MANSFIELD — A discussion on honor and integrity triggered the most heated exchange between Richland County’s two candidates for sheriff during a debate Thursday evening.
Democratic challenger Matt Mayer has repeatedly said through previous interviews and campaigning that he wants to restore “honor and integrity” to the sheriff’s office. Republican incumbent, Sheriff Steve Sheldon, called those “buzzwords” and stated they were meaningless claims.
“(Mayer) has a picture of himself on his advertisement as a sergeant on the patrol bureau, but he retired three years ago,” Sheldon said. “When I talk about morale, accountability, honor and integrity, what better way to show that than our office going to body cameras and going through accreditation?
“We want to show the public that we are and do what we say.”
The exchange came towards the end of a 45-minute debate between Sheldon and Mayer at Mansfield Senior High School, hosted by the News Journal. Mayer did not take the dismissal of his campaign’s slogan lightly.
“You want to talk about buzzwords, I’ll give you some. Take for example Eric Bosko,” Mayer answered heatedly.
Mayer went on to detail about a lawsuit that was eventually settled between Sheldon, Capt. Eric Bosko and FOP labor negotiator Mark Drum, who was arrested by Bosko in June 2009 during an investigation of, and by, the sheriff’s office. Drum faced counts of obstructing justice, theft, receiving stolen property and tampering with evidence, but a grand jury ruled there was not enough evidence to indict him.
“The sheriff allegedly received a phone call … he knew Mark Drum sat there in jail illegally under arrest,” Mayer said. “A $290,000 settlement ain’t a buzzword, that’s a lot of money.”
Sheldon responded by noting Bosko was Officer of the Year several times.
“When the arrest of Mark Drum happened, I wasn’t even there that day,” Sheldon claimed, to grumbles from the crowd.
Thursday’s debate was led mostly through questions posed by the audience and began with the issue many felt should be a high priority for the next sheriff: the drug epidemic.
However, alluding to the complicated nature of the county’s drug problem, the question was asked whether drug users should be treated as criminals or as patients with an addiction problem.
For Sheldon, he viewed the problem as separate battles between addicts and dealers.
“If someone is selling or really pushing drugs, we need to send a clear message to the community that we won’t tolerate that activity,” he said. “But you need to help the people that have a drug problem. It is both a medical problem and a criminal problem, and I think the best thing we can do is attack it from both sides.”
Mayer expressed sympathy for addicts and praised those who have pulled themselves out of addiction, including his own nephew. However, he laid out a no-tolerance stance on addicts who resort to violence to feed their habit.
“I feel for the people hooked on opiates but I’m not going to tolerate them breaking into your house and sticking a gun in your face,” Mayer said. “I’m not cold-hearted, and there are some good programs out there in the courts, but if a heroin addict breaks into your house and steals your belongings or threatens you, he’s going to my jail and I’m going to see that he goes to prison.”
“Obviously if somebody is breaking into your house they need to go to jail and need to go to prison,” Sheldon added.
Another facet of battling drugs locally, Richland County’s METRICH Enforcement Unit was a hot topic among the candidates. Mayer accused Sheldon of only assigning one deputy to METRICH over the last eight years, and assigning a second deputy to the drug task force in the interim simply for appearances during the election.
“They assigned a gentleman to METRICH last year that was basically a rookie when they had a 15-year veteran detective that could’ve taken the spot,” Mayer said. “A short time later he returned back to patrol and she ended up going out there.
“I don’t know what he was thinking, but drugs are the number one cause of problems in the county, so why don’t you get your best out there?”
In addition to rebutting Mayer’s statement, Sheldon affirmed that there were two sheriff detectives currently stationed at METRICH and touted his Project Starfish organization as one example of combating the drug epidemic.
“What my opponent said is inaccurate; the one detective that was out there requested to come back to patrol and that was done through the collective bargaining agreement,” Sheldon said.
The candidates clashed again on the county’s budget restraints in regards to putting more deputies on the road. Sheldon noted the office is currently 15 deputies short, calling it a “very devastating” problem.
“It’s an economic thing, and unfortunately I don’t have a magic wand to get the board of commissioners to give me more money,” Sheldon said. “We are at the commissioner meetings all the time, trying to get more money to better staff ourselves. I’ve been to those meetings for 12 years and I’ve never seen my opponent there.”
Mayer, in response, blamed Sheldon for the office’s budget problems due to a mismanagement of staff. Mayer proposed assigning five of the 10 sworn officers currently on administrative duty back to patrolling the county roads.
In addition, Mayer claimed that over the last four years, Sheldon has cost the taxpayers approximately $900,000 in overtime pay because of these administrative officers. The estimate comes from pulling a current record of overtime pay, where close to $300,000 has been paid in overtime in 2016 alone, according to Mayer.
“This is an outrage,” Mayer said. “I’m not saying I can reduce this entirely, but I think with five other people getting out of the office it will cut it down dramatically and save money to get body cameras and cruisers and jail scanners.”
The debate attempted to end on a positive note by asking the two candidates to name one positive trait about their opponent.
“I consider Matt a friend,” Sheldon said. “If a tree fell on my house, he’d be the first one there to help me. We have differences of opinion, but I do like and respect him.”
“Anyone who has been in law enforcement this long, I respect that,” Mayer responded. “It’s not so much that I disagree with Steve himself, he just doesn’t stop his administrators from doing the things they do.”
