NOREEN: Sheriff? It's about managing people and money
Which would make a better sheriff — a bureaucrat or a Sunday school teacher?
It’s one way to look at the race for the Republican nomination in the El Paso County sheriff’s primary. The race features two law enforcement officers with long experience, incumbent Sheriff Terry Maketa and Monument Police Chief Jake Shirk.
The two squared off Thursday morning at an event sponsored by the Colorado Springs Masterminds, a business group.
Maketa, running for his third term as sheriff, continually stressed his experience in dealing with state and federal laws and tight budgets. Shirk, who spent most of his career with the Aurora Police Department in several roles, also informed the small audience that “I’ve been a Sunday school teacher.”
Without providing specifics, Shirk has cast aspersions about Maketa, promising in electioneering leaflets that if elected, he’ll establish “a new code of conduct; no tolerance for unprofessional or tawdry behavior.”
On Tuesday, sounding a bit like a Sunday school teacher, Shirk said: “Integrity, morals, ethics, they start at the very top.”
Maketa critics charge that the sheriff was too lenient on officers who violated department policies. Alluding to those cases, Maketa said “every organization is going to have some problems. You have to look at mistakes to see if they are of the heart or the mind.”
Sounding like a bureaucrat, Maketa, plowed through his record as an administrator, noting how he saved money by pre-purchasing fuel at a fixed cost and got certification for his department to handle cases involving suspects who are here illegally.
Shirk repeated his promises of “more guns on the street” and that “you’re not going to see me out in front, asking for a tax increase.” That’s a reference to Maketa’s support for a failed city-county tax increase.
Maketa didn’t back away from his support of the tax hike but said that after it failed, “we have reduced response times while reducing budgets.”
One publication in town, without providing any evidence, has repeatedly tarred Maketa as some sort of Casanova, and the same stories in essence have shamefully labeled a couple of his employees as whores.
Shirk clearly is trying to capitalize on that, but he didn’t come out and make the accusation himself Tuesday. It’s a way to be political without appearing so.
This, we must be wearily resigned to acknowledge, is what passes for taking the high road on a slow news day in a pedestrian primary.
Alas, this is not Rio Bravo and the sheriff is not reduced to facing down the bad guys, aided by a drunken deputy. In a metropolitan county the boring truth is that the sheriff’s biggest challenges are the bureaucratic ones.
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