FM Talk 1065 Podcasts
Baldwin County Sheriff Huey Hoss Mack on his career and the future - Midday Mobile - Thursday 7-11-24
"There will be no personal nor direct attacks on anyone, and I would ask that you please try to, um, keep down the loud cheering and the clapping, there will be no booing, and no unruly behavior." With that, this is painful, and it will be for a long time. "Don't run, baby, that's right, this man knows what's up." "After all, these are a couple of high-stepping turkeys, and you know what to say about a high stepper, no stepper, too high for a high stepper." This is Midday Mobile with Sean Sullivan on FMTalk1065. "Well, Sean's a tough guy, I mean, I think everybody knows that, you know, Sean, he took some licks, he hangs in there." "Yeah, what's wrong with the deal we got? I mean, the deal we got drank pretty good, don't it?" "Did you hear what I said?" "So this is a bade council, I had no doubt about them." "That doesn't suck." "If you don't like it, you're bad." "Last question, were you high on drugs?" "Last question, kiss my f***es." Right, here we go, FMTalk1065 at Midday Mobile. Glad to have you here on this Friday Eve Thursday edition of the show. Speaking of which, coming up on hour number two, Dale Lees from Land Apple, join us like it does usually on Tuesdays, and a heads up two. I know we're going to talk about this probably more tomorrow and talk about it a little bit with Dr. Sean Powers yesterday. But the kids, the youths, Bobby and I talked about it this morning, the Roy Barton Young Anglers Tournament happening down at the rodeo site this Saturday, so a day and a half from now. Get the kids out to go fishing, any other questions about that? I can probably answer those on the text line, which is at 3430106, 3430106 for a phone call or a text. If you got a question, you can get it through on that because it's good to have this man on. It's sad that this will be the last time I talk to him in his position. I think the last time I talk to him in his position that he holds currently, but there's a lot of stuff in the future for Mobile, Baldwin County Sheriff, Hollis Mack, joining us now on Midday Mobile. Thanks for your time, Sheriff. Yes, sir. I was, when this came out, I know, because I want to hear from you how long you've been thinking about this, but I was, it seemed abrupt to me, right? Because I obviously hadn't been in your orbit. And when I heard this the other day, I said, "Oh my gosh," but he's a young guy, you know? He's retiring from the Sheriff's office, but then I started looking at how long you've been working in the Sheriff's department. You've been there a while. Yeah. Sean, I began my career in law enforcement in 1985 in Mobile with the Alabama Department of Forensic Sciences. And then in 1989, I came to work with the Sheriff's office. And then in 2006, I ran for Sheriff, and of course, I'm in my fifth term. So I got to work in at an early age. I came to work in law enforcement actually at 20 years of age, so I'll be 60 this year. So it's been a little while, but it has flown by. Okay. I want to pick this up. So it's 1989, and you're a Deputy Sheriff there in Baldwin County. Think about y'all just -- I'm picturing Baldwin County in 1989, which is still a big difference from '79, but 1989 to 2024, there's probably not -- I don't know in the state of Alabama or outside the state of Alabama, a lot of counties that have seen that growth. And here you are the Chief Law Enforcement Officer over that county. Tell me what that was like. Well, as you know, we've gained several municipalities that have incorporated since 1989. Our population is just about tripled during that time. Our transient population, which is our visitors, vacationers, and people that live here several months out of the year, has all of those have grown. I've told other sheriffs when I talked to them, I envy a sheriff's office that is not in a constant state of change. And that's what we've been since I came to work with the sheriff's office, but particularly since I've been sheriff. So, you know, we're dealing with a lot more people, a lot more traffic, a lot more situations, and of course, the different things that we've had to address over the past few years. So -- and we're continuing to grow again. You know, we have the jail project going on up in Baymonet right now. We're hoping to finish that project probably mid-year next year. So there's just always -- you've got to -- at the top of our list every year is how we're going to address the growth. And that's something you have to -- I'm guessing that you have to catch up with, right? You can't go -- do you, as a sheriff and go, "Listen, the projection on population growth in our county is this in the next three years, so I need to get deputies staffed at this level to be ready for it, or is it -- you meet the belts too tight, you know, because you've had to -- you've got this growth and now you have to add extra deputies." I mean, is it Carter Horse, which is in front? Well, we use a lot of -- a lot of avenues of information to kind of help us with our projections. For instance, we look at the school system of how many new students are being enrolled. We work with the Baldwin County Realtors Association. We work with the Baldwin County Economic Alliance. We work with all the Chamber of Commerce's, and even to the point of working with our two large