and such. So what you’re saying is that now you are handling that physically in a different place as well, a little better than it used to be, I guess. Are you providing, obviously, programs and stuff then?

Keybo Taylor 0:08:24

Yes. I mean, we took a close look. When you look at anybody that comes through with a mental disability, if you’re looking at use of force, you’re looking at treatment, you’re looking at where they are in the criminal justice system, mental health is kind of like right at the center podge of all of it. When you’re looking at, if you go in and you do a comprehensive study of your use of force, then you’re going to see the majority of the people that come into a facility such as this and attack a deputy or deputy has to use force is normally because they’re dealing with some sort of mental disabilities that is causing that. Okay, so basically what we did is when we came in with the medical contracts, we wanted to put a stronger emphasis on the evaluation of people coming in the door. Now, does that mean that you’re going to catch everything? No, because some people may not present until a couple of days inside of general population, and then we pick up on the fact that they’re suffering from a mental disability. But we wanted to make sure that we address them coming in the door and what type of treatment plans being more aggressive on treating people with mental disabilities here and providing services, whether it’s services while they’re here and even trying to address mental disabilities once they’re back out outside of our facility, but also in with that, too. We started a mental health task force because like I told you when you and I first talked almost four years ago, we have to start looking at maybe these people don’t need to be in a jail setting. Maybe they need to be in a crisis stabilization unit. So if we could get to someone and identify a person that is going through a mental health crisis, get them to a hospital, get them into a different system other than bringing them to jail and getting them the services that they need, and then also, too, providing them with more services to help them reintegrate and get back out in here to the public so that they’re productive and they’re not recycling and coming back into the jail again. So those are some of the things that we looked at, but we realized that in order to give best care, we had to consolidate those services in one area physically. So it’s been a journey, but I feel like we’re making a lot of progress with it. We’ve had some missteps in here as far as dealing with folks with mental disabilities, but we have to make sure that we’re putting the emphasis back on the state DBHDD to make sure that we’re moving inmates, residents into the systems where they really need to be, where they can get that proper care.

Rico Figliolini 0:11:23

Yeah, that makes sense because I don’t know what percentage. What percentage of the population would you say that is that you deal with mental health issues?

Keybo Taylor 0:11:34

I don’t know what the percentage is, but right now, I have between four, maybe 450 inmates in here that has some sort of level of mental disabilities that they’re dealing with. And right now, I think the last number I had is I’ve got 15 here in the jail that should be in the state system getting treatment. And for whatever reason, we’ve not been able to move those make slash residents to the state.

Rico Figliolini 0:12:08

One of the things that is a problem apparently nationwide, it’s not just here is, and it’s not just the prison system necessarily. It’s law enforcement, is that it’s difficult to find qualified people to be hired. Time and again, I see there are budget dollars for hiring, let’s say 20 or 30 or 40 people within a system, but there’s not enough application. So the money sits there, that there is money maybe to hire, but there’s not enough qualified people applying for those jobs. And when they do, from what ends they even Gwinnett police, they’ll put them through the system, train them and all, and then within a year or two, those people leave for better paying jobs somewhere else, maybe. How are you facing those challenges? This is not just here. It’s across the board with every business, it seems, but more so, I would imagine, in law enforcement.

Keybo Taylor 0:13:04

Well, it’s like anything else. You got to look to see what the trends of the day is. And when you and I talked before, I believe we did discuss this. I told you that there needed to be, and I’m going to use a different term, a cleansing of our business here, meaning that there’s people that is in law enforcement that should not be in law enforcement. When I came in, I was coming in behind an administration that was between 13 and $14 million paid out in damages due to use of force. So, like I said, when you identify these bad actors, you got to get them up out of law enforcement completely, meaning that they should not be able to leave one agency and go to another and stay into this business. So that was a challenge. But in order to bring in the top people, you got to know that we’re in competition with other agencies, city agencies, other sheriff’s offices across the state and across the. You know, obviously, Gwinnett county has always been known for the training. All right? So a lot of people was coming here, and people realized that if you get an officer or deputy that has been trained here in Gwinnett county, they know what they’re getting. They know that they’re getting people that have some of the best training in the nation. So they make it attractive for these people to go to different agencies and leave us. So we’ve been in contact with our county commissioners and the county administrator, and we’ve talked about some of the concerns with that and coming up with different ideas on making Gwinnett county the place to be and then making Gwinnett county the place to be. We got to be ultra competitive with anybody else as far as what we’re looking at, as far as salaries, benefits, working conditions, supervision. Where we get people in and keeping folks, the retention is the most important thing. Getting people in the door is one thing. Keeping them is something totally different, for sure.

