Knox County has a primary race for sheriff; here are the Democrats running
GALESBURG — On Tuesday, Democrat voters will choose between two candidates for Knox County Sheriff, James Robertson and Doug Sampson.
Republican candidate Jack Harlan is running unopposed from his party and Zac Cox, running as an Independent, will not appear on the ballot until the Nov. 8 general election.
Knox County Sheriff David Clague announced in August 2021 that he will not seek re-election in 2022. First appointed to the position in 2007 when former Sheriff Jim Thompson stepped down, Clague was elected to a two-year term in 2008, when he defeated Republican Gary Ryner and was re-elected in every election since.
The Register-Mail interviewed the two Democrats running in Tuesday's contested race.
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James Robertson
Career background
Robertson, 48, first joined the Knox County Sheriff’s Department Auxiliary in 1997 when he was 22. He was hired as a police officer for East Galesburg in early 1998 and was hired as a Knox County corrections officer by the end of the same year. In 2011, he was transferred to patrol.
During the time that he worked in corrections and patrol, Robertson served as a field training officer, was elected union president and was temporarily a shift patrol supervisor. Robertson left his position as patrol officer and union president in March of 2020.
Robertson serves as the chief of police for Williamsfield and has since 2014. He is also a sergeant for the Galva Police Department, where he has worked since Dec. 2020.
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Doug Sampson
Career background
Sampson, 50, became an ambulance driver and got his emergency medical technician license when he was 18-years-old. Sampson was 20 years old when he put himself through the Police Training Institute in 1993, sponsored by the Abingdon police department. He joined the Knox County Sheriff department’s auxiliary from 1993 to 1994.
Sampson was then hired as court security for the Knox County Sheriff's department from 1994 to 1995 and worked part-time in the Abingdon police department from 1995 to 1997. He was hired as a full-time road deputy for the Knox County Sheriff’s department in 1995 and worked there until he retired from the job in 2017.
Sampson was hired as the EMS coordinator for Cottage Hospital in Dec. 2017, supervising 36 different departments and up to 400 personnel until the hospital closed in Jan. 2022.
Sampson has also worked as a part-time officer in Alexis for about a year and a part-time officer in Yates City since 2007.
If elected, what would you accomplish in your first 90 days as sheriff?
Robertson: I would like to walk in the door and I would like to meet with all the staff, command, down to corrections, patrol and I would like to get an idea of where they stand about the job itself, about the department. I know a lot of the deficiencies that I think could be improved that I want to improve in my own way. I'm not saying there are deficiencies in the old administration, there's just deficiencies that I think I can make a difference for and work better. So I think that the most changes I would be looking to make is how the department is run, how we respond to calls of service, how we respond to our ways of providing service and protection to the county. I think that's very important. I would like to have many different avenues of — for example, replacing some of the squad cars. There needs to be a plan set forth so that way it's set in stone that we know this is when we're getting them every so often, instead of running them to 200,000 miles, 150,000 miles. That's really pushing them and it starts nickel and diming you. I would like to establish a plan to have that.
Sampson: First 90 days is probably going to be a lot of getting back in the sheriff's department. I've been gone for about five years and learning how that side, the administrative side as a sheriff, what has to be done. I know we're going to have to work on budgeting. Hopefully the sheriff now has the budget done for the new sheriff coming in. In the background, there is a lot of paperwork that needs to be done and to learn how to do that paperwork. I understand there's problems in the jail, there's problems in the courthouse, there's problems with patrol and sit down with everybody and figure out where our problems are and how we can fix them so everybody is getting along and things are running a lot smoother.”
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How well do you think the sheriff’s department is being run? What would you change?
Sampson: “(Clague) ran a very, very good ship there. I've very much enjoyed working for him when I was there. I haven't seen or heard a lot that needs super changed. There may be some little tweaks and things there that maybe will make things run a little bit more efficiently. But I think it will probably be the first 90 days like we talked about, getting in there and learning what if there's problems there, how can we fix them. If we can't fix them by trying to work them out, figure them out, maybe it's a personnel change that we need to do, it will probably be all in the first 90 days learning what we can fix and we can't.”
Robertson: "The changes I am looking forward to doing and improving are I want to make the morale within the department be very high, I want the service to our community to be above and beyond, I want people to trust the fact that the quality of life — years ago we used to be able to leave our doors unlocked. We could go to the store, come home, and we can't do that today. and that's probably never going to come back but I think we can still work on improving the quality of life in different ways to allow us to be able to go outside and walk down the road and not worry that there might be something happening. And I think there's a lot of different avenues within the patrol division and corrections we can make and try to improvise and improve for better for the staff, better for the community, better for everyone involved.”
