Greg Hamilton, Travis County sheriff
By Mark Collins
Friday, 06 February 2009
- Education: Southwest Texas State University, 1982
- Experience: Corrections officer, DARE officer, mounted patrol, chief of enforcement at the Texas Alcoholic Beverage Commission, selected to serve on the Governor’s DWI Task Force Advisory Board from 1996 to 2000
- Contact: 854-9788,
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- Q: Are there issues that the community calls the city about when they should be contacting the sheriff’s office and vice versa?
- A: Travis County is responsible for the unincorporated areas, and the lines are blurred sometimes because of annexation. We have various areas where one side of the street is in the city and one side is in the county. We also have, with Hays County and Williamson County, areas where one part of the house could be in one county and one part in another. One of the things we do is when we go to a call, if we’re not the proper agency or have jurisdiction, we will still maintain the scene until the proper agency gets there. I would think that would be uniform across the country.
- Q. What would you say the sheriff’s office does that might surprise people?
- A. I don’t know if individuals understand that a big portion of the sheriff’s job is the jail. We are the sole possessors of the jail.
- Q: What would you say are your biggest challenges?
- A: No. 1, I would say the jail. I think that would be twofold — it’s the jail and trying to get the proper allotment of officers to do the things you need to do [within budget]. A lot of people think jail is something where you put a person in there, lock them up and throw away the key. I think we are doing a disservice if we do that. Only 7 percent of the people who come into my facility actually go to the penitentiary. The other 93 percent are getting out of jail and going back into the community. If you lock them up like a caged dog and don’t try to give them some type of life skills, I think you’re just setting these individuals up for failure. A lot of people think that when you have programs in jail it is a waste of time. I think we have a captive audience at that time. There are a lot of individuals in our facility who only have a sixth-grade education. We need to try to help these people get their GED, or at least start it, and have some type of connection with somebody outside of the community that can pick it up. If that individual is only in jail for two weeks and it takes him a month and half to get his GED, then we need to have a relationship with people outside of the jail.
- Q. Has it been rewarding to be the first black sheriff in the county?
- A. One of the things that I want my legacy to be is that, I was a darn good sheriff who just so happened to be black. And I’m proud to be the first African-American to do this. Hopefully the youngsters are looking at me, and now looking at Barack Obama, and saying, ‘I can be anything I want to be.’ But I’ve been in these positions all my life. I was the first African-American to start as quarterback as a freshman in college, I was the first African-American chief of enforcement for Texas Alcohol Beverage Commission, [as a] matter of fact I was the youngest since 1935 when the organization started. It’s a big deal, about being an African-American and being in those positions. I hope I showed individuals that it’s not about your color — it’s about what you have right there in your chest that beats all the time and what you have in your head — whether or not you can do the job.
