It is time to start hiring, instead of electing, district attorneys and sheriffs

[jmowreader]

Every jurisdiction I know of has an elected district attorney and an elected sheriff. A lot of them do a good job. But the thing is, every elected official who's in a job that allows her or him to stand for reelection is very concerned about being reelected...and these people run for reelection on "I locked up x number of criminals." The Maricopa County DA will never get reelected on a "I turned loose 500 people Sheriff Joe wrongfully arrested" platform. And most sheriffs would rather run, say, a prostitution sting that'll throw 200 men in jail or set up a series of DUI roadblocks that issue "700 citations" of which two are for DUI because the drunk drivers are smart enough to figure out where the roadblocks are and not go home that way because they generate raw numbers. (In Fayettenam they quit doing the DUI checkpoints because they finally realized the checkpoints were catching people with expired inspection stickers, and the drunk drivers were being caught by patrolling officers.)

So I figure it like this: We get rid of the election system for these two positions, and hire competent people instead. At their annual reviews we judge them on one huge criteria: what has the crime rate done? Under that standard Arpaio would have been out on his ass years ago because, grandstanding apart, crime is WORSE in Maricopa County now than it was when Arpaio was first elected.

[Egnever]

1. The only problem I see with that

Is that if a sherif gets out of control it makes it a lot harder to remove them.

[jmowreader]

10. Voting them out works well?

Witness the last two "America's Toughest Sheriffs," Gerald Hege and Joe Arpaio. Both of them were/are completely out of control. The only way they got rid of Hege was to convict him of fifteen felonies, and that's what it's going to take to get rid of Arpaio.

If Arpaio and Hege were hired rather than elected, getting rid of them would require only the will to do so.

[derby378]

2. Excuse me? You want a hired cop, look no further than your city's police chief

Dallas County, TX has a sheriff (Lupe Valdez) who's female, Hispanic, and gay. And elected by popular vote.

[jmowreader]

4. I want hired sheriffs and prosecutors.

If Lupe Valdez is as good as you say, let her apply for the job. Most if not all of the initial cadre of hired sheriffs would be the incumbent sheriffs anyway; the county commissioners or whoever was in charge of hiring sheriffs would undoubtedly choose to stick with the sheriff they had, unless said sheriff was totally worthless.

Let me ask you a simple question: Do you think that if the prosecutor in Corsicana, Texas, would have thought to himself "is this man actually guilty? Why am I listening to 'arson experts' whose cases routinely get thrown out on appeal?" instead of "if I portray this man as someone who killed his kids because they were interfering with his selfish personal whims, I can get an easy murder conviction," Cameron Todd Willingham's life would have ended strapped to a gurney in Huntsville?

[MajorChode]

9. I think what the OP is suggesting is that we hire these people based on merit rather than popularity

Wise county, TX (not that far from Dallas) elected a fuckstick constable that posts his minutemen activities and anti-Obama blatantly racist bullshit on his website and got elected just because he had an (R) after his name. His own daughter has also accused him of molesting her and threatening her with a gun. Now he carries a gun and has a patrol car, and is reasonably free to do his job however he sees fit, which can and probably does include racially profiling people with very little in the way of accountability. In any police force in the country, he would be thrown own on his ass in disgrace, but because he's an elected official, he must be impeached or voted out. Some jobs just shouldn't be political, and a merit-based selection system does have the potential to work quite well.

[derby378]

14. During the last election cycle...

...Valdez was challenged by in the Democratic primary by someone (I'll call him Monty) who put forth what sounded like some good ideas for restructuring the sheriff's department and had a decent resume to back it up. As it turns out, however, we learned a week or so before the primary that Monty had padded his resume considerably. He lost the primary, and Valdez went on to defeat her Republican challenger.

I'm all for merit over popularity, but the voters need to make that determination. And that means they need to get informed.

[MajorChode]

18. Here's the problem with that

Your last sentence is the biggest hurdle, especially when you consider that once you get outside the major metropolitan areas in Texas, most people get their "information" from talk radio, the freepersphere, and those moronic chain emails that those dipshits pass back and forth. Occasionally I have to drive through those areas, and I really don't want to end up like Cameron Todd Willingham. Now maybe if they had a little maze you have to go through in order to get their ballot, or perhaps a little puzzle with pegs and holes, or just something to weed out those who are 2 standard deviations or more on the left side of the bell curve, you might have something. But so long as local churches can teach anencephalic fucksticks to color in the arrow on the "vote straight line Republican" line, I'm not really comfortable with the system the way it is. I've met some of the sheriffs and constables in rural areas of Texas, and they are so fucking stupid it's downright scary. If you are any sort of a minority or they find out you are politically to the left of the John Birch Society, you'd better make damn sure they never accuse you of any sort of crime.

