I wanted to send a quick note to apologize for the long silence. I had a procedure that took me longer to recover from than I expected. But I am okay, not to worry!
Usually, at this time of year, I announce the (very official) best and worst sheriff moments for the year. I have decided that this year I will focus on some of the excellent local journalism about sheriffs. It’s been so heartening to me to see people writing and thinking about their local sheriff.
Please let me know in the comments below your nominations! I hope everyone is healthy and well. It’s a tough time of year for a lot of people. Please take care of yourself and those around you.
Feel better Jess! Thanks for all your hard work and hope you heal up soon. Mucho love and happy holidays, my friend. <3
My nomination for “2023 best moments in sherriffing stories,” both in the sense of being well-reported by Nebraska Public Media and others and for being one of the few having a non-appalling ending, is the saga of (now-former) Dundy County, Nebraska, Sheriff Clinton Smith (“C.J.”), a self-styled “constitutional sheriff” who maintained that he was being targeted and driven from office earlier this year because of his strong support of the Second Amendment (and definitely not because he lacked state certification as a law enforcement officer or any other reason). The Ur-constitutional sheriff himself, Richard Mack, even took notice of the situation, apparently agreed with Smith’s assessment, and called it “an outrage.” On Nov. 7, the citizens of Dundy County, took a different view of what was an outrage and what was not, and bade farewell to Smith by voting him out of office 712 to 63, well out of mandatory recount range. As a coda, a month or so later, Smith was arrested by the Nebraska State Patrol in connection with their investigation of allegations that firearms were missing from the Dundy County Sheriff’s Office. After executing a search warrant at Smith’s residence and allegedly finding one of the missing firearms, they arrested him on suspicion of theft by unlawful taking and possession of a stolen firearm. A little something for eveyone in there.
The “bad moments in sheriffing” category had too many candidates to count but the “Goon Squad” of Rankin County Mississippi has got to be in the top 3 at least. I won’t even attempt to summarize it.