YORK COUNTY — Protect and Serve is a series highlighting local police officers during National Police Week. Today, meet York-Poquoson Sheriff’s Deputy Kevin Taylor.
Taylor began his career as a corrections officer. After a few years, Taylor transitioned into the court system working with another sheriff’s office in the state. With stints as a deputy on the road, a school resource officer and an investigator in school crimes, he eventually became a juvenile law expert and a crime prevention specialist.
“When I came here to York County three years ago, I came specifically as a crime prevention specialist, school resource officer, and I worked for that first year in York High School. Most of all of my time in public safety, including my fire background, has been in prevention,” Taylor said.
As a crime prevention specialist, Taylor is in charge of the York-Poquoson Sheriff’s Office Crime Prevention trailer. The trailer is a mobile unit stocked full of information on any sort of prevention effort. Taylor has packed the unit with giveaways, pamphlets, and more, and takes the trailer to community events around York County and the City of Poquoson.
The trailer has full electric capability, two televisions and is also fully air-conditioned. According to Taylor, from about mid-March through mid-November, the crime prevention trailer rolls out of the sheriff’s office at least once a week, sometimes every day.
“The crime prevention trailer is like my baby. All of the items in the trailer are free and are all crime prevention resources and materials for the young, the elderly, and everyone in between. The trailer is chock full of information and I can do just about anything that I can do at the sheriff’s office in the trailer,” Taylor said.
Much of what Taylor works on is crime prevention geared toward the youth.
“I want to establish new ways for youth to engage as productive citizens. I want them to turn bad decisions and bad choices into positive things. Coming here, helping them to enhance their crime prevention unit, and building upon what they already had. We went from doing 100 events a year to last year, we closed out the year with 301 community events,” Taylor said.
His work with youth stems from his own experiences as a child, where he lacked an advocate.
“I was bullied and picked on in middle school and when I got to high school that bullying continued beyond belief. It became physical. I was tormented and I just couldn’t handle school. I didn’t want to be there but I made good grades, I just didn’t have any friends. I wanted to drop out and I attempted to do that a few times,” Taylor recalls.
When his mom found out about his attempts to drop out, she refused to sign the paperwork.
“She sat me down and asked, ‘why would you do this?’ I told her that she didn’t know what it was like. I had no friends, I was being tormented, I was being bullied, I never fought back. My mother said, ‘you are going to graduate, you are going to finish.’ I questioned it, but my mom reminded me that she had a sixth-grade education before she was pulled out of school to take care of her siblings and the farm when my grandfather died,” Taylor says.
Taylor’s mom wanted a better life and education for him. After hearing the story, Taylor agreed to continue his high school education. On graduation day, Taylor’s mom spoke to him shortly after he received his diploma and asked him two questions that changed his outlook on life forever.
“She asked me, ‘what do you want to do in life?’ and I told her I wanted to help people. She said, ‘okay, if you could come back to this school and you could change one thing, what would it be?’ I told her that I would change the way that people like me were treated,” Taylor said.
After that conversation, he set out to help those kids who were just like him. His first job was as the School Resource Officer in that same school that he almost didn’t graduate from.
In addition to his duties in the crime prevention unit, Taylor also serves as a Field Training Officer, is Crisis Intervention Training certified, is a juvenile law expert and a Department of Criminal Justice Services Certified Crime Prevention Specialist. He is also a certified law enforcement practitioner who is licensed in all 50 states.
“I was told early on in my law enforcement career that I needed to be firm, fair, and consistent. You need to maintain who you are, you can’t switch it up, one day be a nice person and the next day have an attitude. You need to be like water. If you want a promotion, you need to float into cracks and crevices like water and just absorb any training possible. I was told too that the work that others don’t want to do, you need to do it. All of that makes you very valuable and nobody can hold a candle to the work that you do,” Taylor said.
When Taylor doesn’t have the trailer rolling, he’s often teaching classes or offering seminars at the York-Poquson Sheriff’s Office headquarters. The classes are completely free to anyone and a schedule of classes can be found on the York-Poquson Sheriff’s Office website.
“I am a firm believer in crime prevention through education. I’m a firm believer that yes, we can put handcuffs on society, but it doesn’t get rid of the problem. The best way to get rid of the issue is to educate the issue. If you work hard at educating society about not being a victim, you’re going to have less victims,” Taylor said.
Overall, Taylor couldn’t imagine doing anything else.
“This is a lifestyle. This is not a clock-in, clock-out. I go to work every day, not for the paycheck, but purely for the love of what I do. This matters to me in ways that I can’t even put into words.”