After what will be 24 years as Sheriff, Todd Kemp has decided it’s time for him to officially retire. He has announced that he will not be running for re-election next year. Despite retiring from being sheriff, he still intends to stay busy.
“I’ve been doing this a long time, and the stress of the job is not getting any better,” informed Todd, “and I just think it’s time for me to look over the horizon and find something else to do. I’m not gonna sit down; I’m gonna be busy doing something. I’ll still be in the community. I’m not going anywhere. This is my home. I just think it’s time for changing of the guard, and hopefully we’ll get the right man in there that’ll continue to take care of the people of this county. That’s what I tried to do over the last 24 years as well as my whole tenure. I’ve always been very sympathetic toward all the victims of crimes and tried to catch the bad guys the best we could to try and put them behind bars. We weren’t always successful, but we tried on every case. I’ve just seen a lot about what one human being can do to another, and those memories won’t go away.”
Todd has a strong history in law enforcement even before he became the sheriff, and he has used what he learned all those years to do his best as sheriff since he was first elected and started in 2000.
“I worked for Sheriff Shirley from ’88 to ’92. Then, Sheriff Evans got elected, and I worked with him for eight years as his chief deputy,” recalled Todd. “Before that, I worked a little bit for Sheriff Hutchinson back in the late ‘70s. I worked in the jail and dispatch as a teenager. I grew up in a law enforcement family. My dad was chief of police here for many many years, so it just kind of got in my blood. I never thought that I would pick it; it kind of picked me. I’ve tried to do my best and be available to the people and tried to work hard to maintain order here in Clarke County.”
Over his years as sheriff, he has been proud of his staff and what they have accomplished. While there are too many instances to count, there are a few cases that stand out the most in his mind.
“There are numerous things, and I owe this to the staff I’ve had working for me all these years because I knew what they could do when something bad happened, whether it was a storm or major homicide or something like that,” declared Todd. “I knew what we could accomplish and felt like there was nothing we couldn’t accomplish when we give them the right information and right stuff to work with. Back in the ‘90s, I served as the interim Emergency Management Director. I didn’t know I was going to be that for six or seven years. I did that along with being chief deputy, and so on days with bad weather, I was always on alert because we never know what we’re going to deal with on those kind of things. I was real proud of our crew during Hurricane Katrina. They worked from county to county trying to make sure we got ice and water and rations and everything else out to our citizens. We saw firsthand what a major disaster can do, and a lot of people were unprepared for that. My people really stepped up to the plate in that event.”
He will forever remember different stories and accounts of both the good and bad that he has had to witness over the years in his position. He will continue to love this county and serve it as much as he can as he finishes out his last term.