Rico Figliolini 0:15:14

And walking along that road, if you will. Diversity. Getting different people within the system that may not have been in the system before, diverse employment to be able to. I mean, we’re. Gwinnett county is a majority minority. Majority minority county. And to get the right officers and diversity in there, multilingual, it’s important as well, especially in the jail system, I would imagine. Even so, how do you deal with that? How has that been going?

Keybo Taylor 0:15:48

Well, like you just said, Gwinnett county is one of the most diverse counties in the nation. And I can’t remember. I think it’s like 150 something different nationalities here in Gwinnett county. Obviously, be nice if we could find somebody from each and every nationality and get them in here to represent the Gwynette county sheriff’s office. But that’s not possible. But what is possible is for me, my executive staff and command staff, to set a culture here that is welcoming for anybody, any culture, to come in and have a good, positive workplace within the Gwinnett County Sheriff’s office. So I think as long as you’re doing that and you’re getting good, qualified applicants coming in, we should continue to be able to diversify our staff and even upper management. I feel like we’ve done a very good job of diversifying the command staff, the executive command staff, and we’re just trying to get people at all different levels to provide me and my chief with the best information on how we best serve any and everybody here in Gwinnett county. Because I campaign on being the sheriff for everybody. So that’s what we’re looking to try to do.

Rico Figliolini 0:17:14

It’s interesting because dealing with gangs and human trafficking, I know that’s one of the areas that you all are working on. And with the diversity of the community, the asian population, every culture has different ways of having to deal with crime that happens within their community. Right. Some will step forward and report these things, others won’t because of fear of retaliation and stuff. When you’re dealing with gang human trafficking and implementing units to handle that, how do you approach that? How successful has it been and what are you doing there?

Keybo Taylor 0:17:54

Well, very good question. The first thing you got to do is you got to build trust. And in the process of building trust, you got to ask yourself the question, if we’re talking about gangs, what is it we got to start with? What is it about this kid that make him feel like he has to be a part of a gang? What is it about his environment, his home life? Who is around him? Or is there a significant threat that this person feels like they cannot deal with and live safely in their community without being involved in a gang? So that’s the first step. Second step is to, once you figure that out, finding people where they are all right, you don’t want to try to address these problems in an enforcement capacity all the time. So basically what we did is that we went in and we started trying to do other things to put ourselves in front of these kids in communities. And the third and the most important step is, and you said it yourself, people don’t report because they’re fearful. Okay? And a lot of people don’t trust law enforcement. And so when I came in, and again, I’ve talked about it from day one, is that we have to create a culture. I have to create a culture to where everybody feels safe with law enforcement. So when you go back and you look at elderly black people who probably have had some very negative experiences with law enforcement, then they’re inherently not going to be trustful. So we’re trying to change that. And that’s the reason why we set up our community outreach section so that we are out here in neighborhoods, and we’re having a presence in these neighborhoods that has been unrepresented before as far as law enforcement. So once you start to establish that trust and they see us in other capacities other than coming in to lock somebody up or do the negative things that is perceived in a neighborhood to keep them safe, we’re trying to build that trust. So once you build that trust, people feel comfortable with us. Then they will come in and open up more, give us more information so that even if the resources don’t come in from the sheriff’s office, we can collaborate with other resources, outside vendors, whatever it may take to say, hey, we need to go into this area, do ABC, because this is a problem. So we go in and we can look at the environment, we can look at the structure of the family. We can look at what’s going on within the school systems in those areas. We can address those areas. And once people feel safe, then maybe they don’t need to feel like they need to go and join a game. They can live productively without having the pressures of that, needing that type of added protection.

