Appointing Sheriffs?

An election is approaching and brings along an increasing advocation of forgoing voting for the sheriff and instead making him an appointee of the county commissioners. The logic involved, as much as there might be, can be seen here.

Although the elected sheriff is a position with a long history in the US, the movement to make it an employee rather than an choice of the voters is growing.

Two reasons for this operated in sunny Arizona. Maricopa County, location of Phoenix, was served by "America's toughest sheriff", the famous Joe Arpaio, who held the office for 24 years. He was noted for requiring county jail inmates to wear pink underwear and refusing to provide them with air conditioning during the sweltering Phoenix summer. Arpaio was regularly criticized by the local media for his inhumanity but despite spending a minimal amount on election campaigns he wasn't seriously threatened with defeat until 2017.

Just 108 miles down the road in Tucson, county seat of Pima County, Clarence Dupnik was appointed sheriff in 1980 to fill the seat of his resigning predecessor and was re-elected regularly until his retirement in 2015 at age 79. Dupnik was also a magnet for controversy during his tenure in the Old Pueblo. A Pima County Sheriff's SWAT Team gunned down US Marine vet and copper miner Jose Guarena in his own bedroom with 71 shots on May 5, 2011. The police agencies involved settled with Guarena's survivors for $3.4 million. Deputies employed at the county jail were disciplined for beating up customers outside a bar.

Despite these, and other issues, both Arpaio and Dupnik were returned to office by the voters, even though they endured serious criticism from the local media. This is what storied "democracy" is all about. But elections don't always turn out the way some of the population desire. There was a recent US federal election that featured a similar outcome.

One could make the case that US county sheriffs are the most powerful law enforcement officers in the country simply because they are, indeed, elected. They owe their positions to the voters, not to any other individual or committee. This bothers the un-democratic, even the un-democratic that are themselves elected to office.  One of their most frequently advanced objections to elected sheriffs is that they aren't necessarily required to have any training or certification in the aspects of law enforcement needed today. An appointee selected by the county board would have to meet standards. Even then, if he failed he could be fired immediately, like police chiefs sometimes are, rather than waiting for another election to roll around. This ignores the fact that sheriffs have many deputies and employees, just like police chiefs. They are executives. Just as the president of General Motors isn't expected to operate the robots that put a Buick LaCrosse together, nobody thinks the sheriff will stroll into a bar and check the identification of college kids or design and implement the information systems his department will use.

In a country where the very word "democracy" is holy and the secret ballot is a religious experience, making the county sheriff an appointee is a heresy. Furthermore, committees are no more able to select suitable people than the voters. Appointed officials are fired on a regular basis, like this one, this one, or this one.