Athens-Clark County Sheriff On ICE: It's Not My Intention, When Elected, To Cooperate With Detainers

Flashback - Athens-Clark County Sheriff on ICE: ‘It Is Not My Intention, When Elected Sheriff, to Cooperate with Those Detainers’ - ‘We can’t help with a culture of fear in our community and expect our community to respond and help us in situations’ —— Williams: “It is not my intention when elected sheriff to cooperate with those detainers. I see it as the sheriff’s responsibility, any law enforcement to protect and serve the community. That’s everybody in Athens-Clarke County community because this is the office that I’m running for. We can’t help with a culture of fear in the community and expect the citizens to respond and help us in situations. Because the fact is that a lot of law enforcement is based around community support.

Like I just said, building relationships is key. And if we’re, I guess, antagonizing people, because they are, what, undocumented and documented, then they built that fear in them and they’re not likely to come to us, not only when we need their help, but when they need our help. So that’s not something we’ll be doing. We won’t be doing any type of roundups, we won’t be attributing to that culture of fear. We want people to respect the police, but we also want them to trust us.”