Candidate for Sheriff: Chris Williams highlights his experience, management skills and dedication in bid for office
This the the second of three planned interview articles with the candidates for Rappahannock County sheriff in the Nov. 6 election.
By James P. Gannon
Major Chris Williams, the second-ranking officer in the Rappahannock County Sheriff’s Office, is a proud cop.
He’s proud of his 19 years of service to the county in law enforcement, and proud of the improvements in technology, management, and professionalism that he’s helped introduce in the past five years, particularly through the large grants he’s won for the department to modernize its methods and equipment.
So when an outside critic portrays the county’s sheriff’s office as behind the times or somehow backward, it gets under his skin–especially if that suggestion comes from a rival in the county’s three-way contest for the sheriff’s job this year.
That became clear when The Rappahannock Voice showed up at his office in the county’s old jail building in Washington for an interview, and Major Williams was ready to respond. He didn’t wait a minute to start.
Without prompting, he had something he wanted to get off his chest in reply to comments made in a RappVoice interview a week earlier by J.C. Welch, the Culpeper Police Department sergeant who is one of his rivals for office. “He shouldn’t speak out if he doesn’t know what he’s talking about–that’s my opinion,” Williams said.
In the interview, Welch, who served as a Rappahannock County deputy until he left for the Culpeper job nearly five years ago, suggested that the RCSO was not up to date on training and technology. “I know they are using technology that is outdated, that people were using 20 or 30 years ago,” he said, citing such things as the latest technology for fingerprinting. (To read the Welch story, click here.)
But Williams objects. “He is trying to paint a picture of an Andy Griffith-style of policing here, but that is not the case,” said Williams, referring to the 1960s television show in which Griffith played the easy-going sheriff in the rural backwater of Mayberry, NC, with his bumbling deputy, Barney Fife.
Williams was eager to talk about and show off the new technology now in use at the Rappahannock sheriff’s office. “In 2003,” he said, “I was able to get a $75,000 Federal grant to update our records-management system.” The grant bought new computers, installation and training to modernize law enforcement records and information.
He demonstrated the new Livescan computerized fingerprinting system which is linked to the Virginia State Police records for instantaneous reporting to Richmond. When jailers book a suspect, electronic copies of fingerprints and information from arrest warrants ago instantly to State Police. Williams also showed off the new laptop computers and new videocameras installed in each of the patrol cars used by deputies. Deputies can compose their incident reports while still on the scene, and video evidence is available and stored by computer.
“I just want to make sure that people don’t think that we have not been keeping up with technology and upgrading our equipment, because we have,” Williams said. “The majority of it has been done through grants,” which modernized sheriff’s office operations “without the taxpayer having to pay for this stuff.” And the grants have been researched, pursued and applied for by Williams.
Sitting in his cramped little office, he presents a classic image of a cop. Square-jawed and broad-shouldered, he is a bulky man with a linebacker’s build and the serious eyes of a no-nonsense guy. In his crisp white shirt decorated with his gold star, he wears a uniform brown tie adorned with a tie pin shaped as handcuffs. This guy is no Barney Fife.
The 38-year-old Williams, a Rappahannock County native who was born in Chester Gap and never has lived anywhere else, is a 1987 graduate of Rappahannock County High School. His wife of 17 years, Leslie, also works in law enforcement in a job in the Warren County sheriff’s office; they have two children, Andrew, 9 and Heather, 3.
Son of a carpenter, Williams began doing construction work with his father at the age of 10, and worked with him for about a year after graduating from high school. He recalls asking then-Sheriff John Henry Woodward how a person becomes a deputy. “Turn 21 and file an application,” the sheriff told him. Williams first landed an entry-level job at the county jail in August 1988. “I told the sheriff my goal was to be a patrol officer,” he said. By June 1990, he was elevated to road deputy, the job he coveted.
Williams was promoted to patrol sergeant and crime investigator in 1997 by then-Sheriff Gary Settle. When an on-the-job knee injury laid him up in February, 1998, forcing a recovery period of six to eight weeks, he recalls, he volunteered to do paperwork or administrative tasks while he was laid up. At that time, the sheriff’s No. 2 man or chief deputy had just resigned for another job, “and I started doing administrative work that the chief deputy had been doing.” By April, Sheriff Settle asked him to be his chief deputy full time.
For nine years, Williams has held that job. Asked what his chief duties are, he smiles and responds with one word: “everything.” Among his duties: Training manager, equipment procurement, managing the vehicle fleet, managing record-keeping, preparing jail reports, rewriting policies and procedures, technical support and more. He takes pride in having landed over $185,000 in state and federal grants for the office.
Last year, Williams completed an intensive 10-week course in the National Criminal Justice Command College, a training program of the Virginia State Police and the University of Virginia, with a curriculum focused on leadership, management, forensic science, inter-agency collaboration, and legal issues and the law. He didn’t like being away from home and family five days a week in Richmond for 10 weeks, he said, but he’s proud to be one of only 60 persons to graduate from the program.
In his campaign, Williams has set out goals for his hoped-for term as sheriff, which include: building stronger relations with the community and promoting community involvement in the sheriff’s work; continuing to seek more state and federal grants for equipment, support staff and overtime money; increasing law enforcement presence in our schools; building stronger relations with county fire and rescue services; and mandatory leadership training for supervisors.