How would you improve racial diversity among your staff?
Robertson: I think working with different organizations — and having them help us and us help them work on diversifying our department, and training the current employees on cultural diversity and implicit bias, and being very close within the agency, everybody is accepted, it doesn't matter — I think that building rapport within our community and being involved in their organizations is going to be helpful. I think it is going to be beneficial to law enforcement, I think it's going to build trust, and I think that it's going to move us forward because I am looking more into progressing rather than regressing in this day and age.
Sampson: As far as hiring, all we can do is offer the jobs and have them come and test for the jobs. You can't twist somebody's arm to get them to come in there. The sheriff's department has always been very, very open, very you-can-take-this-side-or-that-side, it's open down the road. As long as they don't have a criminal history, they can pass everything, have all the qualifications, it doesn't matter what race, male or female, any of it — it doesn't matter. It's all open. You just have to qualify like everybody else does. I noticed that there are two, three more female deputies on the sheriff's department now. Racially wise, we just don't get the candidates.”
What is your stance on addressing mental health issues in the community?
Sampson: One of our biggest problems is not having facilities close by, besides Bridgeway here, that people can be put temporarily to either get their medications straightened out — we run into a lot of it where people aren't taking their medications that they should be and that's an issue where they need to be monitored for a little while and get back on their medications and make sure that they get right back on the path, back in the community and back to their jobs. We definitely need more counselors out there. I watch the news and hear of other places sending counselors out to talk to mentally challenged people or people with mental breakdowns, my fear is you're putting somebody in danger. Where a police officer is trained to defend themselves if they're getting attacked but somebody in the mental health side may not be trained that way and I would hate to see one of them get injured."
Robertson: The last I read, our president gave out $600 million to be distributed for mental health. I do not think that is enough. We're talking about a country of what 330 million people, so I think that mental health is a huge issue, I said this the other day, the problem was that mental health was cut many years ago and it became one of the many things that befell under the umbrella of responsibility of the law enforcement. So we need more training on mental health, that is an obvious thing, I think that more training would suit us well. I think that mental health is a huge issue within our community, it's a huge issue within our country, but when we're talking about our community, when we respond I would like to see more soulful service interaction when we know that it's safe for them to do so. Because I think that sometimes when you deal with mental health, the uniform and the weapon and all that can be somewhat intimidating or a trigger so anything that would reduce that problem would be great.
What is your stance on body-cams?
Robertson: I am for body cameras, and I think they're a great tool, I think they protect both sides. I just want to confirm that they're funding it appropriately and that's my only concern — because again, that's a pretty huge increase. It's going to affect these smaller towns within our county, it's going to affect those smaller agencies, it's very costly and I think working with these smaller agencies and collaborating everything together, I think we can all work it out so that way they're able to have these body cameras by I think 2025 and sustain that data that's going to be going through and having to be sustained.”
Sampson: I have no problem with it. I don't think most of the officers do. It's just another piece of equipment that they have to wear on them and to remember to turn it on and off when they're supposed to be. You've got cameras on you all the time. If you're doing your job correctly it should not matter if you have a camera on or not because everything will be recorded. And if you did something wrong, make sure you document it in your report. There's no hiding anything. You have to be transparent with everything.”
What distinguishes you from the other candidate running?
Sampson: "I bring 22 years of experience. I don't want to say anything to put any of them down. You've got one with no experience. You've got one with five years and one that left the department three times and is not dedicated to the department. I was there for 22 years straight. When I was there I saved the department thousands and thousands of dollars. When I was on patrol, we were buying cars out in Missouri to try and save money and I was building all of the squad cars. So if we had enough deputies on the shift I would work at home, building a squad car and it saved a lot of money."
Robertson: “I possess something that none of the candidates possess and that is experience in corrections. I feel like that is a very huge accolade because the thing is I possess experience in patrol, I possess experience in corrections which in my outlook is very important, I also possess an extensive amount of supervision experience and the difference between us is when I walk in the door day one, I can lead day one. I don't have to have someone counsel me or talk to me about how the jail works or how corrections works, what's the policies or how do we progress forward. I can lead day one, big changes that need to be made and try to get it so that we are progressing in the right way. And that's not to say anything negative towards any of my opponents, it's just for me to say this is what I believe and I think that's what the people are looking for, someone with experience.”
This article originally appeared on Galesburg Register-Mail: Two Democrats are running Tuesday for Knox County sheriff's office