Rico Figliolini 0:20:55

Yeah. Does make a difference where you brought up and the environment that you’re in? Absolutely. And I think part of it is also, I think we’ve lost, to a degree, respect for people and for law enforcement. Not out of fear, but just respect that they’re doing a good job out there. They’re doing the best job they can out there. In an environment where you have to be the good guy, the good guy isn’t always able to work against the bad guy well enough. Maybe because there’s no rules when you’re a bad guy, but you have to follow rules when you’re a good guy, right?

Keybo Taylor 0:21:31

That’s correct. But the flip side to that is when we, as the good guys, become the bad guys once again, it’s like, okay, see, that’s what I’ve been talking about. You see what they’re doing. And unfortunately, we get to see so much more of the bad. But when you look at the number of the bad that we deal with, it’s such a small percentage of what people do out here in law enforcement every day. There’s millions of police contact with folks every day. And unfortunately, we get to hear about a handful of them.

Rico Figliolini 0:22:10

Okay?

Keybo Taylor 0:22:11

They’re so egregious that you don’t have a choice. But, hey, that’s such a negative perception of what they’re doing. You got to address it. But as the leader of your agency, department, wherever you’re at in the food chain and law enforcement, it’s up to us to make sure we change that culture. And that’s what I’ve tried to do here, is make sure people have that feeling of comfort. Now we’re saying that, okay, does that mean that something won’t happen? No, it doesn’t mean that for sure. No matter whatever we do, things still happen. We still get bad players that make it through the system, into the system.

Rico Figliolini 0:22:48

Right.

Keybo Taylor 0:22:49

So then it becomes, how do we handle? Okay, are you trying to cover up the bad, or are you addressing the bad? And the approach that we’ve taken is that we address our bad head on, whatever. That may be one thing that I’m proud of, and I don’t have the numbers of the stats here in front of me, but the use of forces that we have. And I want to make a difference between what we call necessary force, excessive force, and when we’re using force, because we have to use force in certain situations. We wanted to take a look to see if the force was one necessary and if it was excessive. And we have done a great number, excuse me, a great job in reducing the number of unnecessary and excessive force complaints that were sustained, which means that, hey, a deputy went too far. And how do we address that? Is it a training issue? Is it a disciplinary issue to where this person, again, like I said at the very beginning of the show, we got players out here that don’t need to be in law enforcement. And we, as leaders, we have to identify those people.

Rico Figliolini 0:24:04

Yeah, no doubt. Listen, when you’re hiring enough staff to do the work of everything being equal, they’re not robots, right? They’re going to go out. There’ll be unique situations that they’ll come upon that wasn’t trained for maybe, or it may have been, but may have not have been emphasized because it rarely happens. But, like, you know, there’s TikTok, there’s Instagram. Things will blow up on a social media tool site, one thing, and make you look bad, where you may have hundreds if not thousands of other encounters where everything’s fine, in fact, where there are heroes to be made, if you will, instead of villains. Right in the system.

Keybo Taylor 0:24:48

Because it is a dangerous headline that day. Yes.

Rico Figliolini 0:24:56

As the sheriff’s department and such, do you ever handle? I mean, I guess not probably anything in the cybersecurity realm or do you get calls on any of that from citizens or related to technology theft or even retail theft? That’s not something.

Keybo Taylor 0:25:17

Yeah, we don’t necessarily handle it, but we do get the calls on it. And basically what we’ll do is we’ll refer it out to the appropriate agencies to handle it, whether or not we don’t have the resources to do cybersecurity. But that’s where your partnerships with the state and federal agencies who has a wider range that deals with these type of crimes, have units that that is all they do is deal with cyber type crimes. Then a lot of times we rely upon, and we depend upon them.

