BMG recently got a how-do-you-do from a candidate for Sheriff in Essex County. A devil of a candidate named Damien is taking on the incumbent.
One comment writer (me) asked the candidate to explain why the office of Sheriff is still needed.
Its mission is to detain the accused who cannot make bail (for the right price freedom is yours my friend) and house those convicted of misdemeanors.
The Mass County Sheriff goes back to colonial times. They are not needed today. Why can’t these patronage heavy offices be eliminated and brought in under the Department of Correction?
Please share widely!
Article XIX of the Amendments to the MA Constitution states:
<
p>”Article XIX. The legislature shall prescribe, by general law, for the election of sheriffs, registers of probate, and clerks of the courts, by the people of the several counties, and that district-attorneys shall be chosen by the people of the several districts, for such term of office as the legislature shall prescribe.”
<
p>So this is a constitutional position and an amendment would be required to eliminate. Since Essex is one of the older counties I suspect it has a High Sheriff like Middlesex does and was originally responsible for transmitting election returns. One of the many esteemed traditions of our fair Commonwealth and I’m not inclined to get rid of it. I know in Middlesex James DiPaola has and uses additional resources to assist with local law enforcement.
An archaic and redundant office.
<
p>The sheriff is a hotelier–nothing more–nothing less.
<
p>The sheriffs office is a vast waste of taxpayer money. Have the state police and the local police do what they are mandated to do. Getting the state police to do anything is getting more difficult every day.
There is no reason for sheriffs to have police cars, dogs, guns, tanks, communication centers, helicopters, forensic labs, boats or anything else that overlaps with the local police departments. These people watch entirely too much television!
But given that we’d have to amend the constitution, I can already see the PR campaign waged by the sheriff’s offices. Jobs and public safety. Crime in the streets, workers on the bread line. You think the dog racetracks are making a stink? It would pale in comparison.
<
p>Doesn’t mean it shouldn’t be done, but I can’t imagine many people have the stomachs or pocketbooks for that fight…
Plymouth County is ridicuous. The sheriff down there actually has his own private police department!
Let’s use our imagination here. What should a sheriff’s department in Massachusetts in 2009 do?
<
p>For example, in Plymouth and Norfolk counties, the sheriffs also serve as process servers. Plymouth County has a state-of-the-art CSI-esque lab and K9 units.
<
p>Should the county sherrifs take a greater role in crime scene investigations? Should they run drug investigation units? Should they be in charge of road details, not police officers?
We don’t elect police chiefs. We don’t elect the head of the state lab or the coroner’s office. If we’re rethinking the value of a distinct sheriff’s office, let’s also look at whether it makes sense to have it be an elected office or not.
<
p>My position right now is that there’s no value in it, other than giving some politicians something to run for. And while I know of one decent person who’s a sheriff (Andrea Cabral) my sense from what I know of others is that it’s a big hack farm.
I’d love to know how Andrea Cabral was able to create the lone hack-free district in all of the Commonwealth.
When they spend the same money for the state police crime lab?
What in the name of hell is going on? You see Plymouth County cop cars hiding in the woods, behind supermarkets, behind strip malls, all over the damn place. One of them spends half his day at home. How many millions of dollars a year does that cost? How can you justify it? You can’t. It is a complete waste of money on make believe cops. And you should see these people. Is it part of the job description that you must be 50-100 lbs overweight?
but if worked properly could save cash strapped cities and towns money by allowing them to disband their police forces and go with a true Sheriff. The mechanism for regionalization already exists in Massachusetts law. The Sheriff is by law the highest law enforcement authority in the historical counties. I say not just keep em but allow towns to disband police and allow the sheriff to take over.
Also, as for the promotion comment to this diary – nice try. The spirit if not the letter requires these positions actually mean something. Besides, it seems to me the fewer elected officials, the more opportunity for hackery, though I sympathize with those who wonder why we elect county bureaucrats.
We are wasting tens of millions of dollars on nonsense and sustaining another layer of hackery, pork, corruption, and fiscal irresponsibility.
Found in an emanation of a penumbra, no doubt.
For a constitution to mean anything it has to be put into effect, which often requires funding. Just another aspect of your “anti-tradition” crusade, no doubt:)
The problem all arises from the problem that the state police have turned into a dysfunctional entity due to the fact that the state police union runs the department. The state police doubled in size in 1990 and they do less work. Half the department now is “special units” and detectives. The guys in the blue cruisers comprise something like 30% of the state police and they can’t investigate anything thanks to William Delahunt when he was the high and mighty DA in Norfolk County. Seems the boys in blue were investigating folks who were pals of some of the district attorneys—-can’t have that now.
Other than having to find another official to call to order the Harvard University commencement (required of the High Sheriff of Middlesex County by statute from what I understand), there is no reason to maintain the sheriff system. The state DOC can certainly run the jails. While not so much recently, several sheriffs have managed to become guests of the Commonwealth themselves in several instances, in at least one case over abuses related to service of process and kickbacks. Do we really want these people getting homeland security funds for souped-up RVs and other toys when other security needs go under/unfunded?
<
p>The idea of regionalizing and further professionalizing local law enforcement (and fire safety) has a great deal of merit,though awarding it to sheriffs who often have no police training and dubious law enforcement backgrounds (with apologies to Sheriff DiPaola – a former police officer and Sheriff Cabral – a former ADA) would likely institutionalize and perpetuate the worst aspects of local PDs.
<
p>On to the Governor’s Council anyone???
Am I the only one proud of our somewhat unique heritage as a body politic?
<
p>Keep the (high) sheriffs.
Keep the Governor’s Council.
Keep the holidays.
<
p>God Save the honourable, the Commonwealth of Massachusetts!
The rest of us would rather have zoos and health care for legal immigrants.
…and most of the traditional fluff costs the equivalent of a drop in the bucket. So yes, I’m all for the best public services, something that incidently is also a great part of our state’s tradition, though I didn’t realize until these discussions started that a zoo was a publicly-owned facility, and admittedly probably further down my own list of priorities.
As on a lot of issues, things are often different here Out West. I suppose we could send convicts with short sentences to prisons farther east if that’s a money saver. In Hampshire,Hampden, and Franklin County, we don’t have any prisons.
<
p>When it comes to lock ups, many our police departments are small enough not to have them. In my own town, we locked prisoners to a bench or something, eventually taking them to a neighboring town which had a better lock up. We still had to pay staff overtime to watch them. We don’t have prisoners everyday, but a weekend prisoners can cost a lot.
<
p>Now Hampshire County runs a county lockup, where our community and many others can send their prisoners.
There need be better monitoring of functions and responsible reporting of situations. As I remember, one sheriff in Suffolk County resigned(?) a few years back which indicates to me there is some control of county government. We need more. Yes, courts, too.
<
p>Oh, that the county governments’ law enforcement powers were better put to use! I look at what passes for police in all the cities and especially small towns and I don’t see better. Just more people that couldn’t get jobs elsewhere holding down police jobs and layers upon layers of bureaucracy glueing the mess together.
<
p>If the county governments could be cleaned up, I’d like to see them start to take over the policing of small towns within their jurisdiction. I can’t see them as any worse and maybe regional policing would be more effective and cost less.