By Gary Bennett
This article appeared in the Frederick News Post, November 24, 2021
Ongoing political sniping in this newspaper between current sheriff Chuck Jenkins and previous and probable future candidate Karl Bickel should remind us all that it doesn’t have to be this way in Frederick County.
It is clear to me, and I hope to you, too, that Frederick County has outgrown the increasingly outdated policing model of county sheriff.
In Maryland, the office of sheriff is an elected one required by the state constitution. There are 23 counties and Baltimore City, and 24 politician/sheriffs serve each one.
And therein lies the problem. Do we really want elective politics playing a day-to-day role in professional law enforcement? That is what we have here in Frederick County and I submit it does not serve us well.
Sheriff Jenkins has made it clear he is not shy about pushing back forcefully at his critics at any time. It is chilling to listen to him rail against fellow politicians Karl Bickel and Kai Hagan, who are in fact Frederick County citizens he swore an oath to protect.
Karl Bickel seems to think that an honest discussion of the merits of a county police force is a red herring at this time. He sounds more like a politician who thinks he has a pretty good shot at becoming sheriff in 2022 but would have very little shot at winning a nationwide search for county police chief. He is probably very right about that.
As a constitutional officer, there are relatively few checks on the power of a sheriff. The popularly elected county executive and county council have no authority whatsoever over the sheriff. They do have some say in setting the sheriff’s overall budget but it is severely limited and can not be itemized to, for example, defund our county’s participation in ICE’s 287(g) program.
If he or she wishes, a sheriff can publicly denounce any law they disagree with and pledge not to enforce it. This is done all over the country particularly with gun laws, and there is very little anyone can do about it. This is an extraordinary amount of power to be placed in one person, and it must end.
While the Maryland constitution requires each county to have a sheriff, state statutes allow counties and municipalities to form local police departments. This is the path Frederick County needs to start down.
The five largest Maryland counties – Anne Arundel, Baltimore, Howard, Montgomery, and Prince Georges – have all created professional county police departments that report directly to the county executive or county council, much like the Frederick city police chief reports to the mayor. They are the primary law enforcement agencies in these jurisdictions, charged with enforcing all laws and investigating all crimes. In these counties, the office of sheriff remains but is limited to enforcing orders of the court such as evictions, seizing property, serving subpoenas, summonses, and warrants and running the county jail.
Frederick County ranks right below these top five in population. We are not the sleepy backwater we used to be. We are a metropolitan county that demands good government. We are the largest, most diverse Maryland county without its own police force. We’ve seen fit to join other large Maryland counties in establishing a county executive and county council. A county police force is the next natural progression.
A professional Frederick County police force would have several benefits:
- Political sniping and grandstanding would no longer have an effect on day-to-day law enforcement policy.
- We can be secure in the fact that law enforcement policy would be in tune with the overall political wishes of a majority of Frederick County citizens who vote for the county executive and county council who, in turn, campaign on their public safety stance and hire the county police chief.
- With a likely nationwide search for the best possible candidate, the overall quality of the county’s chief law enforcement officer would surely increase.
- Frederick County policing would be subject to better accountability and oversight. The chief of a county police department would serve at the pleasure of the country executive and county council with appropriate oversight especially in budgetary and big-picture matters such as 287(g).
- Training and professionalism would increase. In Maryland counties with their own police force, money spent on training has more than doubled over what was spent by the respective sheriff’s office.
Creating a professional county police force won’t be cheap, of course. New officers will be needed along with new cars, equipment, and office space to name a few. Some of these items can reasonably be drawn from the existing sheriff’s office, but not all. Funding of the sheriff’s office must continue, too, albeit at a lower level. But Frederick County is in excellent financial shape and can afford to take this bold and necessary step.
A change such as I am proposing would take an extraordinary amount of political will and courage. The hue and cry from the incumbent sheriff and his backers and sheriff wannabes would be debilitating. But progressive Maryland can get it done.
This change in policing model could and should be timed to not adversely harm any incumbent, challenger, or upcoming election. The election for sheriff should and will go off as planned with other county office holders in 2022. After appropriate study, the legislative request to create a county police force and reform the office of sheriff in Frederick County could then go to the General Assembly in 2023 with a target date of enactment in 2026. Even for government, this timetable should be doable.
Progressives, like conservatives, want safe communities and the laws to be enforced. The difference comes in the policies to make this happen. Politics should not play an overt role in such an important endeavor.
