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Transcript

Valerie Fuller (Intro): 

You’re tuned in to the Clayton Connected Podcast in Clayton County, where the world lands and opportunities take off. 

Valerie (cont.):  

Welcome, welcome, welcome! I’m your hostess Valerie Fuller, Communications Administrator in the Office of Communications for Clayton County Government sector in the Clayton connected Podcast Studio today. You’re not going to believe it, people. I have the chief of police, Kevin Roberts everybody.  Welcome!  And he did not come alone. He is also here with Master Officer Barnes. Today we are talking all good things about Clayton County Police Department. Things some people may know, things some people may not know, but we want you to know nevertheless. Right. Chief, crime rates are down in Clayton County.  

Chief Kevin Roberts: 

Yes, they are. I’m pleased to report that we’re trending towards a 17% decrease in overall crime compared to the same time last year. I encourage any of our citizens to keep up with your crime stats yourself by going to our website, claytonpolice.com. If you go to our website, you engage the crime statistics button. Every time you see me in the community and I’m giving crime stats, those are the numbers I’m giving you. We’re very transparent about our crime and I thank you for everything our community is doing to help us drive these numbers down. 

 Valerie:  

Absolutely. And the percentage that they’re down to date? 

Chief Roberts:  

17%.  

Valerie:  

17%. Definitely worthy of a round of applause. So, what is it that you and the officers have done different this year?  

Chief Roberts:  

Because we’re working on our second consecutive year, I can’t say that we’ve done anything different more than we’ve done things a little bit better. What I’m talking about is communication and collaboration, not just within the department, but with our law enforcement, community partners, and of course the citizens in the community. We gather weekly to go over these crime stats, not only with individuals in our agency, but we send invites to the cities, to our DA’s office, to the Solicitor’s office, and those leaders are on the call to include our Clayton County School Police. We have state partners that also listen to what we’re sharing with them. They also exchange information. That gives us the ability to plan weekly on how we will respond in our community and where we need to direct the most attention to drive our numbers down. So, we’ve seen success. I expect that success to continue throughout this year into next year.  

Valerie:  

Partnerships, communication, collaboration throughout Clayton County. Loving it. So tell me this. What’s your message to those who decide to commit crimes in Clayton County?  

Chief Roberts:  

Don’t.  

Valerie:  

Just don’t do it.  

Chief Roberts:  

Don’t. We’re not here for it. As a collaborative and a collective law enforcement family, we encourage criminals to go somewhere else. And when I say encourage, we will help you relocate.  

Valerie:  

Right  

Chief Roberts:  

Now is not the season to be committing crimes in Clayton County. We’re a unified front. We work regularly together. So, you can’t travel into Riverdale, Forest Park, or through the Clayton County Sheriff’s Office, or the PD’s space and expect that we’re not all connected and working as a collaborative to drive crime down and keep our citizens safe. So, best bet, find some other jurisdiction to commit your crimes.  

Valerie:  

Yeah. Or just don’t commit crime at all because you’re going to be held accountable, right?  

Chief Roberts:  

Absolutely.  

Valerie:  

So, what’s your message to the residents in the community? 

Chief Roberts:  

Stay the course. Our citizens have been great with keeping us informed about crime trends in their areas and what they’re seeing. Engagement is the key. When I talk about communication and collaboration, we’re not just talking about law enforcement. We’re talking about collaboration and communication with our citizens. Whether it’s through neighborhood watches or HOAs or just community interaction and knowing who your respective leaders are in your space, wherever your subdivision is or wherever your apartment community is; you need to know who your sector commander, your captain, that leader for that area is. So, you can reach out to them directly when it’s not a need for you to dial 911. When you have a concern about suspicious activity, you know who to reach out to. And those leaders that I put in place will respond and they’ll respond accordingly.  

Valerie:  

And how can people find out who their sector police officers?  

Chief Roberts:  

It would be great, if you go back to that clayton police.com website.  We have the sectors arranged visually and we have the contact information for those respective captains, and they are looking for your call. They want to hear from you because we’ve been great with the contribution of our citizens.  

Valerie:  

Absolutely. So on to this. We have great officers all three throughout Clayton County, over 390 some odd positions. Correct? 

Chief Roberts:  

Yes, ma’am.  

Valerie:  

So, let’s talk about vacancies. How many vacancies do you have? And what are the qualifications? What do you encourage people to do?  

