UPDATED May 2, 2:48 p.m.: To add responses from candidate Keith Jenkins about his legal, employment, and family issues and community policing
Five candidates — incumbent Will Bowman, Gary Eason, Kevin Hofkin, Keith Jenkins, and Gary Richardson — are vying for Liberty County sheriff. In the May 21 general primary, Eason, a Republican, stands alone on that ballot, while the other four Democratic candidates will battle for a spot in the runoff. The Democratic winner will face Eason on the November ballot.
The Current compiled profiles of each candidate based on their Georgia Peace Officer Standards and Training records, personnel files from law enforcement agencies where they serve or have served, court documents, incident reports, public statements, and direct interviews by phone, e-mail, social media, and/or in person. We’ll add links to those files here as we process them.
Will Bowman
William Bowman, Liberty County’s first African-American sheriff, is running for reelection. He served as a drill sergeant and retired from the U.S. Army, going on to a distinguished career with the Georgia State Patrol. Bowman was named Trooper of the Year in 2015 and 2018. His POST record shows he has completed 2,594 training hours.
Bowman served with the Georgia State Patrol from August 2005 to February 2016, when he voluntarily resigned. He came back in December 2016 and served through 2019, then again voluntarily resigned to begin his term as sheriff in 2020. The Current filed an Open Records Request for Bowman’s personnel file on April 8 with the Georgia Department of Public Safety but had yet to receive those documents as of press time on May 1 (we’ll update as they arrive). On April 12 and April 15, DPS’ Attorney Manager of the Open Records Unit, Nkenge Green, cited the files’ age and size, estimating that it would take at least three weeks to fulfill the request.
Bowman’s support for area youth programs recently drew criticism after he presented a $20,000 check to Bradwell Institute for a band trip, which came from school zone camera ticket revenues. He also made several donations to school and AAU athletic teams from the fund. The Liberty County Board of Commissioners has taken control of the bank account as part of a deal, still pending at press time, between Bowen and the board that would require the county to sign off on all future spending.
He also has been criticized for his deputies’ handling of a traffic stop that drew national attention. A bus carrying Delaware State University‘s women’s college lacrosse team was pulled over for illegally driving in the left lane on I-95. Deputies used a K-9 to search the bus for drugs. The historically-black university filed a federal civil rights suit, which led to a consent decree and the U.S. Justice Department requiring LCSO to “review its bias-free policing policies, make necessary updates to its policies on traffic enforcement and searches, and develop and implement data collection procedures, among other provisions.”
During the April 13 NAACP Liberty County Branch candidate forum, Bowman said he was proud of getting state certification for LCSO, which opened the door to federal grant money. At the forum, Bowman said, “We have received almost $3.2 million in federal grants because we were state certified.” His campaign literature cites $1,582,540 in grants to the department since he took office. Bowman also brought the CHAMPS (Choosing Healthy Alternatives and Methods Promoting Safety) program to local schools.
“I don’t care who sits in this seat, it’ll never be easy,” Bowman told the crowd. “You won’t please everybody, but you’ve got to do the best for everybody. You’ve got to treat everybody fair. You can’t treat everybody the same because everybody’s different. And you have to be able to inspire people to want to obey the law.”
“You cannot change people’s minds in three years. If you are used to doing something one way, and somebody else comes in and tries to change it for you, you’re gonna have resistance. I don’t care who it is,” he said. “But if your heart and your ambition and your mind is where it’s supposed to be, then you can get people to follow you. When I came in as sheriff, I didn’t come right in when the election was over. I didn’t get but a day and a half to transition. … But I worked my tail off to get us state-certified, so that would open us up so that we would be able to get some federal grants. That is something that we have never done.”
Bowman also took credit for leasing, instead of buying, patrol vehicles. At 85,000 miles, he said, the vehicle gets swapped out: “Now you don’t have deputies driving a vehicle with 200-something-thousand miles on it, and going out there and getting themselves hurt.”
Bowman said his “vision for this community is to get more officers on the road, get more SROs in the schools, but that takes money and that takes time and it takes all of us to work together as a community. I’m here with you, I’m gonna always be here with you, and I’m for you.”
