Robert Clark of Slocomb has Announced his Candidacy for the Office of Sheriff for Geneva County

Matt Boster

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Posted by: Matt Boster
Date: Feb 18 2014 2:59 PM

Robert Clark of Slocomb has announced his candidacy for the Office of Sheriff for Geneva County. Robert is 47 years old, and has provided a wide diversity of public service during his 28 years in the arena of law enforcement and security.

Robert began his adult life as a U.S. Marine, which included combat service as an Infantry Team Leader and Squad Leader during Operation Desert Storm in 1991. The honor of leading Marines is the personal highlight of his life.

His formal education consists of Bachelor of Science in Criminal Justice, and a Master of Science in Justice and Public Safety. The graduate program was a focus on criminal justice administration.  In addition to the formal, university education he has attended numerous certification courses and training in several areas of law enforcement.

Robert’s law enforcement experience began with the Montgomery County Sheriff’s Office in 1995 when he attended the Montgomery Advanced Standards Police Academy, which was a 20 week academy instead of the 12 week minimum standards academy. Montgomery County is a relatively large Sheriff’s Office, with 120 deputies and 100 corrections officers in a jail that accommodates almost 1,000 inmates. The majority of his time there was spent in patrol, and he spent three years with the Special Operations Division as a K9 handler. One year was spent in the Court Security Division, providing a secure environment for six judges and thousands of people who conducted business at the Courthouse daily.

Leaving Montgomery County in February 2002 to join the Transportation Security Administration as one of the first 300 employees of the agency, Robert traveled extensively to manage airport security and establish operations at nine airports. When his permanent assignment field office was on the list to be established, he returned to Montgomery as a Security Manager and later Acting Asst. Federal Security Director to implement the same operations in the cities for which he was responsible. This included airports in three cities in Alabama and Georgia, 150 employees, and more than $10 million in budgets. While in Montgomery, Robert was a member of the U.S. Attorney’s Joint Terrorism Task Force.

In the early years of the agency many selected personnel had to perform more than one job at times. Attending the Federal Aviation Administration’s Security Enforcement Training Academy, Robert became an Aviation Security Inspector, responsible for regulatory investigations and enforcement of security requirements for airports and air carriers. He also spent some time in Washington, D.C. as the TSA Liaison to the Homeland Security Operations Center where he worked within the Border and Transportation Security Task Force. In that capacity he conducted activities related to the terrorist watch lists, analyzed intelligence and operations, and provided a 24/7 crisis management structure for the nation. Part of his responsibility there was to write the Task Force portion of the President’s Daily Intelligence brief for President George W. Bush, from the most current intelligence and operations information.

In November of 2006, an opportunity to become Director of Security for Mercedes-Benz, U.S. presented itself and he spent three and a half years there, managing a security operation of more than 50 personnel, and consolidated all emergency response operations into a unified command and in the process saved more than a million dollars annually. The security and safety operation there consisted of 50 security personnel and more than 50 firefighters, and a budget of more than four million dollars.

In 2006, Robert began teaching Criminal Justice as an adjunct instructor and over a period of seven years taught more than 50 undergraduate courses in criminal justice and security management. In other professional academic pursuits, he worked as a consulting Subject Matter Expert to the University of Phoenix in Organizational Security Management and Criminal Justice and also served on the faculty advisory council, where he created almost two dozen undergrad and graduate courses to maintain a rigorous and contemporary program. Related to the experience in teaching, Robert is the only candidate that is an Alabama Peace Officers and Standards Training Commission certified law enforcement instructor, approved by the state to teach everything from basic police academy curriculum to executive level training.

Robert has been with the Geneva County Sheriff’s Office for three and a half years.

Among his goals as Sheriff, Robert is committed to:

-          Efficient use of resources to provide the citizens with effective law enforcement services and providing problem oriented solutions to issues of crime.

-          A Sheriff’s Office that takes the lead in providing continual training for all officers in the county in partnerships with the four police departments in the county.

-          An enhanced, active reserve program that gives deputies more time for law enforcement activity

-          Increased use of technology to include social media to connect to citizens and more effective communications systems to improve interaction between agencies and solidify the crisis management abilities of the county.

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