Another of his goals is to implement a new hiring process to attract and retain highly qualified employees. While he won’t say the current process is flawed, he sees need for improvement.
“I’d like to do a more in-depth hiring process–a really thorough background investigation” on all applicants, he said. “We don’t do as in-depth a background check as I would like to do. I would like more information about who I am hiring.”
Often when a job vacancy occurs, there’s and urgent need to fill the opening to avoid staffing problems, he noted. “A lot of time, we’re in a crunch and need to hire” promptly, allowing less time than he’d like for background checks. One idea he has is to have an annual process which would invite interested persons to submit an application, creating a pool of possible hires and allowing more time–without the pressure of a vacant job–to investigate and evaluate numerous applicants.
Asked to assess the strengths and weaknesses of the Rappahannock County Sheriff’s Office currently, Williams replied: “Our weaknesses are like other jurisdictions around us–we’re pretty much used as a training grounds. People come in here and get certified and they are ambitious, and a neighboring county is offering $6,000 or $7,000 more” in salary, so they move on to larger police departments or sheriff’s offices. “It’s hard to keep them here.”
While he credits the county’s Board of Supervisors with being “generous” in raising the budget to improve compensation for sheriff’s personnel, he says its hard for a small county like Rappahannock to compete. “When you lose one person in a department of this size, it puts you in a manpower crunch.”
The RCSO currently has seven road deputies who patrol the county, plus a full-time crime investigator (Lt. Connie Compton Smith, the third candidate for sheriff), a full-time in-school officer, Capt. Jeffrey Brown, plus Major Williams and Sheriff Larry Sherertz, who will retire at the end of his term this year. In addition, there are six male jailers and seven women who work as dispatchers and jail matrons.
In the interview, Williams responded to questions on issues facing the county in coming years.
Crime in Rappahannock: Asked if Rappahannock County has a growing crime problem, Williams paused for a long while before answering, “It is growing everywhere.” He said, “The number of calls (to the sheriff) for service have greatly increased in the past year.”
The rising number of weekend motorcyclists attracted to Rappahannock’s winding country lanes and mountain roads for weekend riding and racing is one factor. “We’re dealing with these motorcycles all the time on weekends,” Williams said. “We get a lot of domestic calls, civil disputes.”
Crime from surrounding jurisdictions is spilling over in to rural Rappahannock, he suggested. “A lot of the crime rate in Rappahannock County is due to the rising populations in counties around us. Also, we have a tremendous number of commuters using Route 211 and going to Northern Virginia” for jobs, which increases accidents along the county’s main highway, he said.
An influx of illegal immigrants is causing problems for law enforcement in Culpeper and other nearby counties, he noted, but there has been no impact yet in Rappahannock County.
Budget Issues: Asked if the current Sheriff’s office budget is adequate or too little, Williams responded cautiously: “At this point, we are able to operate under the current budget. The large majority of it is for personnel costs.” While he did not cite a need for future budget increases, he pointed out that cramped quarters of the old jail are inadequate for current operations.
“We have pretty much outgrown this office space,” he said. “We have grown but the space hasn’t grown.” He pointed out two outbuildings on the jail grounds, including what was once an old summer kitchen, that have been converted to offices due to lack of space in the main building. This is an issue the county will have to face in coming years, he said, perhaps in connection with planning for a new jail or the new government building planned in the Rappahannock Commons center on Route 211 near Rappahannock National Bank.
Regional jail plan: Without hesitation, Williams said he favors the creation of a three-county regional jail in co-operation with Warren and Shenandoah counties–a plan that will come before the county’s Board of Supervisors next week.
“It is getting tougher for us to meet the (Virginia) Department of Corrections standards” for jails, Williams said. “There are new standards coming and we will not be able to meet them” with the 130-year-old Rappahannock County jail, the oldest in the commonwealth. “We are either going to have to join a regional jail now, or later we will have to buy into one,” which likely would be more costly than to join the other two counties in the proposed regional facility.
“It’s not something you really want to do, but we see the need and we don’t have much choice,” he said. Whether Rappahannock will need to maintain some kind of jail here will depend on where the new regional jail is located, and what arrangements are made to transport prisoners back and forth, he said. “You are going to have to have at minimum, a holding cell,” for someone who is arrested for violence or drunkenness, he said.
He ruled out placing the regional jail in Rappahannock County, saying that the county lacks an appropriate site with necessary public water and sewage-treatment systems.
The sheriff’s race: With three qualified candidates running, Williams was asked what he thinks distinguishes him as the best candidate.
“My experience, obviously,” he responded. “Working under two sheriffs as second-in-command here is a plus.” He noted that he has worked under three sheriffs, and “through their different leadership styles, I have learned a lot of things that will help me on how I would run the sheriff’s office.
“I have a vast knowledge of the internal workings of the sheriff’s office and all the systems here–the majority of them I have set up and put in place,” he said. “I am dedicated to serving the people of Rappahannock County. I don’t think you can find anyone more dedicated than I am to serving this community.”
“I have built strong working relationships with the FBI and Virginia State Police, and the other local sheriffs. I have a good working relationship with them. Having those relationships is an asset as to why I am the better candidate.”
For more on the Williams campaign, see his website.
-- James P. Gannon
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