Marc Hamlin knew from an early age that he was interested in public service, and in particular, the business of wearing a badge and maintaining law and order.

By Jim Lewis

“LAW ENFORCEMENT ALWAYS INTRIGUED ME,” said the Brazos County District Clerk who recently ended his term as president of the Texas Association of Counties. “I wanted to be involved with making a difference in people’s
lives, even if it’s on a small scale. Being an officer means you’re someone people look up to. It’s an admirable position to hold.”

As a high school senior in April 1977, Hamlin and two buddies drove down to Houston to tour the city’s police academy. They’d hatched a plan to share an apartment and work as patrol officers for the Houston Police Department, but when they filled out their applications, they hit a snag — they had to swear to be 18, and all three were a few months short.

By the time their birthdays arrived and the next class enrollment occurred, things had changed.

One of the trio had died in a traffic accident. Another joined the Bryan PD and Hamlin took a job installing air conditioning in new homes.

The following year, Hamlin’s dad Nolan decided to open a tire business and asked his son whether the construction business was now his life’s ambition. “I had already come to understand that the work was inconsistent and that the weather was a factor on when you could work, so I gave up my journeymen’s license and joined the family business,” Hamlin recalled.

In those days, business was booming across Texas but come the mid-‘80s, the crash occurred. “When the oil boom busted, overnight
we had $400,000 in uncollectible accounts receivable. Within 30 days, we went from going full throttle to trying to decide which of our customers were likely to be able to pay their bills. Seemed like most everyone was declaring bankruptcy in those days.”

With the business climate so sour, Hamlin returned to his original goal — he had acquired his peace officer certification for the sake of being a reserve deputy, so he was already prepared get on with the Brazos County Sheriff’s Office.

It didn’t take long for the young man to come to understand just what a patrol deputy’s life is like.

“It’s not all glory. There were a lot of cattle calls and neighbors bickering,” he recalled. “While I thought on the outside that I understood
law enforcement, I had no real understanding until I actually
was in law enforcement.”

He sensed that his attitude toward the world was shifting.

“I began to look at the world through the eyes of a person who didn’t give people the benefit of the doubt,” said Hamlin, who is known to business associates these days as a cheerful person with a positive attitude. “It seemed like I was becoming insensitive, hard.”

And then one day four or five months into the job, events made him begin to think about whether he’d found his path.

THE CALL CAME IN AT 10:18 A.M. on a spring day in 1992 — shots had been fired in a mobile home out on Highway 6 South, the road leading to Houston. Hamlin and his backup, Jim Mann, were the first officers on the scene. They took up a position about 100 yards from the structure, which was actually two single-wides that had been put together.

Soon after, then-Sheriff Ronnie Miller learned by radio that inside the home was an anguished male who had shot his estranged wife and his mother-in-law. He was on the phone with his brother, trying
to figure out what to do next. With him were the family’s two children, ages 5 and 7. The brother had called the sheriff’s office to tell them what was going on.

“The man apparently believed that because his wife had left him, the only way they’d get into heaven was if he killed her and then himself,” Hamlin said. “He felt this was his method of getting salvation
and to rid him of his shame. That’s what he was telling his brother.”

It wasn’t long before the scene was swarming with peace officers — a mobile command unit was in place and Highway 6 was shut down by College Station and Bryan police. A Department of Public Safety helicopter circled overhead. The helicopter used infrared photography
to confirm the number of live persons inside.

Already in an advance position outside the home, Hamlin and Mann crawled to the edge of the structure, then underneath it to see what they could hear.
Inside, the desperate father wasn’t sure what to do. Every few minutes,
he’d call his brother, talk a while, then hang up. Then the brother would call back — sometimes the man would answer, other times he would let the call go to the answering machine, his brother begging with him to let the kids go and give up. As the suspect walked from one room to another, the two officers underneath watched the floor above them bend with each step. When the machine answered, they could hear the brother’s pleading.

“As we were lying there, we didn’t know if he would shoot through the floor or what. All we really knew was that this was a man with nothing to lose,” Hamlin said. “He had already demonstrated that he would kill. It was becoming obvious that he had decided he would either commit suicide or commit suicide by police officer.”

As the day wore on, so did the tension.

By mid-afternoon, a plan was hatched to shoot tear gas into the structure and rush officers with gas-masks in before the man could respond. It was up to Hamlin and Mann to determine when he was at the opposite end of the home from his children, then signal that it was time to go in.

But it was never quite the right time.

“We’d be on the verge of going in and then he’d start talking to his brother again and we would stand down. That happened five or six times,” said Hamlin, noting how the prolonged anxiety was starting to get to him.

“Sometimes an adrenaline rush is a good thing but sometimes it can cause you to get tunnel vision so that you’re not fully aware of the best course of action,” he recalled. “I ended up with the most intense migraine headache I’ve ever had.”

Eventually, one of the officers pointed out that tear gas canisters burn extremely hot and that mobile homes are comprised of a large amount of particle board. “A tear gas canister is basically a torch and it would only take minutes until the entire structure would go up in flames,” he said.
Soon, a further complication was added.

More helicopters, sent by local television stations, were beginning to broadcast images of the drama below. Hamlin heard the father turn on the TV so he could check out the view from above to learn what was going on around him.

By 5 p.m., the leadership in the mobile command unit decided on a new course of action. A line of officers would gather at the door and burst in. The first would go to the left, the next to the right and the following officers would alternate from side to side as they entered. It was thought that the children were in the kitchen at the right of the door so it was the second officer, Hamlin, who would go there first.

“My instructions were that I would go in and grab a child and get out and take it to safety no matter what it took,” he said.