Kevin Hofkin
Kevin Hofkin is a former Liberty County Sheriff’s deputy who, along with another former deputy, bought and rehabbed the moribund Halfmoon Marina on Colonel’s Island in Midway. Hofkin, who came here around 1986, told the Liberty County Branch NAACP candidate forum audience he knows “what it’s like to be in the community, [and] see higher taxes.” Hofkin said, “We need to be more proactive in law enforcement” to create a safer community. “How do we do that and not spend more money?” He added, “We need to restructure how the sheriff’s office is run; we need more deputies on the road.”
A review of Hofkin’s POST file showed no sanctions and no investigations on his record, that he holds a GED, has completed 768 hours of training, and that he served as a jailor for LCSO from December 2016 to December 2017. He then was promoted to deputy sheriff and served in that capacity until March 30, 2021, when he voluntarily resigned.
Hofkin criticized Sheriff William Bowman’s use of school zone speed camera revenues to fund school sports team uniforms, trophies, and gear, as well as a band trip. He told The Current, “Several years ago, my shift handed out over 30 turkeys prior to Thanksgiving out of our own money, so I stand behind community outreach with more than words.”
Hofkin said that the sheriff’s department needs greater transparency and accountability, and that he wanted to emphasize more of a community policing philosophy “as established by the Department of Justice’s Community Oriented Policing Services model.” Hofkin alluded to employee morale at LCSO: “Culture cancels out everything. Culture cancels out standard operating procedures. Culture cancels out all accreditation standings. Culture cancels out training. We need to reset and bring a positive culture for the employees.” Hofkin said he would take “a proactive angle that values problem solving and partnerships” and “a ‘spirit of service instead of only a spirit of adventure.’ The idea, he said, is for deputies to “create solutions to problems,” which makes them feel “accountable for those solutions” and more responsible for community well-being.
He added that LCSO owes the community transparency: “If the community is to be a full partner, the sheriff’s office needs mechanisms for sharing relevant information. Accountability in actions, spending with no hidden agenda or secrets.” Hofkin also said he would be accessible, promising “I will be readily available to everyone. I will encourage anyone who wants or needs to speak with me to do so and I will speak to everyone in a timely manner without feeling like you are having to go through a corn maze.”
If elected, Hofkin said, he plans to bring back a citizens’ academy, as well as a teen safe-driving program covering “crash avoidance, off road recovery, distraction exercise, panic stop and a car control exercise,” as well as training on “encounters with law enforcement on the road.”
As for the best uses of any opioid settlement funds coming to the county, Hofkin said he would “have conversations with Gateway Behavioral and the Liberty County Board of Health to identify programs to reduce drug dependency in the community,” as well as “countywide training with Liberty County EMS and Liberty Fire Rescue on the safest response and follow up.” He also would look into the possibility of “Narcan boxes,” which he said are similar to AED boxes.
Keith Jenkins
Keith Bryan Jenkins is a former Hinesville District 4 city councilman and mayor pro tem, honorably discharged Army veteran, and longtime karate black belt and instructor who has served with several law enforcement agencies in Coastal Georgia. His Georgia POST record shows he is in good standing, with 3,101 training hours.
The Current had made several efforts to reach Jenkins in person and through campaign volunteers to comment on his files before the story went to press May 1. Jenkins called May 2 and gave an extensive interview about his background. We’ve added excerpts addressing those points.
Jenkins suffered a cerebral aneurysm in October 2017 that was severe enough to require a helicopter flight to Savannah and a stretch of inpatient rehabilitation. He said a doctor told him he had had a slow leak for about 28 years. That would have been around 1983, when Jenkins was serving in the Army. He and his unit handled explosives. Asked whether he thought that might have contributed to his aneurysm, Jenkins said it was possible, but also said it could have been caused by an APC accident: “I was walking through the motor pool and then a guy came there, riding through the motor pool real fast, but he had a thing, an extension on the back of his truck and hanging on the side.” The extension struck Jenkins in the head: “Along with all the explosive stuff that we blew up in the field, that could have just made it worser.”
