Having the privilege to serve as your Sheriff is the greatest honor I have ever had and one I never take lightly. Since taking office in 2017, I have kept my word, we have taken every opportunity to keep Forsyth safe. We have increased our presence greatly on all fronts and our crime rates are the lowest in all of Metro Atlanta. Our partnerships with your our citizens has never been stronger and that shows in the community support FCSO receives every day. Forsyth County remains THE place to live and raise a family and with your help, the men and women of the Sheriff’s Office will keep it that way.
Sheriff Freeman has lived in Forsyth County for 40 years and has been married to his high school sweetheart Dana Freeman for the past 28 years, they have two adult children, Lexi, a professional equestrian trainer and Hunter, a college junior at Valdosta University.
Since taking office, the School Resource Program has grown into the largest SRO program of any Sheriff’s Office in Georgia. Ron Freeman will increase the number of narcotics officers to combat the growing issues of drugs. There is no excuse not to use every resource available to protect our children.
In order to protect our children, Sheriff Freeman instituted a groundbreaking Multi Discipline School Safety Task force with Superintendent Bearden after the Parkland tragedy. As a result, we have increased School Resource Deputies from 13 to 40, placed a Deputy with a body camera on every physical campus full time, and placed 2 Resource Deputies at every major high school.
Narcotics detectives increased from 2 to 8 and then in January 2018, Sheriff Freeman led the creation of the Johns Creek, Alpharetta, Forsyth County Drug Task Force. Drug dealers know they are in the crosshairs of JCAF.
In 2015, the agency had lost its national accreditation from the Commission on the Accreditation of Law Enforcement Agencies (CALEA). When Sheriff Freeman took office in January 2017, he set the agency on course to again meet the highest standards in the law enforcement profession. Few agencies are willing to be judged by and meet the toughest standards in the world, FCSO does — proving to our citizens their trust is being earned.
Since taking office, Sheriff Freeman has sold or traded all luxury vehicles and equipment, using the proceeds to buy law enforcement patrol vehicles on state contracts.
He has streamlined the purchasing process and eliminated excess spending and unnecessary contracts. Monthly finance overviews are published online and the Sheriff’s Office ended 2017 approximately $700k under budget and 2018 nearly $600K under budget. That is over $1M returned to the taxpayers of Forsyth County even when while filling previously vacant positions.
Hiring a Director of Communications, FCSO was able to reassign deputies to law enforcement duties and has greatly increased our outreach to our citizens with our social media reaching nearly 100K people on Facebook alone.
As part of our outreach, we have increased the number of self defense, firearms, and child safety classes available to our citizens.
Non-violent inmates are now out of the jail 5 days a week picking up trash and litter from our roadways at little to no cost to our taxpayers. A joint program with the Board of Commissioners, landfill fees fund a deputy full time to monitor inmates keeping our county beautiful. Inmates also care for the landscaping at Sheriff’s Precincts and the National Guard Armory among others.
Created to assist both Forsyth County and others in the wake of a natural or other disaster, the Incident Response Team consists of two, 15 Deputy teams specially trained and equipped for disaster response. In the wake of the devastating hurricane that struck the Florida Panhandle and South Georgia, the I.R.T. team deployed to Crisp and Dougherty Counties providing immediate law enforcement and disaster relief and helping our fellow Georgians for 8 days.