Chief Roberts:  

Today, we have 16 sworn police officer vacancies out of the allotted 393. And yes, I want that to be zero effective immediately. So, what we ask is for the right citizens and when I say right citizens I mean those committed to service, law abiding and willing to be flexible and having a heart to serve. So, what does that mean? Everything doesn’t have to result in arrest. Sometimes it results in you taking an extra step to put a citizen in touch with resources versus arrest.  Those are the type of candidates that we’re looking for and I prioritize homegrown talent first. What does that mean? I’m looking for candidates who have lived in Clayton County the majority of their life, have gone to Clayton County public schools and graduated. They may have gone off to college but have come back home. You get priority because you know the county, you know the expectation, and you know the citizens that live here already. So, those type of candidates can engage us through our website or through our social media footprints. We have regular hiring events and we prioritize homegrown talent. We have a hiring event this Friday morning. This Friday starting at 8:00 on December 19th. And as I was talking about a hiring event versus you just submitting an application, the hiring event presents you an opportunity for a one-stop shop. Meaning I come out, I want to be a police officer. I come; I take the physical agility test at the beginning of the day. The background and recruiting team, they do a preliminary background check. They find that I’m a viable candidate. At the end of that day, I will get a face to face possibly with the chief of police and depending on how the interview goes, that candidate may walk away with a conditional offer of employment with the Clayton County Police Department through me.  

Valerie:  

So, you have a heart for community, a heart for service; hiring event on December 19th, which is this Friday, as well as other events or hiring events throughout the year, not just December 19th, but specifically pushing that one because that’s an opportunity that you can attend that hiring event right away. 

Chief Roberts:  

Absolutely. And as far as hiring events go, we do them monthly. So if they don’t make the 19th, that’s great. What I want to drive home is there’s an opportunity monthly for the appropriate and right people to sign on to join our Clayton County Police Department family.  

Valerie:  

Now, we’re going to move on to our Crisis Co-response Unit. Chief, who is this team specifically, and what exactly do they do?  

Chief Roberts:  

I’m pleased to report this is an initiative that we’ve been working on for years. It’s a partnership between our mental health professionals in the county and the police department. We envision a team that can respond to assist our citizens who may be going through some type of crisis that normally we would only dispatch a police officer to with the required state training, but maybe that state training just isn’t enough. We thought it would be great to have that police officer partnered with a licensed clinician and in this case it’ll be a social worker and their purpose is to respond to those calls involving our citizens in crisis and not necessarily respond with arrest at the top of the list. This team will be responding with assistance at the top of their list as in a way of service to our citizens who may be in crisis. What does that look like? The licensed clinician may be able to make an assessment on site that this person needs some type of off-site treatment and that clinician will have resources available to them that they can help facilitate getting the person the type of assistance they need versus a police officer responding solely and it resulting in a arrest that really does not assist the citizen with what they really need. So… 

Valerie:  

This is, I love this thought process because it shows that Clayton County Police is taking mental illness seriously and this is an alternative resource.  

Chief Roberts:  

Absolutely. And with that, that alternative resource will get our folks hopefully to the place where they’re getting long-term assistance and not just a short term removal. So, we’re looking to provide long-term and long resulting solutions for our citizens in crisis.  

Valerie:  

Very proactive. Absolutely. You guys probably didn’t know all this was happening within the Clayton County Police Department and this is why I absolutely love doing the Clayton connected Podcast. So, now we’re going to move to what we call the Junior CPA or Citizens Police Academy.  

Officer Ter’Stace Barnes:  

Yes, ma’am.  

Valerie:  

Master Officer Barnes, tell us about it.  

Officer Barnes:  

So, the Junior Citizens Police Academy is a 10-week program that we offer and it is usually every Monday from 6:00 to 7:00 and we take kids from the age six up and basically they have to bring their parent and we show them an in-depth I guess experience of what we do as police officers. I know a lot of people see things on the internet. So, we try to show them what we do actually as police officers and not let the internet try to show them what we do. 

Valerie:  

And the requirement is that the parent has to attend too.  

Officer Barnes:  

Has to attend.  

Chief Roberts:  

Absolutely. Absolutely. We want buy in from the adults and the juveniles and Officer Barnes has painted the picture and I just want to highlight Officer Barnes and our Community Affairs Unit. They came to me with this initiative of a Junior Citizens Police Academy.  