utility companies in Baldwin County. So historically, you can look at those and kind of get an aggregate number, if you will, right now, I think most people agree we're probably growing right now between 6 to 7,000 people per year. One of the biggest things, however, though, is, you know, there's still substantial growth within the municipalities. Of course, we have 14 municipalities, but now a lot of the population is moving down into the rural areas. There's a lot of development that goes through the rural areas, and of course, that's the primary focus of the sheriff's office, even though we do a lot of things in our cities and towns as well. But the rural areas are our primary responsibility. It is, though, you know, I talk about this with Sheriff Birch, that people say, well, I saw, you know, the sheriff's department's inside some city, and I always think about it like, what is it, those GIS maps? I mean, well, municipalities do the work once they're incorporated. Y'all still are responsible for everything that's Baldwin County, right? That is correct. In particular, we have, you know, we have 12 police departments, five of our police departments in Baldwin County, or what we would call relatively small departments, which means they may not have full-time investigators, may not have, you know, people that have a lot of experience. So we get called in to a lot of these municipalities to assist with case investigations. Over the past year, we've actually been called in to do three of our municipalities to help out because they had manpower shortages. They did not have sufficient personnel to provide 24-hour service to their cities, so we came in and we, you know, helped them out and continue to do so when those type situations arise. Think about the, and I don't know if this is written down, but the kind of calls that, you know, what y'all got the most kind of calls for in 1989 versus 2024, is that a, has there been a change? Is it more of a, you know, rural calls back then to municipal adjacent calls now or have you, don't track that stuff? We do. And, you know, why, you know, we can always talk about the drug problem, the drug epidemic, drugs have always been a huge issue with any law enforcement agency. But, you know, with Baldwin County, we have seen an increase property-related crime and that's just simply related to the fact there's more people here. You're talking 265,000 that may be in the county today versus all the way back then when it was 85,000. So, you're looking at the total difference that you have there. We did have this past year of great concern, which we had almost triple the number of drug overdoses and 90 percent of those were attributed to fentanyl. So, I can remember the day when, you know, when we transitioned, it was crack cocaine and then it went from crack cocaine to methamphetamine, then heroin kind of started popping back up on the streets a few years ago simply because it was so cheap. And now we're transitioning over to fentanyl and in fentanyl is being mixed with all the other drugs as well. And so, you know, we have seen those type changes, you know, over those past years. Yeah. Think about the drug side of it also, I was thinking about also the mental health. I remember, you know, this has been an issue for Mobile County when I guess the first term of Governor Bentley, I think I might make second term where the state changed how it was doing, you know, housing people with mental illness. There's a lot of people that went right back into the communities and all of a sudden I watched law enforcement at the municipal level and sheriff's departments having to like do a new job, right? I mean, be in the the mental health department, which is not what y'all are trained for. Right. Now, the Alabama sheriff's, we operate the largest mental health facilities in the state. Unfortunately, that is in the county jail. Yeah. And so we have had to develop a lot of programs. I know in our sheriff's office, just within the past two years, we have stood up three different partnerships with our partners, such as out to point, east point, the Baldwin County mental health, working with different things, trying to address, you know, we never wanted to be in a position of a treatment facility because it's very hard to actually treat someone in a correctional facility for mental illness because of the environment. But we do want to try to do what we can do to assess, refer, follow up, and try to do those things. So just in the past, as I said, the past two years, we had to initiate three different programs, two of which are strictly within the correction center and one of which is an outpatient referral program that we dealt with. And so mental health has really become a big issue because we are so far behind on commitment beds, full-time beds in the state of Alabama. So the majority of people that are going through a mental health issue, trying to get treated or being treated as outpatient, and that just kind of lends itself sometimes to the number of those people that get in crises and, you know, have to be referred or have to be dealt with by law enforcement. So if, like, in 1989, the training your deputies are getting now and have been on dealing with that was not exactly part of the protocol in 1989, I can imagine. No, I mean, you know, I'm a through police academy in 1985. My police academy was seven