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Rookie UGA Police Officer Chuck Horton patrolled the campus streets
in 1976 in a squad car that must have struck fear in the hearts
of all would-be criminals—at least, as much fear as a station
wagon possibly can.
“Those patrol cars weren’t just any station wagons,”
Horton says. “These were ugly—and I mean ugly—station
wagons. I think about those old cars today and realize we have come
so far.”
Chief Horton will retire at the end of this month after 28 years
on the UGA police force, the last 16 as chief. He worked his way
to the top of the department, modernizing a force that now ranks
highly among universities.
“Our capability to respond to certain emergencies is far ahead
of a lot of other colleges and universities,” Horton says.
“Not many have the capabilities we have.”
UGA’s crowd-control team was called on to protect world leaders
at the G8 Summit Command Center on the Georgia coast. Horton has
also put together one of the few bomb teams on a college campus.
Horton came to UGA from Brunswick on a football scholarship in 1972.
After playing on the freshman team, he hurt his knee in the off-season
and had to give up football, but he earned his degree in political
science in four years. After taking the job on the police force,
he returned to the classroom, earning a business degree and later
a graduate degree in safety education.
“My intent was not to stay here this long, it just worked
out that way,” he says. “My wife is from here, so it
was a good fit.”
Horton did have opportunities to leave, including an offer from
the University of North Carolina to be campus police chief. He turned
it down because he didn’t want to uproot his children, and
because he was interested in politics, serving on the school board
in Oconee County.
During his career, he says, he has “just about seen it all”—the
funny, the tragic and the bizarre. And then, he says, there is football
season.
“It always amazes me how folks can get caught up in something
so much they lose their presence of mind,” he says. “Football
season puts a lot of strain on my department.”
In 1996, a newborn was found in a trash can on the UGA campus, and
that unsolved case still haunts Horton.
“Not a day goes by I don’t think about that little boy,”
he says. “I wish we could have solved that. In this business
you are going to get bad things, and you have to deal with it—but
it is always there.”
Horton says he will miss the people he has worked with over the
years, but he has no regrets about retiring.
He is going to focus on his political career, running for Oconee
County Commissioner in the July 20 election.
Horton says his successor at UGA will find a police department with
an excellent and well-trained staff.
“Those people are how we got to be where are,” he says.
“It wasn’t all Chuck Horton.”
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