Ep. 54 Judicial Safety: From the Secret Service to Tennessee Courts, a conversation with Jim Holcomb

The Administrative Office of the Courts (AOC) has welcomed Jim Holcomb as its new Judicial Safety Program Manager. 

In this role, Holcomb has begun leading a coordinated, proactive strategy to protect the people who serve Tennessee’s justice system. He is the primary safety liaison across state and local law enforcement, courts, and state agencies. 

In this episode, Holcomb tells us about his years serving as a Senior Special Agent for the U.S. Secret Service and what he hopes to accomplish in this new position. 

Transcript

00;00;00;14 - 00;00;27;20
Host
Hello and welcome to Tennessee Court Talk. Today we're tackling a topic that often flies under the radar. Judicial security judges are the guardians of justice, tasked with making impartial decisions that shape lives, our communities, and the future of our society. But what happens when those tasked with upholding the law become targets themselves, from rising threats against judges to breaches of personal privacy?

00;00;27;22 - 00;00;52;13
Host
The need for robust judicial protection has never been more urgent. I'm Samantha Fisher, Communications Director and your host. In today's episode, we'll explore why safeguarding our judiciary isn't just about protecting individuals, it is also about preserving the integrity of the legal system. Joining me today is Jim Holcomb Judicial Safety Program Manager for the Administrative Office of the Courts.

00;00;52;14 - 00;00;55;00
Host
Welcome to the AOC, Jim, and welcome to Court Talk.

00;00;55;00 - 00;00;55;28
Jim Holcomb
Thanks so much.

00;00;56;01 - 00;01;14;03
Host
So you have an absolutely fascinating and impressive resume, including serving in the U.S. Secret Service as a Special Agent. And we are going to get to that. Sure. I am excited to talk about that. But first, I wanted to ask about your role here. You are going to be building a first of its kind safety program for our judiciary, right?

00;01;14;08 - 00;01;31;16
Jim Holcomb
And in my short time here at the AOC and interacting with judges and other personnel in the courts, I think it's desperately needed. And I'm so glad that the AOC identified this opportunity, created this this job. And, and really grateful they hired me to do it.

00;01;31;18 - 00;01;54;04
Host
We've seen in recent years more politicization of the judicial system. And so I think also in combination with technology and information that can be found online, this is a real need to have somebody who can oversee it, who can facilitate it, and who has the experience that you do to, you know, investigate threats and to know what the right course of action is.

00;01;54;05 - 00;02;16;12
Jim Holcomb
Yeah. Thanks. The, important note of distinction. It's not a law enforcement officer position. Mine isn’t. And so there's there's no, I will not be knocking on anybody's door to investigate anybody. But my hope is educating our law enforcement partners with how to conduct a, threat investigation. It's it's a little atypical from your standard investigation.

00;02;16;13 - 00;02;45;18
Jim Holcomb
Say something. You know, somebody assaults somebody else will oftentimes. Hey, that's pretty cut and dry. It's the, who did it and arrest them, prosecute them, and they go to jail. Threats, on the other hand, there's a lot of, management, to that. So it's, it's identification of who makes a threat, the assessment of who makes the threat, and then, and then really the management on the back end of that, because oftentimes you're dealing with people who are mentally ill who who may or may not get prosecuted.

00;02;45;18 - 00;02;52;00
Jim Holcomb
But, yeah, the management end is really where I hope to, raise awareness and contribute.

00;02;52;03 - 00;02;55;18
Host
Talk a little bit about the need for this role and what you bring to it.

00;02;55;20 - 00;03;21;22
Jim Holcomb
Sure. If our if the people appointed or elected to be judges don't feel secure in the execution of their job and the holding of that position, we are going to, cease to get qualified people to hold those jobs. They will likely not be people deterred from running for Governor or President of the United States, or, you know, as these, elected officials have around the clock security.

00;03;21;25 - 00;03;45;09
Jim Holcomb
Right. But the judges really who are put in the position to make judgments on whether or not you see your children anymore or whether or not you have to forfeit, your home because you purchased it with stolen funds, or you're going to prison for any amount of time. You know, they are not afforded those same protections.

00;03;45;09 - 00;03;50;26
Jim Holcomb
And yet we ask them to do a very difficult, and necessary job.

00;03;50;29 - 00;04;13;05
Host
Absolutely. Jim, you you touched on the protection for other elected officials, perhaps more higher profile, you might say Governors, Presidents. You know, you bring more than two decades of service with the United States Secret Service, where you served as a Senior Special Agent in Protective Operations Investigations. Training your career has included roles in the Presidential Protective Division.

