Name: Dennis Taylor
Rank: Sergeant
Agency: Kinston Department of Public Safety
Joined force: February 1990
After 10 years as a firefighter, Dennis Taylor took a chance on law enforcement.
Early on, the reason was to handcuff criminals at the scene.
“Being appointed to that, we didn’t have anybody on the fire side that was sworn as a law enforcement officer,” Taylor said. “So, we were catching someone setting arson fires. We didn’t have the arresting power. We had to call the police.”
Taylor graduated from Kinston High School in 1984, joined the KDPS in 1990 and moved over to law enforcement in 2000. The Greene County native said he considers Kinston his hometown. He just finished up his second year teaching children at Rochelle Middle School.
The program is called GREAT – Gang Resistance Education and Training.
Taylor said they don’t talk about the gangs, since the children are already aware of the gangs and what they do. What’s done, Taylor said, is teaching the children about peer pressure and dealing with anger issues.
“We’ve got to start somewhere, so, I reached 170-some,” Taylor said. “Now they know the dos and don’ts if you do wrong, and the consequences if you do wrong.”
Taylor said that while most gang members he encounters start around 12 or 13 years old, others are even younger.
“Initially, yeah, I have some gang members at the middle school,” Taylor said. “And that’s 12, 13 (years old).But, actually, we’re going to have to start earlier than that because I have had — actually, I can go down in to the elementary school and teach the fourth and fifth grade. …
“People say, ‘That’s too early,’ but not so when I have been out and talked to kids — eight, nine and 10 — that can tell me about the gang.”
Taylor, who heads up the KDPS gang unit, said that when it comes down to it, taking guns illegally possessed by criminals is one of the better parts of his job.
“Anytime we can get a gun off the street, I look at that as something you can’t target the general public with, nor law enforcement,” he said. “If we can move those, we don’t have to worry about the kids running up and down the street, being shot — eventually someone is going to be shot who’s an innocent bystander.”
Wes Wolfe can be reached at 252-559-1075 and Wes.Wolfe@Kinston.com. Follow him on Twitter @WolfeReports.