As he entered, he saw a blood-spattered body to the left but his attention was focused on the kitchen, where the two children were eating cereal and watching cartoons on TV. As he ran to them, the children began to tremble and cried out in confusion, “Bad man, bad man, bad man!” As he ran, Hamlin heard a shot from the other side of the room — the father shot himself.

Hamlin grabbed a child in each arm, turned around and headed back out the door and into the yard. A police vehicle pulled up with the door open. Hamlin put the children inside, slammed the door and watched it speed away.

It was over — no more tension, no more waiting. By now, it was after 6:30 p.m.

“All the respective parties either scattered or assumed their dutiesat the scene,” Hamlin recalled. “And for me, suddenly I’m just off duty. These days, there would be some way for an officer to talk to a psychologist or someone, for the sake of decompression. Back then, there were no policies or procedures to determine how it affected you.”

But that day, which he calls “a pivotal moment in my law enforcement
career,” was not over for Hamlin.

“For at least six weeks afterward, I would wake up at night and be unable to get back to sleep,” he said. “I always thought my nightmares
would probably over-exaggerate the circumstances, like I would actually get shot or the children would be harmed. But actually,
the dreams and nightmares were the actual reality. And that was bad enough.”

Hamlin’s law enforcement career continued on for a couple years more but the doubt — was this really what he wanted to do? — had been planted in his mind. He began to realize that when he took the job, he knew the rules, but he didn’t understand the life he was taking on.

As time passed, he realized that he wasn’t the Marc Hamlin he’d always been.

“I found out that law enforcement is a very specialized field that is suited to specialized people,” Hamlin said. “It’s very demanding emotionally. It began to change me as a person.”

He was particularly hardened by the way “the system” allows children
to be hurt or neglected. On occasions when he accompanied Child Protective Services workers investigating circumstances where youngsters could be removed from their homes, Hamlin had to confront
situations in which what he thought should happen was not what the law called for.

“I’d see children in circumstances that just begged for something to be done but the law didn’t allow it. I’d be livid, but according to the letter of the law, there was nothing I could do.”

His attitude toward the world began to change. “I became a person
who saw the bad side of people instead of the good,” he said. “I just started to lose respect for people generally.”

At home, he found himself becoming less compassionate with his wife Kelley and their children, Jarrod and Katye. “I was dealing with my work internally and didn’t want to deal with any sort of family issues at home.”

A lifelong Christian, Hamlin had been a church deacon and a Bible school teacher but more and more, he was making excuses about why he couldn’t be at church each Sunday.

Eventually, he broke down.

“The hardest thing I’ve had to do in my life was just let go and let God take over,” he said. “I told God I was a broken person and that I couldn’t do this anymore.”
A few days later, his life brightened. He was contacted by a community
leader who suggested he might want to apply for a job running
the local chapter of the American Heart Association. Within a few weeks, he was hired into a new life.

“As an officer, most of the time when you’re called, it’s because there’s a problem that needs to be addressed, not because something constructive is going to happen,” Hamlin said. “In service to your community, it’s a more positive way of looking at things.”

HAMLIN HAD ADDITIONAL OPPORTUNITIES to experience community service during two terms as a member of the Bryan City Council. When the incumbent Brazos County District Clerk retired at the end of 1994, Hamlin ran for the position and won, beating five others in the Republican primary.
Once again, he learned he didn’t really know what to expect in a new job.

“I hate to say it but I lied to the people of Brazos County about what I knew about the job of district clerk. Today, it’s 13 years later and I’m still learning,” he joked.

In truth, Hamlin must have figured out something right about serving as district clerk, having been elected to serve as president of the Texas County and District Clerks Association in 2002-3. In that position, he served as a member of the Texas Association of Counties
Board of Directors, which elected him to serve as its president in 2006-7.

But Hamlin doesn’t figure his involvement with law enforcement ended when he took off his badge.

“As district clerk, I still have a part in being able to ensure that the public is protected in the sense that the law requires that the paperwork
be done and properly documented,” he said. “That’s still a part of being able to put people behind bars.”

During Hamlin’s leadership in the clerks’ organization, he made a point of scheduling expanded education programs that featured federal law enforcement officials explaining the importance of rapid,
accurate responses to requests for criminal history background checks.

“The information that we clerks and our employees make available
to law enforcement may be the only thing that saves an officer’s life,” he said. “What if an officer gets information back that says whoever they’re talking to has been charged with aggravated assault on a police officer? It’s very important that an officer know who he’s dealing with out there on the street.”
Over the years, Hamlin has maintained his peace officer certification
(eight hours education annually) so that he can continue to serve as a reserve deputy. As district clerk, he has worked closely with Brazos County Sheriff Chris Kirk on projects to clean up the county’s warrant database and to eliminate wasted time in getting sentenced felons paper-ready to be shipped to state prison.

“His being a former officer means that as district clerk, he has a better understanding of what our department’s needs are,” Sheriff Kirk said. “As an officer he did a great job and was well respected.”

Hamlin and Kirk go way back, all the way to that day in 1992 when Hamlin burst out the door of the trailer home with two kids in his arms. Just 75 yards away was Kirk, who was the assigned sniper with responsibility to kill if the wrong person came charging out. Television footage of the ordeal showed Kirk briefly raising his weapon to fire as Hamlin exited the trailer, then dropping it back down.

“He had my life in his hands,” Hamlin said. “I’m just glad he made the right decision at that moment.”

For his part, Kirk took the .308 caliber bullet out of his chamber, wrote Hamlin’s name on it and gave it to him. That bullet, Hamlin said, “is in a very safe and secure place.”