Jenkins also has had his own run-ins with the law, also dating from the 1980s. In 1988, he was convicted of assault after, according to a police report, breaking into his ex-girlfriend’s house and choking and kicking her. Jenkins was fined and given a 12-month suspended sentence. Jenkins said, “You know at times you’re overprotective for someone, and they are doing stuff that you totally disagree with, but you’re trying to save the person? I don’t want to hurt nobody. Never did, just don’t want them to get caught up into nothing….But as far as stalking, no, I was inside that house.” He said he made the mistake of holding someone down, which he said he used to believe was the right thing to do: “you just hold them and then you let them go, because I was in the military at the time. And then I left….there was nothing more to be said. I just left.” Jenkins said his girlfriend had started dating a Savannah police officer, “and I didn’t know that, but I guess he encouraged her to take out a warrant. When I went to court about it, the judge told me [he] wouldn’t lock [me] up for it…. He just gave me three months’ probation,” which ended after two months. “He said, ‘You don’t need to be here anymore.”
In 2013, Jenkins’ wife told Hinesville Police that Jenkins allegedly had grabbed her by the neck. Jenkins told The Current that both of them had been “going through some medical stuff. All of us were scared. I didn’t know what was going on with her, but she had veins busted and stuff inside her arms. We sent her to different places, didn’t know what was wrong with her…. She would always say she felt like something was creeping in her body and stuff crawling inside of her.” Jenkins said, “I did love my wife, loved her to death. But it was just so much stuff that was going on in her life….I just didn’t know how to fix it.” When his wife came home that say and was locked out, Jenkins said, she was agitated, “howling and screaming and going all crazy,” so he called his boss to listen in.
During a 1993 background check, the Liberty County Sheriff’s Office found an assault charge against Jenkins from October 14, 1980 in Charleston, South Carolina. However, because the records had been purged, LCSO could not confirm the outcome of that case.
Jenkins has a loyal following because of his karate school, where Jenkins offered lessons free of charge to juveniles coming through the court system, as well as to the community at large. The school was set up as a non-profit. When Jenkins was forced to move the school, a local restaurant owner, Nury Wright, told The Current she offered to let Jenkins run his school temporarily on her property until he was able to get back on his feet. According to Wright, Jenkins built a structure for the school on her property. Wright said she asked Jenkins to start paying rent but that he said the school was not making a profit. Wright and Jenkins have been locked in a legal battle ever since, bouncing between courtrooms and mediation attempts. After a judge ordered Jenkins to resolve the matter, court records allege that Jenkins had the building torn down and that the restaurant building was damaged in the process. The parties were due back at court the week before candidate qualifying for this race, but agreed to go back to mediation at the last minute, heading off a trial that would have coincided with the general primary.
Jenkins told The Current that Wright, whose kids were in the karate school, invited him to build the school on her property. “I told her, ‘I don’t know.’ I didn’t know how I was going to do it because to me, $10,000 was a lot of money….But I had some money that I had gotten in the military. And I said, ‘If I do that, but watch costs, blah blah blah, I may be able to do it.’….She wanted me to move down there….As God is my witness, this is all she asked me….The only thing we agreed upon, she wanted me to say if I decide to sell the building, I see the building to her, and if she decided to sell the land, she’s selling it to nobody but me.” He said he gave Wright some money every month: “Whenever I made money, I paid the bills, and then whatever I had left over, I give it to her.” Later, Jenkins alleged, Wright’s daughter “had some guy who she called her lawyer — he’s not a lawyer — handed me some paperwork that said they wanted me to pay rent. I said, ‘Rent? Pay rent on my own building? I ain’t paying rent on my own building.’ I said, I would sell them the building because I was going to retire.” Jenkins refused to leave. “What am I gonna do? Pick up the building on my chest and walk away?….God is my witness. I was gonna give her the building. I would have gave her the building and just walked away from it and stuff. But they were so nasty with it.” He accused Wright’s family of damaging his building and letting people stay in it “when the building was still, honestly, I felt, in the hands of the court.” Rather than face liability, Jenkins said, “You know what? Before somebody get hurt, I’ll tear that building down….They wanted it tore down, they told the police they wanted it tore down. So I just went ahead and gave her her wishes.” He added he wished the building was still standing because “That’s part of my life. That’s part of my history.”.