weeks long. Now the most police academies now are 14 weeks long and they have all these components, you know, Alabama passed a law just in the past session, where every police officer now has to undergo sensitivity training as it relates to autism, autism has become a big issue. And so that's something, once again, that's new. And so the training aspect just continues to grow and to grow and to grow to meet with all these different circumstances, you know, that we're having to deal with. Just joining us talking to Baldwin County Sheriff, Paul Smack, from the text line here, Sheriff, this texture said legal immigrants dealing with illegal immigrants in crime in Baldwin County, how that has exploded the text or asking. Yeah, you know, most recently, I think, might be referring to the latest arrest of the DUI manslaughter charge of the person that was driving the car where the six year old child died. You know, we definitely see an increase of what we believe to be undocumented and illegal aliens. Unfortunately, there's very little that we can do about that at the local level. The federal government is the one that controls those things and enforces those things because they have nationwide jurisdiction and these people typically flow from another country and then state to state. So one of the things, our facility, we actually are a ice temporary detention facility where an illegal is arrested for a crime and they're brought to us within 72 hours. They have to be evaluated as to their status, but what we've seen most of the time, none of these people are being deported. They are given actual court date to go before an immigration court, immigration judge to see what their current status is, and right now, they're setting those dates three and four years out. So when that person gets out of jail and gets that paperwork and they have to go to an immigration judge, which in our areas in New Orleans, a majority of those people don't go and overwhelming the majority of people don't go. And so that's where some of our problem is, but we have seen a definite increase in Baldwin County. One of the things that I would project is when we get the 2030 census, when it comes out, you're going to see that the Hispanic population in Baldwin County will be our largest minority. This is, and so it really, I mean, it's going to show it, but it currently is in your approximation. Yes, sir. Yes, sir. And before we go to the news here and come back, I have a question here about it says, has he named a successor? I know you have named the person that even though it's up to the governor, talk us through this. Sure. Real quick. So what we call the old law, which has been in fact since 1901, was that if the sheriff vacated his office, the coroner became the acting sheriff until the governor made an appointment. Well, because of all the specific training and law enforcement now that you've got to have and all the different requirements, the Alabama legislature a couple of years ago passed the new law that said that the highest ranking member of the sheriff's office would become the acting sheriff if the office was vacated. And the governor has two choices. Either the governor can just allow that to stay in place, or the governor can actually make an appointment for the remainder of my term which would end in January of 2027. So because of the way the law is and because of consistency with our office and all the projects we're in, I am recommending to the governor that she consider appointing my chief deputy Anthony Lowry to that position, which would allow us to have a person in place to finish the jail project, keep consistency going on as we go into this before the next election, which will be in 2026. All right, coming right back with the sheriff, Paul Smack, we're going to talk about what's next for, at that point, he'll be, I don't know if he'll still be a sheriff. He'll be part of the sheriff's association. Listen, we'll have the sheriff explain it when we return right here on Midday Mobile. This is Midday Mobile with Sean Sullivan on FM Talk 1065. 1223, FM Talk 1065, Midday Mobile on this Thursday and I'm in conversation with Sheriff Paul Smack, Sheriff of Baldwin County, and we'll transition here to what's next and you're moved to your new job. You're not going to, I mean, you're not going to just sit in the easy chair and take it easy here. Paul, you're going to do something else. Yeah, you know, Sean, this actually began a process, I want to say probably about three years ago, we had an executive director for the Alabama Sheriff's Association for 47 years. His name was Bobby Timmons. Bobby was kind of a legend in Montgomery. He had been a deputy sheriff in Jefferson County and then was elected to the Alabama House of Representatives and the first director that they had of ASA had retired and so Sheriff Mel Bailey was the sheriff of Jefferson County and he encouraged Bobby to take that as a temporary position. So we always joked that he served in that temporary position for 47 years. So when Bobby, when Bobby was going to retire and he and I were very close, Bobby came to me and he said, you need to take this job. And I said, I'm just not ready. I just wasn't the right time. So I actually participated and we hired another director that came to work with us for a short period of time and then he decided to move on and so it came up again