James Wilson, Williamson County sheriff
By Robert Bell
Friday, 06 February 2009
- Education: Juris Doctorate from South Texas College of Law, 1979, Bachelor of Science Degree from Sam Houston State University, 1973
- Experience: Patrolman, criminal investigator, commander of the statewide narcotics operation, director of Department of Public Safety
- Contact: 943-1300, 508 S. Rock St., Georgetown,
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- Q. What are the biggest challenges in the county from a law enforcement perspective?
- A. This is an extremely large county. The challenges that we have here are [due to] the rapid growth — we’ve moved from a rural agrarian county to an urban county. When I moved to Round Rock 20 years ago, there were 2,500 to 3,000 people. Now it’s 96,000.
Just recruiting good people to be officers is tough. The wages are good for police officers in Central Texas, but [good officers are] just hard to come by. So we’re always short-staffed. Fortunately, we have an extremely low crime rate.
But we do have some dangers. Even though we have a low crime rate here, with our proximity to large metro areas like Austin and San Antonio, crimes bleed over into our county.
IH 35 is one of the biggest — if not the biggest — pipeline for narcotics traveling out of Mexico and up into the interior of the United States. We have money and guns going south. Every officer not only [has to watch for] drunk drivers and drivers who aren’t paying attention, they also have to be aware that there are some really bad characters between Georgetown and Austin.
- Q. What does a sheriff do that might surprise people?
- A. We have a pretty large department here — relatively speaking — certainly not as big as Austin or Travis County. We have about 500 employees [and most] are dedicated to running a jail that is capable of holding over 900 people. On any given day, we have 550 to 600 — maybe as few as 525.
We have a victims’ assistance group that helps people who have been struck by tragedy. Once we show up and do the police work, there’s still a lot of the human services work left to do when we leave.
We’re responsible for the animal control in the county. We work with the county and animal control to make sure it is run properly. We have a fugitive unit that pursues people wanted generally for sex abuse of children. We do sex abuse registration for offenders who are in this county. We have a CID — a criminal investigation division — that works extremely well. We have a narcotics unit. It’s just a pretty complex place.
- Q. What made you want to go into law enforcement?
- A. I wanted to be a police officer from the time I was about 9 years old. We had a neighbor whose son and I were about the same age, and we decided to go to their farm in the country in 1955. On the way back to the community we lived in, we got stopped by the highway patrol. I’d never seen one of those guys before. He handled himself extremely professionally and was very nice to everybody, but you could tell that he was well trained and in charge. And I thought to myself, “I’d sure like to grow up to be like that guy.”
