Carmon takes over GPD investigations
By John Joyce
Published in News on June 1, 2015 1:46 PM
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Maj. Anthony Carmon
Goldsboro police Maj. Anthony Carmon has traded in his dress blue uniform for a coat and tie as commander of the department's Criminal Investigations Division.
Carmon, 57, brings a new face -- and voice -- to the department's command staff, filling the slot vacated in December 2014 with the retirement of Maj. Al King.
Chief Jeff Stewart said Carmon bested his competition during an assessment of potential candidates for the promotion.
The candidates were put through a number of exercises and given a project to complete focused on how to improve the department. The competition was judged by four representatives from area police departments.
"Carmon did very well," Stewart said. "He gets the job done. He can be counted on to get the job done."
The new major's first priority -- aside from adjusting to the new attire and hours -- is engaging the community.
"My belief is we need to reach out to the public more. We need to interact with the community more. The community can help us solve the problems," Carmon said. "We can't do it by ourselves. So, getting out there and knocking on doors is really important."
A veteran of the U.S. Air Force and a 20-year veteran of the police department, Carmon is also the first black appointed to the department's command staff in more than 15 years.
And while he downplays the significance of that achievement, Carmon does admit he brings to the table a different perspective than other candidates might.
"Does it mean I may have different life experiences and a different history than someone else? Probably," he said.
Carmon was born in Alexandria, Va., and was raised in Prince George's County, Md.
And back then, much like now, the relationship between law enforcement and the public was strained, he said. Carmon said that experience taught him that a community can endure hard times and come out wiser on the other side.
"There were some tumultuous times. Things were going on there that people weren't very happy about," he said. "But I look at that as a learning experience on not just what not to do, but some of the things that were done correctly."
With police officers across the country facing increased scrutiny, Carmon was careful to stress that this is not Ferguson, Baltimore or Los Angeles.
"This is Goldsboro, North Carolina. We are more family-oriented here than any other place I've ever been, and I have been all over the country through my tour in the military," he said. "We are nowhere near any of the things that are going on in any of the major metropolitan areas."
Race -- neither his own nor anyone else's -- should not play a role in policing, Carmon said. So the fact that he is black is not an issue within the department, nor will it impact how he runs the investigations division.
"It may matter to some people in the public. It shouldn't. It is sad if it does," he said.
What does matter are his qualifications.
Carmon joined the Goldsboro Police Department in 1994 and earned a degree in criminal justice while serving, during which time he also worked with the U.S. Air Force Office of Special Investigations.
He began his civilian law enforcement career as a patrol officer, spent two years in uniform and six years as an investigator before he was promoted and tasked with being the department's internal affairs sergeant. In 2009, he was promoted again -- this time to captain -- and placed in charge of one of the patrol shifts.
Now some of the men and women he supervised will serve under him again in investigations.
"That's pretty much the way you really want to do it -- to get a good feel for everything that goes on within the department," he said. "At some level, either as a patrolman or as a former investigator, at some level, I have handled a little bit of everything."
Still, heading up the Investigations Division is very different from being a patrol captain. The job is more about managing resources now versus managing a shift full of patrol officers.
"In the Investigations Division, I'm dealing with a different class of workers. My guys are already motivated. They already want to do the job, to solve crimes and put the bad guys in jail. That is not the issue," he said.
The issue is trying to give the men and women under him enough resources and enough leeway to go ahead and do what they want to do so they can get the job done, he said.
Resources might include equipment or simply time. Investigators sometimes have to work odd hours and weekends to accomplish the things they need to do to solve cases.
And solving cases in the real world, he said, is a far cry from what people see on TV.
"I kind of laugh when I watch television shows about police work. Things don't happen instantly in real life. We don't have all the multimillion-dollar equipment they talk about on television," he said.
Fingerprints do not draw a match in five seconds. DNA results are not instantaneous either.
"And we don't have that kind of facial recognition software that can check everything in the world," he said. "We are fortunate if we get blood results back in six months."
What closes cases, Carmon said, is law enforcement and the community working together. And that does not just mean calling Crime Stoppers after seeing a wanted poster, although he still encourages people to do so.
"I'd like to see (more) tips coming in, but I'd also like to see the investigators and the (department) in general getting a phone call on things before they happen," he said. "We're the tail chasing the dog a lot of times. We come in after the fact and I don't like that. I like to know things ahead of time. The relationships that (the investigators) make with the community can help with that."
He said speaking with an investigator is a lot different than speaking with an officer in uniform. He encourages his team to use that to their -- and the community's -- advantage.
"The good thing about being an investigator is you're in plain clothes so you are less, I don't know, intimidating to people. We can talk to people a little differently. We don't have a radio blaring. We don't have a marked car in the driveway," he said. "That lends to a more different interaction between people."
It is not lost on Carmon or the Police Department that people still have to live in the neighborhoods they reside in after coming forward, should they witness a crime. Some of what has been lost is the sense of right and wrong the parents of a generation or two ago -- including his own mother -- instilled in their children and communities.
"All I know from my upbringing is, if my mom knew I did something wrong, she would be the one to drag me to the police. And she would encourage anyone who saw me do anything wrong to come forward with the information. We've lost some of that. We'd love to get back to it, but I don't think it is going to happen that way."
The way it is going to happen is to overcome current social trends like being afraid of the police and the "stop snitching" mantra pervasive among today's youths.
"People think that, and there is a little bit of that going on. It makes things difficult, but in reality you need to speak up because it is not going to change unless you do," Carmon said.