ROBESON COUNTY, NC (WBTW) – Burnis Wilkins won the democratic primary for Robeson County Sheriff in May, and on Friday, spoke with News13 about how he wants to reduce crime in the area.
Wilkins retired from law enforcement in 2012 to run for Lumberton City Council. He said as a Lumberton City Councilman, he has the largest community watch in the county.
“Our county’s recognized as being number one for all the wrong reasons,” the Robeson County Sheriff-Elect said. “The crime stats clearly show that gangs, guns, and drugs are the issues that are causing problems in this county.”
Wilkins said he wants to clean up “crime and grime” in Robeson County starting with drugs.
“You’ve got the drug dealer,” he said. “If you didn’t have the drug dealer, you wouldn’t have the drug users. We’re going to come out aggressively, but professionally, in an approach to attack the drug dealers,” he continued. “A lot of it has to do with dealing with the drug problem right off the bat. I know we have more issues than that, but the drugs are my main focus.”
Wilkins has worked in law enforcement for 36 years, and said he started out as a dispatcher when he was a teenager.
“The majority of my career has been working drugs,” Wilkins told News13. “I worked with the State Alcohol Law Enforcement Division for 10 years, and my focus there was drugs and drug round-ups. I was a drug supervisor at the Robeson County Sheriff’s Office, [and] I was a drug supervisor at [the] Lumberton Police Department,”he continued. “I was the supervisor at the Hoke/Robeson Drug Task-force , which was a state federally funded task-force back in the late 80s [and] early 90s.”
Wilkins said he wants to start a dual-county, multi-agency drug task-force to target gangs and drug dealers in the county.
“I’ve talked to federal officials, and state officials as well,” Wilkins said. “What we want to do is a dual county, which will be Robeson and Bladen County, at least those two counties for now,” he explained. “If I can gather just one officer from most of those municipal agencies, and then put the drug units from Bladen and Robeson County Sheriff’s Office together, it would be about a 20 person team,” he continued. “What we would do is we would attack the drug problems in both counties. Sheriff [Jim] McVicker over in Bladen County has helicopters we can use over here, we’ve actually used them before in other incidents. If it could bring us all together as one big team, I think we could really make a difference.”
Wilkins said he’s from Lumberton, and has always wanted to help the community.
“We cannot continue to allow the criminal element to just take over the county,” said Wilkins. “We’re getting national attention for all the wrong reasons. It seems like we’re going downhill, rather than uphill. We have great people that live here. We have a multi-racial county, here in Robeson County, and we all get along great, it seems, but our crime is the problem, and again, the majority of it is related to drugs.”
Wilkins mentioned several mentoring programs he wants to bring to youth in the community, as a way to steer them from criminal activity.
“My kid cadet program,” he said. “I knew at 13 or 14 years old that I wanted to be a police officer, so what I want to do is, we’re going to have detention officers and deputies to mentor youth that we can identify that are interested in becoming firefighters, police officers, EMTs, that kind of thing.”
Wilkins also explained his Badges and Bibles program, which he said was similar to scared straight programs across the nation. However, he explained the children would not spend a night in jail.
“Instead of yelling at them and trying to get their attention,” he said. “I have preachers, [and] pastors across the county that are already on board that we’re going to try and use the faith-based community to reach out to troubled youth,” he continued. “We can’t force religion on anyone, I know that, and it would be through parental permission.”
Wilkins said a new sheriff is like a fresh start, and he wants to re-brand the sheriff’s office.
“We’re going to change the patrol cars of Robeson County,” said Wilkins. “I’m changing the color of the car. I’m changing the stripe scheme on the side of the car. I’m changing the patch on the uniform,” he explained. “We’re going to be a community-oriented type sheriff’s office, but we’re going to come out with an aggressive approach towards crime.”
Wilkins will be sworn in as sheriff on Dec. 3 this year.