Here is a summary of Jenkins’ time in law enforcement, condensed from personnel files and court records:
Jenkins was hired by the Liberty County Sheriff’s Office in September 1992, pending certification from POST. After the department was unable to find records on the disposition of what it said was Jenkins’ October 14, 1980 assault charge in Columbia, South Carolina, Georgia POST held his pending certification for review and then-Sheriff J. Don Martin terminated Jenkins, effective January 1, 1993. (A 2021 background investigation by the Brunswick Police Department found “Mr. Jenkins HAS criminal history Simple Battery on 8/23/1988.“) In March 1993, the department was still trying to find out how the South Carolina case was resolved. In May 1994, POST said it would not certify Jenkins until it could review his misdemeanor criminal history, and Martin withdrew Jenkins’ application.
In 1996, according to POST, Jenkins’ application was transferred to the Brunswick Police Department, where he worked until taking career retirement in January 2011. Within a week, former Liberty County Sheriff Steve Sikes hired Jenkins “as Lieutenant assigned as second in command of Training/Traffic,” promoting him six months later to captain and putting him in charge of training.
It was during this term of service that Jenkins was elected to the Hinesville City Council and was involved in the 2013 domestic dispute with his wife. In October 2017, Jenkins suffered the brain aneurysm, followed by in-patient rehabilitation. In 2020, when Bowman was elected sheriff in 2020, he laid off Jenkins, who went back to the Brunswick Police Department. On Jan. 16, 2021, an internal memo at BPD detailed several concerns about Jenkins’ ability to work as a law enforcement officer, noting that Jenkins had cited “a prior medical issue that he has notified command level about prior to coming to the FTO program.” That period of service does not appear on Jenkins’ POST record.
Two months later, in March 2021, the Chatham County Sheriff’s Office hired Jenkins as a law enforcement training instructor at the Chatham County Detention Center. He went to work in May 2021 as a deputy correctional officer. But on Sept. 9, 2021, an internal memo alleged that Jenkins had been “unsafe on the firing line with a loaded weapon,” among other issues. On Sept. 20, 2021, Jenkins tendered a one-line resignation, “effective immediately.”
The next month, Jenkins went back to the Brunswick Police Department, passing a voice stress test with flying colors. The examiner noted that, in a pre-test interview, Jenkins had admitted to “some minor incidents with his wife, however [no] violence from his side was involved.” Four months later, a woman who had been involved in a dispute with her boyfriend filed a complaint against Jenkins for an alleged “inappropriate” comment, but departmental investigators who reviewed bodycam footage exonerated Jenkins.
He resigned on Feb. 24, 2022, and went to work for the Glennville Police Department in March 2022, but was terminated on Sept, 29, 2023. Officials there told The Current that Jenkins had medical issues that kept him from wearing his duty belt and that the department could not afford to keep one of its three officers in a full-time desk position. Jenkins confirmed that he “fell backwards and injured my back badly in Glennville.” He explained that his duty gun belt “was too much weight on my back, and I could not be out there putting other people’s lives in danger….I’m not gonna respond to Miss Susie’s house, and then I hear shootings in the system, and I can’t do nothing for her.” Jenkins added that he had been getting injections through workman’s compensation, “but they didn’t want to continue to give me the shots….And I think if they would have continued to give me the shots, I think I would have gotten better. But the city manager said he needed that position because they’re short. You got a four-man department plus a chief. I understood.”
Jenkins started running unofficially for sheriff well before the actual qualifying date. In October 2023, he showed up at Walthourville’s municipal candidate forum to make a campaign speech.
At the NAACP Liberty County Branch Candidate Forum on April 13, Jenkins called for tutors and skilled trades training for county jail detainees, even though jails are short-term pretrial holding facilities and not prisons where people who have been convicted of crimes serve generally more time. He also stressed the importance of getting out of the patrol car and playing with local kids to develop goodwill in the community.
