A candidate for Fulton County Sheriff didn’t always want to be involved in law enforcement. Charles Rambo grew up in Gary, Indiana, and if you know Gary, you know that during the 60’s, 70’s, and 80’s, the city was dangerous. Police included.
“I was not intending to join law enforcement,” said Rambo, who visited The Atlanta Voice offices earlier this week. Rambo enlisted in the United States Air Force following high school graduation in 1986. After eight years in the service, he began following his dream of becoming a mortician. “I wanted to attend mortuary school. I had no plans and no desire to move to Atlanta.”
Rambo may have begun his career pursuit at the Powell Coleman Funeral Home in Gary, where he worked from the age of 12 until he left town for the military, but Atlanta was where he would live for the entirety of his adult life and professional career. Rambo worked at the Murray Brothers Funeral Home, one of the city’s oldest and most connected Black-owned businesses in Atlanta. There he would rub elbows with city elites, including many who would steer him toward a career in law enforcement.
“That was my introduction to Atlanta; that was my introduction to families, politicians, and so on,” said Rambo. “I wanted to feel like I was putting my eyes on a future career.”
Three weeks into working at Murray Brothers, Atlanta Police Department (APD) Sgt. Willie Cameron, one of the founders of the Afro Patrolmen League, was shot and killed in the West End. His family chose Murray Brothers to handle the preparation of the body and burial. Rambo recalls that decision changing his life. On Feb. 6. 1987, Cameron was just 39 years old when he was shot in the face during an altercation in a West End Mall department store where he worked a second job as security.
“That was my first direct contact with law enforcement. People started encouraging me to think about going into law enforcement,” he said. “It was almost like a supernatural moment.”
“I went from stuffing to cuffing,” he joked. Rambo admitted that his time working in funeral homes prepared him for what was to come. “It taught me how to deal with people at their worst,” he said. “It taught me how to lift their spirits, and at the end of the day, the funeral is not about the dead; it’s about the living.”
This is not the first campaign for Rambo, a 34-year veteran of the Fulton County Sheriff’s Department (FCSO), who retired in 2016 and up until recently taught at the law enforcement academy. He has run for the lofty position of sheriff four times, including most recently a loss to the current Fulton County Sheriff Patrick Labat in the June 2020 primary. Undeterred, Rambo believes the fifth time’s the charm.
Asked what he wants to do differently if he is elected, Rambo immediately mentioned the Fulton County Jail. “There’s a deprivation of the human spirit in that place,” he said. “That was not present in the years that we were there. We had our problems, don’t get me wrong, but we did not have the amount of deaths that have taken place during this administration.”
The majority of the deaths that have taken place within the Fulton County Jail over the past four years have been by way of homicide. Rambo believes that is an issue that can be fixed by leadership.
He said he would also ramp up the security at the Fulton County Courthouse and tighten the budget.
“You need somebody that has absolute public policy and sheriff expertise to get back in this saddle to ride this crisis that we are in,” Rambo said. “Whenever leadership is present, there is always change,” said Rambo.
Asked why he was running for a fifth time, Rambo said this was his life’s calling. Being involved in law enforcement was what he was called to do. “I’m putting myself back out there because so many people called me and asked me to,” he explained. “It’s worth a shot.”
On May 12, he’s going to get another shot at becoming sheriff. He knows the odds are against him. The Fulton County Sheriff’s Office race tends to become a low-information race,” Rambo said. “People are not as in-depth on the real issues, the real qualifications of the candidates.”
Rambo believes he is the right man for the job at the right time. The fifth time. “This is not a crisis; this is a plague,” said Rambo. “People are watching this office pretty closely and are looking for answers.”