(Audience Cheering) 

Chief Roberts:   

Yes. Yes. And it was after we had one of our adults, Citizens Polic Academies, they said, “We need to do this for the kids.” And we’re always looking for an alternative route to bridging the gap between law enforcement and our juvenile population. And this is one that’s received rave reviews. And I must say, when I come in on that first Monday of the Junior CPA, and I look and I engage the young folks, they don’t want to talk to me. But nine month, nine Mondays later; we’re all good, we’re all family and they go away with a better understanding of the purpose of the police department, everything that the officers do and we’re building relationships that not only touch that young person, but then it sparks an interest with the adult who’s sitting right next to him.  

Valerie:  

And so the adults typically do what?  

Chief Roberts:   

They typically, if they haven’t done so already, they consider participating in the adult Citizens Police Academy. So, I applaud Officer Barnes and her team. They are forward thinking.  

Valerie:  

Thank you, Master Officer Barnes and your team. We can’t do it alone. We work together. This is what it’s all about. You also have what we call volunteers in policing. What are the VIPs?  

Officer Barnes:  

So, the VIPs are graduates of the Citizens Police Academy, the adult version. And so they are able to volunteer within the police department to help us with just different things that we may need like lobby assistance, showing people where they need to go if they want to pick up reports, get their car to repo; just different things that they may need throughout the police department. Also, we always have events throughout the county as well. So we do need assistance with that as well. So that is what that program is for. And also, animal control.  

Valerie:  

I love the continuity from one program to the next program, you know, it just continues to escalate, you know, and hopefully these people that are participating in the Citizens Police Academy as juniors, you know, will grow to want to be and have a love and passion for the heart and community to fill some of those positions in the near future as they grow into, you know, out of their teen years into their adulthood. So tell me about this Police Athletic League. Chief, you guys are busy. 

Chief Roberts:   

Yes, we are very busy. We try to provide alternatives; that’s the word we’ve been floating during this presentation. And this is an alternative. The vision is, and if you pay attention to larger metropolitan agencies, a lot of them have a Police Athletic League.  The purpose; to provide an opportunity, to occupy the time and build relationships with our young folks in the community that hopefully will deter them from becoming involved in criminal activity.  

Valerie:  

Right.  

Chief Roberts:   

To do so though, we needed a footprint of support and that footprint for our department is our Clayton County Police Foundation and it’s led by Bishop Donald Battle and several different community and business leaders who make up our foundation footprint and they’ve been in place now for a little bit over two years. When I went to Bishop Battle about the foundation, my intent for the foundation was to drive the creation of the Police Athletic League because it had to be separate from our police department. And with that, we’re here now. We’re in the preliminary stages. We met last week with Mr. Battle and other leaders in the community to just confirm their buy in for the process and to help move that footprint forward. I’ve gotten that commitment last week. So, you will be hearing from me in the near future as we progress down the road to stand this thing up.  

Valerie:  

Absolutely love it. Again, so much happening within the Clayton County Police Department. I thank you both for being here. We’re going to close out today with Shop with a Cop. 

Officer Barnes:  

Yes, ma’am. My favorite. Shop with a Cop is an annual event that we host at the Walmart  throughout the county. So, usually we do the Walmart at Anvil Block but basically we get kids  from different ages all the way up into high school and less fortunate. We provide a set amount  and we allow them to just go in Walmart and get whatever that gift card will allow them to get. 

Valerie:  

I’m going to backtrack. I truly want to be a kid again in Clayton County. Can I can I backtrack, Chief?  

Chief Roberts:   

Only if you let me put this plug in about, about the shot with a cop. I talked about the police foundation. The police foundation contributes to that shop with a cop menu, mission. 

Valerie:  

Excellent. Excellent. So, all this information can be found where?  

Officer Barnes:  

Claytonpolice.com.  

Valerie:  

Claytonpolice.com. Chief of Police Kevin Roberts, Master Officer Barnes. Thank you so much for being here today in the Clayton connected Podcast Studio. I know you’re coming back again. Great things happening not just in 2025, but so much more to come in 2026.  

Officer Barnes:  

Yes, ma’am. Thank you for having us. 

Valerie (outro):  

I’m your hostess, Valerie Fuller. Thank you for listening to the Clayton Connected podcast in Clayton County, Georgia, where the world lands and opportunities take off.