Rico Figliolini 0:25:54

You were saying before about training or about looking at altercations that might happen when you revisit that and you see why did that happen? Can we retrain that? Is there an ongoing, I’m assuming there’s some ongoing education programs for training for sheriffs, whether it’s encounters like that or for technology. So is there ongoing training for those types of things as well.

Keybo Taylor 0:26:20

Sure. The state requires, and I can’t remember how many hours every year, deescalation training. Okay. Use of force and deescalation. And on top of that, we emphasize, and we put in more training here, whether it be cit training, we emphasize, we put more emphasis on deescalation. So before it was just use of force, how to shoot, okay. Other things, man, when to use force, deadly force, those type of things. So I think it’s been a good idea by trying to incorporate more deescalation. I remember a movie one time, and I think it was a Steven Seagal movie, and I’m getting off a little bit, and we all know that he likes to beat up people in his movies. Well, there was one movie where he was injured, and he needed some herbs to get himself together, and he, you know, before, you know, got to learn how to heal before you learn how to do anything else. And I think that’s the same thing here. Before we learn to use force, we need to learn and put more emphasis on other techniques that we can do to de escalate a situation where we don’t even have to use force.

Rico Figliolini 0:27:40

Right. Agreed.

Keybo Taylor 0:27:42

So, too, let me say this, man. We’ve invested millions into upgrading our taser situations, body cams, all of these things that goes along with helping us to identify, recognize problems with force. So that’s something I’m very happy about.

Rico Figliolini 0:28:02

That’s cool. Technology has become, in the policing area, pretty big. I know that the local sheriffs here in peace, three corners are using, like, taser. I think it’s called taser ten, which is a more advanced taser gun. They’re using bola wraps. So this way they’re using tags on cars. This way they don’t have to do car chases. Pretty much. They could just gps track a car once it’s tagged. This way, there’s no high speed traffic, races across the city and streets and stuff. So technology is important, I’m sure. What about successful collaborations, partnerships, local businesses, other areas? Has the sheriff’s department done any collaboration or partnerships with private or public beyond what we’ve discussed?

Keybo Taylor 0:28:51

Yeah, there is nothing that I can do here without those partnerships. If you go back and you look, every year we do two things that’s major here, or actually three things. We have what we call our sheriff’s cup, which we bring in outside partners, and we have a football game to dress and talk about bullying, anti bullying and anti gang. We also do book bag drive every year to where we give out school supplies for students last year we were able to expand it for. We collected school supplies and necessary supplies for teachers also. But the biggest thing we do every year is we have a food drive in November, right before Thanksgiving. And our numbers in all of this, man, we’re upwards on the food drive to about feeding about 4000 people. So we have basically the largest school supplies. We have the largest probably food drive, one of the largest in the nation, I would say. But none of that is possible if we don’t have the cooperation between our outside vendors. So a lot of people that do business with the sheriff’s office, they have graciously provided time, money and resources into helping us out with those projects. I’ve gotten a lot of support from our county commissioners in sport warden. We do. And some of our initiatives out here, the churches, all the churches and other faith based leaders out here has been phenomenal as far as coming in, participating and making these events a success for us.

Rico Figliolini 0:30:44

Do you see ongoing, not ongoing, but with the evolution of the criminal, of the perpetrator, being able to continue to do what they’re doing, they’re changing the way they do things. Also the smash and grabs, the running into places like Lululemon and just stealing things and knowing that they probably won’t get arrested or won’t get stopped and stuff. So it’s all evolving. Do you see in the coming year or two challenges ahead that you’re prepared for or that you’re seeing that you want to be able to attend to those challenges and opportunities that you think the sheriff’s department needs to work with? Work towards solving?