00;04;13;08 - 00;04;15;19
Host
Tell us a little bit about that. That's really interesting.

00;04;15;19 - 00;04;37;27
Jim Holcomb
Yeah. Yeah, thanks. My wife calls me extra special agent, so, which is fun. The the Secret Service is known for protecting the President and everybody. Just assume that that's all we do all day, every day. And while there is certainly a lot of that, and some of it is the really fun parts people imagine of flying in Air Force One or working at the white House.

00;04;37;29 - 00;04;59;25
Jim Holcomb
I have stood in more stairwells, at hotels, than I did I ever took flights on Air Force One. The other part of protecting the people who are elected or appointed that we provide protection for is the running out of threats. And every single threat made against people we protect is investigated. And that is labor intensive.

00;05;00;03 - 00;05;19;29
Jim Holcomb
There are only 3000 agents in the US Secret Service. You know, might be a little low, or it might be a little high, depending on, the era, but, that's a lot of people. And then the other really fun part that the Secret Service does, and it's their original mission dating back to 1865, is the suppression of counterfeit money.

00;05;20;01 - 00;05;26;17
Jim Holcomb
And, and toward the end of the Civil War. You have about a third of all money in circulation is counterfeit.

00;05;26;19 - 00;05;29;20
Host
Okay. Yeah, I didn't really I didn't know that. That's interesting.

00;05;29;21 - 00;05;47;12
Jim Holcomb
Yeah. People sort of gloss over that. And it's still tens of millions of dollars a year in counterfeit that circulated worldwide. But, you know, the the real fraud now takes place in electronic crimes, right? Yeah. You know, hacked accounts, stolen credit cards, things like that. Okay.

00;05;47;13 - 00;05;50;06
Host
Yeah. You were also a U.S. Army combat veteran.

00;05;50;07 - 00;05;51;15
Jim Holcomb
Yeah. How about them apples?

00;05;51;17 - 00;05;55;11
Host
And a graduate. A graduate of the US Naval War College.

00;05;55;14 - 00;05;56;20
Jim Holcomb
Yes.

00;05;56;23 - 00;05;58;24
Host
Very good.

00;05;58;26 - 00;06;28;27
Jim Holcomb
Really uncomfortable. Talking about myself now, my favorite topic. Yeah, I was, I joined the Army, while I was still in high school and was in a reserve unit and my second year of college. Our unit got mobilized, and went to, Operation Desert Storm, which is, quite the experience when you're landing on your 20th birthday into a combat readiness, spend the next seven months of of your life there and, yeah, intense is a good way, I think, to describe any war.

00;06;28;29 - 00;06;43;19
Jim Holcomb
I mean, not that they need to be compared to be appreciated, but yeah, you look at the 20 years of the global war on terror and I can say with great confidence that we we got off easy. You know, in, in what we had to do in the Secret Service, you know, it's a federal government agency.

00;06;43;26 - 00;07;06;12
Jim Holcomb
The various war colleges, offer seats for civilians, which is really neat to, to build partnerships and to foster understanding across government agencies. And so the Secret Service would send people to various war colleges. And then there were some that were open enrollment. And I took one of those and. Yeah, it was at a military installation just up the road from our training academy.

00;07;06;12 - 00;07;20;07
Jim Holcomb
And so, you know, went there with a handful of other folks and was able to somehow finagle a master's degree from the US Naval War College, which is proven insanely helpful in everything I've done, both in and out of the Secret Service.

00;07;20;09 - 00;07;29;15
Host
Interesting. So, from the Secret Service and then, you know, also your military career, what has drawn you to the judiciary in Tennessee?

00;07;29;19 - 00;07;53;25
Jim Holcomb
Yeah. The mission, you know, when I retired from the Secret Service, I thought, hey, I'm going to try something else. Like, you know, will will try your hand at business operations, and, and leadership education, all of which was fine and fun, and it was really happy there. But about 18 months to two years in, I had the sort of the revelation that, well, I really kind of missed working with law enforcement.

00;07;53;27 - 00;08;14;14
Jim Holcomb
I miss the protection element. I miss being around people who are sort of default aggressive and on mission. My experiences when people are serving a cause greater than themselves, there is no end to the energy they bring to the task. Absolutely. And, And I miss that. Not to say that the people I worked with weren't hard working, though.

