There is one government employee you often don't see until there's trouble. If
you've done something wrong he's the last guy you want to meet but if you
need help you desperately hope that he or she is on the way. I'm talking about a
cop, a police officer, the men and women who wear a badge and a gun and enforce
the law and try to keep us safe.
In the city we call them police, but out here they're called deputies and the man
in charge is the sheriff.
We're laid-back enough here that during
the springtime, fish start bite'n, if nothing's going on one of the deputies
and myself, we might want to take the afternoon off and go fishing.
Police! Go in the back! All the way in the back!
Get back ladies, get back! On the ground!
Theres a baby!
Get on the ground! Police!
See some hands!
When we think of cops, this is what we usually think of.
Urban cops, big city police, who
knock down doors and yell and go in with their guns drawn. They're tough,
suspicious. They don't say much and you don't talk back to them. If you've done
something wrong these can be scary guys. But in most of Georgia the job of a
peace officer isn't like what you see on television or the movies or the 6 o'clock news.
*Instrumental country music*
This is Taylor County, about 45 miles southwest of Macon. 7600 people live here
on 380 square miles of forests and meadows, farms, and a few small towns. This
is what most of Georgia looks like and for most rural police officers in the
state, this is a typical day.
Well tell you what, let me do this for you.
Let me just round him up and talk to him.
The sheriff here is Nick Giles. He's been
in this department for twenty years. On the phone, a woman who loaned a friend
some money to buy Christmas gifts for his kids and now the woman wants to be paid back.
Let me find him and I'll talk to him for you.
If that doesn't work then second thing we can do is find out who his supervisor
is off at tje highway department and we'll talk to him and then if that doesn't
work the third alternative would be to garnish his wages.
He spends a lot of
time on the phone and a lot of time in his unmarked car. Out on the road we come
across his next job, a report about an abandoned car that's been here since
yesterday.
I'm gonna be out with this vehicle it
appears to be abandoned.
The car is pretty beat-up. The front left tire is a
spare and it's flat and the license plates are expired. It's against the law
to drive a car with tags dated 1993. Before long, Wainwright's tow truck shows
up. They work on the car for a while and then a few minutes later the owner of
the car arrives with some friends.
What you need to do is get a tag. No kidding. County
get you a tag for it and bring your tag receipt up there by the sheriff's office
and that's all I need. I'm not gonna charge you for operating it without a
tag, I'm gonna let you slide on that. Fair enough?
Good enough.
Anything you want to get out of it? Anything before?
It'll cost the man some money, but at least he won't get a ticket and have to pay a fine which
also means his insurance won't go up. Sheriff Giles says in small-town Georgia
you have to be nice to people, even if you're the sheriff. Besides that he says
it pays off in the end.
Say for instance, we've had a burglary.
Several young people were seen in the area. I can go out there and do a little
talking and chances are I can find out what happened through an informant of
someone. Now a lot of the deputies they think wonder well you know gosh how does
he keep doing that? If you look back somewhere along the line I gave that guy
a break, I helped him out. If you be nice to people and you treat people with with
courtesy. It'll come back, One day you'll be rewarded for it in some way.
Our last stop, Gerald's general store, has been here 90 years since 1905. The sheriff
likes to drop by every once in a while to see Mrs. Troy who is a young and lively 80 years old.
I'm doing pretty good. Keepin' everybody straight out there? Yeah, I'm keepin' everbody straight.
They sell everything in here; candy, crackers, fishing line, nylon stockings, bread, meat,
cereal and soap, pots and pans, kerosene lamps, light bulbs,
on and on. The sheriff wondered if Mrs. Jarell had any problems lately? She says
no not really but she lives next door to the store and
sometimes young people drive too fast and too loud up and down the road.
I'll tell my deputies and we'll see if we can get a patrol up here a little more on the weekends.
Sure would appreciate it.
It may be fine, there may be nothing happening but it's just aggravating though like
all times of the night, three and four a month so.
They haven't any business being out
that time of night and that loud music.
bump, bump, bump.
Oh but maybe that's the way it is, I don't know
Nah, maybe I'm too old for that.
No you're not.
He rarely wears a gun.
He's never been shot, he's never shot anybody. As far as he can remember, he's
never even pulled his gun but don't misunderstand.
There's crack and cocaine in this county. Every year or so there's a rape and a
murder. Every month there's burglaries, some bad checks, a stolen car, and
despite his easygoing ways, sometimes this sheriff gets mad.
I see a young kid
whose clothes are ragged and torn and the mother and the father deadbeats a
lot of heavy drinking, a lot of drug usage. Kids being neglected those kind of
things you know I get mad about those. I get mad at the mother or the father. You know.
What do you say?
You know I just tell them that if I don't they don't do
right, get the kid in church and Sunday school this Sunday,
clean the kid up, you know, quit throwing your money away on beer and liquor and
start buying something for your children, I'm gonna start make things hard on you.
I'll lay out here and catch you behind the wheel, you know, one way another you
know I'm gonna break you up or I'm gonna try to.
We spent two days on the roads of Taylor County and this is what we found: one
abandoned car on the side of the road, a woman calling to get a Christmas loan
paid back, a kindly lady complaining about loud cars on the road outside her
Country Store. What else?
A nice man, easygoing, who likes to give people a
break, who'd rather talk to you than write you a ticket and throw you in jail but
still he has a temper, especially when he comes across someone hungry, abused,
neglected, and that someone is a child. His name's Nick Giles. He's the sheriff
of Taylor County.
*End Screen Music*
Well there are still lots of places left to see in this state.
There are still lots of people I'd like you to meet. This is Georgia stories, I'm
Colin Sidor. Thanks