[madinmaryland]

3. So who selects and hires the DA and sheriffs? An elected official?

[derby378]

5. Maybe we could let a computer do it

I understand Diebold and ES&S have already put in bids...

[jmowreader]

6. What I would recommend...

First, we can well assume the first batch of hired sheriffs are going to be the incumbent ones we've got now. That leaves us stuck with fucknuts like Arpaio, unfortunately, but most sheriffs are at least halfway decent.

Eventually we'll have to start replacing sheriffs--they die, they retire, they get sick of dealing with scumbags and go off to do other things--and at that point we create boards of review, like the American Bar Association does for lawyers who want to be judges. Their members will be sheriffs and chiefs of police. When...oh, Your County, Maryland, needs a new sheriff, the board will produce three "well qualified" candidates. The Your County board of commissioners will select the one they like from that batch. District attorneys will work the same way.

[madinmaryland]

13. That sounds plausible.

Though the candidates will obviously lean towards the party of the board of commissioner/councilmen. The problem I have with elections, are the candidates are beholden to the special interests that contributed to their campaign. How does a judge or sheriff avoid conflicts of interest.

Whether they are elected or selected, there will always be a political tilt to the appointment. Do know if there is a real way to eliminate that. Even police chiefs and fire chiefs are selected in a similar fashion.

:shrug:

Interesting ideas, though!

[T Wolf]

7. In my county (Montgomery, PA) there are NO Democratic judges - only pukes. Couple

that with an all-rethug DA's office and somewhere north of 90% puke cops, etc. and you have a large county with no justice.

And even though the county has been trending Democratic with a few local Dems holding office, the county-wide government is totally in the pocket of the reich-wingers. So, all the county contracts go to the GOP-donors, all the perks go to rethug office-holders, etc.

Not sure what system would be better, except practically any one that we could think of - appointments by a selection panel, random selections from the phone book, anything.

[tularetom]

8. I couldn't agree more

Particularly when it comes to sheriffs. Here in very rural CA a county sheriff has a little fiefdom that he can run for his own fun and profit. The only checks and balances are of course facing the voters every four years, plus the annual budgetary constraints imposed by the elected county board. And a smart sheriff knows how to either grease up the board or dig up some dirt on them so they will STFU about calling him out for his excesses.

He can hand out little goodies like handgun licenses, in return for campaign contributions. He can purge the ranks of his department to weed out dissenters and potential election opponents. He is pretty much a law unto himself.

This may not be the case in bigger cities but in a small county where the good ol boy network is entrenched, its very difficult to get rid of a corrupt or incompetent sheriff. And I know WTF I'm talking about. I'm sort of related by marriage to a poster boy for redneck sheriff syndrome. (He's no longer with us but wow - I could tell you stories).

[fizzgig]

11. i had to check your profile to see if you lived in my county

you described our sheriff perfectly. on top of that, our sheriff is an absolute attention whore. he's the one who handled ballon boy, he's gone on o'reilly, he wrote an editorial (posted on the county's web site) about how there is a war on christmas. he sets up a christmas tree on the lawn of the sheriff's office every year.

[Blue_In_AK]

12. Alaska's attorney general is appointed by the governor

and we don't have sheriffs. Gubernatorial appointments have always seemed to work in the past. SP threw a little money-wrench into it with a couple of her choices, but she was an anomaly in so many ways.

[FarCenter]

15. NJ, for example, has County Prosecutors appointed by the Gov, confirmed by Senat Judiciary Committee

E.g. http://morrisprosecutor.org/bianchi.asp

[Cleita]

16. I personally think the only elected officials should be our legislators or

lawmakers and those who govern like the President. Any government job that requires a certain education, skill and experience like being a sheriff should be hires, so that they can be fired if they can't do the job or rewarded if they do a good job. Actually, I would rather have lawmakers like Senators and other governing officials to be selected from the populace as a duty for their country for a few years. They could be selected by lottery like we select those who do jury duty. They could be vetted by non-partisan officials to weed out any nutjobs or those without enough basic intelligence to understand issues.

[musiclawyer]

17. spot on

Judges should not have to run for office; neither should the sheriff, assessor and tax collectors and a whole slew of other non-legislative officers. Local legislators (boards of supervisors and city councils) do a decent job (for the most part) of appointing managers and administrators based on merit and resumes. The same thing should be done with the sheriff. This would also save a lot of money on elections. Term limits could apply for new blood. Local judges should be appointed by the state legilsature based on merit and peer reviews. Mechanisms can be put in place to remove rogue judges. It's not rocket science. The whole pool of applicants ( for all of the above described positions) would be better.