00;08;14;14 - 00;08;40;12
Jim Holcomb
Some of them certainly weren't. The, I absolutely missed, being part of a collective effort to do some good. You know, and, I could run from it, but at the end of the day, I'm a bit of a shepherd, and I'm a protector of people. Through a friend, I learned about this position being created at the AOC, and, I had no idea what the AOC was.

00;08;40;14 - 00;08;46;01
Jim Holcomb
But, but I've certainly come to appreciate all the services it provides for the judiciary in Tennessee.

00;08;46;02 - 00;08;48;10
Host
For security, you know, sometimes that's good when people don't know who you are.

00;08;48;13 - 00;08;49;28
Jim Holcomb
I totally agree.

00;08;50;01 - 00;08;57;12
Host
So, Jim, you've lived all over the world. But you have deep roots in Tennessee. Talk about your connection to the state.

00;08;57;13 - 00;09;25;26
Jim Holcomb
Yeah. I'd like to say, you know, I knew, and that's why I moved here. But only after moving here did I come to learn that my maternal grandmother's family, is from White County. Sparta in particular. So, yes, I am a Spartan. The, and going back to this, to the settling of Tennessee, you know, in its annexation from North Carolina and the first, member of the Cope family who came here, although they weren't Cope at that point, I forget who it was.

00;09;25;28 - 00;09;51;04
Jim Holcomb
But it was an itinerant Baptist minister. And really, what that means is you're traveling and unpaid. So either he really loved the Lord or he wasn't very good, or not good enough to get paid. And so settled in White County and, Yeah. And they were here through, the early 1900s. And then there was, then some of them went up to Iowa and then, west out to California.

00;09;51;10 - 00;09;53;02
Jim Holcomb
Apparently all the cool kids were moving at that time.

00;09;53;02 - 00;09;54;07
Host
Welcome. South, brother.

00;09;54;08 - 00;09;54;23
Jim Holcomb
Right.

00;09;54;26 - 00;10;03;02
Host
Yes. Welcome home. That's right. Welcome home. Is there anything you'd like folks to know about, this position? What you have in mind, what you see ahead.

00;10;03;03 - 00;10;29;04
Jim Holcomb
Yeah, we we have really four areas of responsibility is. I'm figuring it out. This is week, the start of week five for me here in this position. And, shout out to our Deputy Director, who's been managing this for the last couple of years. And I don't want to put her on blast on a podcast. I don't know if that's sensitive info, but the more I learned about this post and I'm like, okay, well, I'm happy to handle this, you know, as is my sole responsibility.

00;10;29;06 - 00;10;55;21
Jim Holcomb
She'd been managing her job and tasks, but this one as well. And, you know, just continually impressed. So there's, a handful of things that this job is tasked with and that's, collaborating with local law enforcement, clarifying roles in court security and protection, exploring the investigative process and the follow up and assessing, the adequacy of that.

00;10;55;21 - 00;11;17;06
Jim Holcomb
And, one thing we know is when people have reported concerns or threats made against members of the judiciary, it's tough to get that follow up. And so we're, we're working to, to build that sidewalk that goes back to the reporter and, and do some follow up, you know, and that's, that's really important. There's a tech component.

00;11;17;09 - 00;11;38;15
Jim Holcomb
I'm not a tech guy, but my understanding is we have people for that. But there are some tech platforms that, we can leverage to, keep our members safer. And also, I think there's a great opportunity for some asynchronous, some online learning, that can take place. You know, I know we have, a handful of conferences a year, and and those are wonderful opportunities.

00;11;38;19 - 00;12;00;07
Jim Holcomb
But I'd like to see us leverage the technology side to push out some safety, education and information. There are some deliverables. There's an annual report that's due to, our state legislature every year. That will be my responsibility. And there's, you know, tracking and reporting of courthouse security incidents across the state, you know, as this rule services, all 95 counties, right, in Tennessee.

00;12;00;14 - 00;12;12;02
Jim Holcomb
And then, you know, finally, relationships and representation of the AOC. In those spaces where Presiding Judges and security committees meet at their courthouses. Conferences and things of that nature.

00;12;12;07 - 00;12;24;15
Host
Well, Jim Holcomb, thank you for coming to Tennessee, for coming back to Tennessee and serving in this role. I know you've already been well received, and we appreciate the experience that you're bringing to this and your heart for the role as well. Yeah.

00;12;24;15 - 00;12;24;26
Jim Holcomb
Thanks.