ATLANTA — Earlier this week Gov. Brian Kemp swore in Vic Reynolds as the new director for the Georgia Bureau of Investigations.
Reynolds has an extensive background. In the past he's worked as an officer, a judge and most recently served as the district attorney in Cobb County. The former prosecutor has been married to his wife for more than 30 years. They have two daughters.
Outside of Reynolds' past accomplishments, some 11Alive viewers submitted questions wanting to know more about his agenda. 11Alive took those questions to Reynolds, and he addressed them in a sit down interview Thursday.
The Rome native said drugs and gangs are two areas he wants to focus on this year.
"We want to start to develop a gang strike force, where we can start at the beginning of an investigation up until the stage of indictment," he said. "Assist those locals with that case and then step back and let them proceed in court to prosecute it."
He also wants to work to keep youth out of gangs, but he believes some of the work starts with the community.
"We have to be able to say as a society, to say, 'Look, there's another option.' And that's up to the local communities to do that," he added. " And we'll certainly try to use this position as some sort of bully pulpit to say, there's other options that you all can do and see if there's a way we can help as well."
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One 11Alive viewer wanted to know why it is not mandatory for law enforcement officers to have body cameras while they are serving warrants or making arrests. Reynolds said he supports officers wearing cameras.
"I would strongly, strongly tell these local jurisdictions, you need to body-camera your officers. They need to have that body cam on and the police need to be able to show the citizens this is what we did, this is how we did it, this is why we did it," he stressed. "We would strongly encourage it, but in the end, to answer your viewer to that specific question, each municipality, each county, each sheriff's department has to answer themselves."
Reynolds said in many cases, those agencies can apply for grants to pay for the body cameras.
As far as the gang strike force, it will go into operation in less than a month.
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