Keybo Taylor 0:31:31

Yes, man. Like I was telling somebody the other day, if I had ran this thing all the way through, this last year would have been 40 years. And I’ve seen a lot of changes over the last 40 years, especially as it pertains to law enforcement. Okay, so in with that, and with that being said, we have to stay up on top of such things such as technology. Technology is not going to actually replace people, but it gives us a chance to where we can still do our job even if we are low on staff. Cameras, flock cameras, body cams, being able to connect with people that have security cameras around their homes whenever there’s a crime. Those type of things we’re also looking at, too. You mentioned artificial intelligence. We are looking at the fact that you got robots out here. Now, I know that at the PD, they use a lot of robots, especially on SWAT calls. That helps out with use of force. And we’re looking, taking a look to see if that is something that we could implement here in the jail system, robots. But the biggest thing that we have to stay up on top of as the criminals evolve, our training has to evolve. That’s the most important step, because no matter what type of technology you have, you still have to have people out here that can interpret what’s going on. So with good training, we get good intel. The better your intel is, the better you can put things in place to be a little bit more proactive. And then when things happen, if you got good intelligence, you got good starts on whatever, again, your investigations on.

Rico Figliolini 0:33:20

Do you see any challenges or differences in what’s going on with human trafficking in Gwinnett county? Has it evolved differently? Is there any new dangers to it, obviously, than the obvious?

Keybo Taylor 0:33:33

I mean, obviously it has. What I was very proud on is we just had a human trafficking conference here, I think it was in January, and that’s where we brought in people from all over the nation with the human trafficking council. They came to Gwinnett county and put on a symposium here for training here. So we were able to offer that out to a lot of the different local law enforcement officers here within Gwinnett county, as well know, educating and training up our own people here within side of our agency, too. But again, two things I go back to, and I say this, and I use the same model with human trafficking as I would with talking about bullying. Why would a person be put in a position to be trafficked? Okay, what is it about that environment? What’s going on in that person’s life, especially the younger juveniles out here? These people are 15, 14, 15, 16 years old. We have to start looking at what is putting these people in these positions to make sure that we’re staying on top of what we’re doing.

Rico Figliolini 0:34:41

Sure makes sense. Everything does come from the home. You almost wish you could take these kids when they’re two years old and bring them up a certain way outside that environment. We’ve touched on quite a bit. Is there anything that we’re missing that you want to share Keybo?

Keybo Taylor 0:35:03

I think the people of Gwinnett county that entrusted me with this know. Hopefully we know because, like I told you before, we went on a so called listening tour first to hear what the people of Gwinnett county was saying and what they felt like their needs were. And hopefully I’ve answered, been able to keep the promises on some of the things that we said that we were going to do. But we’re not done by no means is this a finished product. We still got more work to do. But I feel very good about the direction that the sheriff’s office is going in. Some of the major improvements that we made specifically within the jail to address certain things. And like I say, if people need more information, they can always go to the sheriff’s office website or they can go to my campaign website and pick up on more information.

Rico Figliolini 0:35:57

Excellent. Anyone that wants to visit the website, what is the website address?

Keybo Taylor 0:36:02

Actually, my campaign website is KeyboforSheriff.com. Okay. And then the other one is the Gwinnett County Sheriff’s Office.

Rico Figliolini 0:36:12

I think if anyone googles it, they’ll be able to find it easy enough.

Keybo Taylor 0:36:15

Yes, sir.

Rico Figliolini 0:36:17

And you are coming up for reelection in May. I think it’s May 21 is the election date. So anyone that wants to find out a little bit more about voting Gwinnett county or registering, which I think voter registration ends sometime in April. So I’ll have some of that information in our show notes so any of the listeners watching this or listening can check that out as well. Want to thank you, Keybo, for coming back for another interview with me to learn all the things that are happening and where you are with us.

Keybo Taylor 0:36:48

Thank you for doing a good job and keeping everybody informed out there.

Rico Figliolini 0:36:53 Thank you. Keybo. Hang with me for one moment as we sign off. Thank you, everyone for visiting with us today. Whether it’s on our Facebook pages, YouTube channel, this Twitter live feed entry, when this goes out, if you have any questions, post it in the comments. I’ll try to get some answers back to you on that. And again, thank you to EV Remodeling, Inc. For being a sponsor of this program and our corporate sponsor with our publications as well. So thank you all. Take care