“I practice community policing, getting out, getting with the kids, I buy ‘em ice cream and stuff,” Jenkins told The Current. “I get out there and I take pictures with the kids, I played softball with them, and them kids look forward to me coming back out to see them again.” And parents call him: “I still have to go to their house, I talk to their kids and stuff. That’s all I do. I will deal with them, they have a problem, they call me and say, ‘Sensei, come over here,” and I go over there, and I talk and mentor the kids. And so, if I still do that, it ain’t something I gotta do. It’s something I want to do.”
Gary Richardson
Gary Richardson, a native of Liberty County, was a LCSO deputy from 1991 to 1993. He also has served with the Hinesville Police Department and the GBI’s Tri Circuit Drug Task Force based in Claxton from 1993 to 1995. From December 1994 to March 1999, Richardson worked on patrol and as an investigator for HPD. From 2003 to 2005, he was with the civilian-staffed Department of Defense Police. In March 2005, Richardson returned to LCSO, where he was promoted to lieutenant in June 2015. He voluntarily resigned on Oct. 1, 2018, joining the Georgia Ports Authority Police two weeks later.
Richardson told The Current the sheriff’s department needs to “reduce turnover and quit policing for profit.” Instead, he wants “new leadership and a new philosophy,” as well as more deputies. As for the jail, he said, “I need to evaluate the jail with the people I plan to put in charge. Some of the things [needed] that I know for sure is to update the facility, upgrade the food services for inmates, and create a less hostile environment.”
Richardson was a named defendant in a federal civil rights suit brought by a student with special needs and his parents. Court filings allege that Richardson shoved the student and Tased him in the chest after the student had disrupted class. The case was settled out of court.
At the NAACP Liberty County Branch candidate forum held April 13, Richardson said, “For the last 33 years, I’ve been serving the citizens of Liberty County in one form or another in law enforcement.” During that time, he said, he earned several advanced law enforcement certifications, a bachelor’s degree in criminal justice, a master’s degree in American legal studies, and worked for three different sheriffs and two different Hinesville police chiefs.
“I think the best thing I want to do is provide quality police services,” he said, adding, “We have to train our officers better. Because as we all know, in the past few years, there’s been a divide between the police and the community.” With better training, he said, officers will be “better able to handle situations and handle folks.” He agreed with Jenkins that it was important to figure out how to keep people out of jail, urging, “Let’s build a partnership between the citizens and the police.”
Richardson said, “I promise as sheriff, I’ll be accessible to all of y’all. Anytime that you come to that sheriff’s department, you can see the sheriff. If I’m there, you will see the sheriff. You will be able to talk to me, and we will get the problem solved. If I can’t solve it, I’ll find somebody that can help me do that.”
Gary Eason
Gary Eason, the sole Republican candidate for Liberty County Sheriff, has been critical of Sheriff William Bowman’s use of RedSpeed funds. Eason had not responded to an e-mail seeking more information about his proposed platform by press time. His Georgia POST record shows he earned a high school diploma and has no sanctions, no investigations, and 1,735 training hours.
According to his POST file, Eason started his law enforcement career in June 1988 as a peace officer at Coastal State Prison, voluntarily resigning in January 1989 and taking a job as corrections officer at Georgia State Prison, again voluntarily resigning in February 1991.
In May 1988, he joined the Hinesville Police Department, where he worked until voluntarily resigning on March 16, 2002. On March 21 of that year, he joined LCSO as a peace officer and was promoted to Sergeant in April 2013, lieutenant in June 2016. On Jan. 3, 2021, Eason was demoted to corporal. In August 2021, he was again promoted to lieutenant, and stayed there until taking career retirement at the end of the year. Three days later, on Jan. 3, 2022, he joined the Bryan County Sheriff’s Office as a deputy and has been there ever since.
Eason told The Current that he did not approve of Bowman’s sports and band donations from the school zone camera fund, and questioned another purchase: “The golf carts that he got, yeah, you can use those as far as public safety, SROs can use them around the school. That’s fine. But don’t be taking it to a golf tournament.” He called for an investigation and accused the Board of Commissioners of “trying to put it off, and I think they’re trying to put it off long enough because of the election coming up.”
Eason had not confirmed an interview date with The Current by press time.
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