when this came about and do a lot of prayer, family consultation and everything. I just saw it as an opportunity that I can help out the 67 sheriffs of the state of Alabama and do some good things, maybe try to do a few things a little bit differently but bring a breath of fresh air into the association and build some great relationships with our legislature, with the Alabama County Commission Association, with our executive branch of the government, Attorney General's office, governor, things of that nature that we're going to be able to do. So it was an opportunity that presented itself again and I just felt like it was probably the time to go ahead and make that move. I think what you just listed is good for people to hear that what sheriffs, the links because you have, I mean, sheriff in county, so you obviously the county commission is a big deal. At the same time, laws are passed in Montgomery through the legislature that affect a sheriff's position or the county and then the execution of those through the executive branch and the judicial with the, you know, the AG's office in Aliyah, I mean, all those were part of the world of a sheriff. That's correct and that's one of the things that makes the sheriff's office more unique than any law enforcement with my, with all due respect to municipalities and our state agencies, but the sheriffs are the officers of the court. And so all of your court actions that come down are going down through your sheriff's offices, which those that includes everything from warrants to subpoenas to garnishments to evictions to all kinds of different things are all channeled through the sheriff's offices. And then once again, as you said, it's usually in each county, the sheriff's office is usually the largest law enforcement agency. And so they're the ones that are providing assistance and working with our local municipalities. And we just want to make sure that we capitalize on those relationships and make sure that we continue to build that. We've got a very diverse sheriff's. We've got one sheriff's office in the state that I think has eight deputies. And then you've got the largest sheriff's office in the state is Jefferson County. And they're currently a substantial amount of number of deputies down. So we've always had memorandums of understanding with all of our sheriffs across the state. And we help each other out. I've sent deputies to other counties to help out the same thing has happened here in times of hurricanes and things of that nature. But we just want to make sure we're building that relationship, building that positive image with all of our partners and everything so that we can make sure that our citizens are getting the best service possible by their sheriff's offices. As you as you leave this office next month to the new job, think your proudest stuff from your time as a deputy sheriff, but your five terms as sheriff of Baldwin County is one thing stand out. I think it's our children's programs. That's one of the things. I mean, I could list we've grown in every division. We actually now have 22 divisions in the sheriff's office, which I never would have. I think when I came to work with the sheriff's office, there may have been eight or nine. But you know, our SRO program, obviously, that has been a flagship for us being able to put a sworn deputy sheriff or police officer in every public school in Baldwin County. Some schools have as many as three or four. Our camp shining star that we do, which is a youth children's camp during the summer. The different programs is that. And then I would probably say next to that is the fact of just keeping up with the general growth of what we've had. We've, you know, I've got people that serve in the sheriff's office that have all kinds of national certifications. They're recognized as experts in their field. And so, but that comes because we had to. We had to address the growth. We had to address what we were doing. So I think it's what we've been able to do with children and the youth in our county. And then the way that we've been able to keep up with the growth that is keeping up with the growth. I can imagine when you're, you're in your new position, any county that says, Hey, if you don't understand, we're growing in our county, you'll be able to go. Okay. Tell you a little about growth. Here's how you deal with it. We'll share if I appreciate that. And if we don't talk before, next time we'll talk, we'll be talking about what's going on with the sheriff's association. That sounds very good. Thank you so much for having me today. Hey, my pleasure. There he goes. Baldwin County Sheriff Paul Smack going to go take a new job as head of the sheriff's association for the 67 counties in Alabama that you hear me reference a lot usually during legislative session, right? We're talking about different bills that are moving and where the sheriff's association is on those bills. So we'll be reaching out to sheriff Mac at that point going forward. All right. Get your calls and texts. When we come back at 343 0106 plus, we mentioned this now, but we'll talk about it in detail with the elite from land nap after one o'clock as the head of MHA, the CEO of the Mobile Housing Authority, accuses city officials of coordinating a smear campaign against him and so the warden turns for the city mobile, doesn't it? Be right back! [BLANK_AUDIO]