Tag Archive for: sheriff’s office

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Sheriffs: Who Are They and What Are Their Duties?

Many of us had our first real look at a sheriff’s office back in 1960 when Andy Taylor and his fearless deputy, Barney Fife, patrolled the roads in and around Mayberry, N.C.

Television took us inside the Mayberry jail, the courthouse, and it even allowed us to ride in the county patrol car. And, for many people, Andy Taylor’s Sheriff’s Office was thought to be the standard.

The things Andy did, well, that’s what a sheriff was supposed to do—fight crime, run the jail, serve the people of the community, spend quality and quiet time with his family and friends—Aunt Bee, Barney, Opie and Miss Ellie and later, Helen, and pickin’ and grinnin’ with the Darlings. Simply a wholesome way of work and play.

But that’s the TV depiction of the life of a county sheriff. Real sheriffin’, however, is a bit different. So, let’s take a brief look at a real-life sheriff and her/his office to see how things differ from the fictional Mayberry department.

First, like Andy, a sheriff is only one person, an elected official who’s in charge of the day-to-day operations of their office.

Because there is only a single sheriff for each jurisdiction, it is in error to call or address the other employees of the agencies as “sheriffs.” This is a common mistake I often hear.

“The sheriff came to my house to deliver a jury summons.”

“Look, here comes a sheriff is driving down the street. Bet she’s going straight to Junior, Jr’s house about them pigs he keeps in the backyard.”

“Two sheriffs went next door and arrested Jim Billy Buck for bustin’ Larry John, Jr.’s jaw with a rusty claw hammer.”

“There are three sheriffs eating donuts and drinking coffee at Delirious Daisy’s Donut Diner.”

So, only one sheriff per office, and, since the sheriff has many responsibilities, they need help to fulfill their duties. Consequently, the sheriff appoints deputies to help with the workload.

Therefore, the drivers of those marked “sheriff’s” cars, the three donut-eaters, arresters of the claw hammer assaulter, jury summons server, and others who work at a sheriff’s office, are typically deputy sheriffs, not the actual sheriff. Unless, of course, the boss happens to be driving one of the marked units, is inside the Donut Diner with two sheriffs from other counties, and decides to serve a jury summons in person (not likely).

Deputy Sheriff

In most locations, deputies serve at the pleasure of the sheriff, meaning they can be dismissed from duty without cause or reason.

Sheriffs in America

There are 3,081 sheriffs in the U.S.

In many areas, the sheriff is the highest-ranking law enforcement officer in the county.

Sheriffs are constitutional officers, meaning they are elected to office by popular vote. Police Chiefs are appointed/hired by a mayor or other officials of a city, such as a city or town council or police commission.

In most states, Sheriffs are elected to four-year terms. Other states require different terms of office, such as a six-year term in one state, a three-year term in another state, and a two-year term in three states.

Generally, sheriffs do not have a supervisor. They don’t answer to a board of supervisors, commissioners, or a county administrator.

Fun Fact – The Los Angeles County Department, the largest sheriff’s department in the world, employs nearly 18,000 budgeted sworn and professional staff. The number of LASD employees is greater than the combined populations of Wyoming counties Sublette and Johnson.

Sheriffs are responsible for:

1) Executing and returning process, meaning they serve all civil papers, such as divorce papers, eviction notices, lien notices, etc. They must also return a copy of the executed paperwork to the clerk of court.

2) Attending and protecting all court proceedings within the jurisdiction.

3) Preserve order at public polling places.

4) Publish announcements regarding the sale of foreclosed property. The sheriff is also responsible for conducting public auctions of foreclosed property.

5) Serving eviction notices. The sheriff must sometimes forcibly remove tenants and their property from their homes or businesses. I’ve known sheriffs who use jail inmates (supervised by deputies) to haul property from houses out to the street.

6) Maintain the county jail and transport prisoners to and from court appearances. The sheriff is also responsible for transporting county prisoners to state prison after they’ve been sentenced by the court.

7) In many, if not most, areas the sheriff is responsible for all law enforcement of their jurisdiction. Some towns do not have police departments, but all jurisdictions, apart from Alaska, Hawaii, and Connecticut, must have a sheriff’s office.

  • In Alaska, there are no county governments.
  • Connecticut replaced sheriffs with a State Marshal System Connecticut.
  • There are no Sheriffs in Hawaii. However, Deputy Sheriffs serve in the Sheriff Division of the Hawaii Department of Public Safety.

8) In California, some sheriffs also serve as coroners of their counties.

California sheriff’s public display of water patrol and rescue equipment, and a tent with “Coroner” labeling.

9) In most jurisdictions, sheriffs and their deputies have arrest powers in all areas of the county where they were elected, including all cities, towns, and villages located within the county.

10) Sheriffs in the three counties of the state of Delaware do not have typical police powers. Yes, there are only three counties in the state of Delaware.

DELAWARE

§ 2103 SHERIFFS AND REGULAR DEPUTIES.

Sheriffs and deputy sheriffs shall not have any arrest authority. However, sheriffs and deputy sheriffs may take into custody and transport a person when specifically so ordered by a judge or commissioner of Superior Court.

In Delaware, the duties of the county sheriffs and their deputies are:

Sussex County – Serve paper for the courts and holds Sheriff’s sales for non-payment of taxes, mortgage foreclosures plus all other court orders.

New Castle County – Provides service of process for writs issued by the Superior Court, Court of Common Pleas, Court of Chancery, Family Court and courts from other states and countries along with subpoenas issued by the Department of Justice, Department of Labor, and Industrial Accident Board.

Kent County – Service the Citizens of Kent County by performing many functions for the State of Delaware Courts (Superior Court, Court of Common Pleas, U.S. District Court and the Court of Chancery).  The Sheriff’s Office serves legal notices to include (subpoenas, levies, summons, etc.)  Additionally, the Sheriff’s Office auctions real estate in accordance with the Delaware Code.

The above list of sheriff’s responsibilities is not all-inclusive. Sheriffs and deputies are responsible for numerous duties and assignments in addition to those listed here.

Is It Sheriff’s Office or Sheriff’s Department? What’s the Difference?

Black’s Law Dictionary defines the terms as:

DEPARTMENT: “One of the major divisions of the executive branch of the government … generally, a branch or division of governmental administration.”

OFFICE: “A right, and correspondent duty, to exercise public trust as an office. A public charge of employment… the most frequent occasions to use the word arise with reference to a duty and power conferred on an individual by the government, and when this is the connection, public office is a usual and more discriminating expression… in the constitutional sense, the term implies an authority to exercise some portion of the sovereign power either in making, executing, or administering the laws.”

A Sheriff’s Office is not a “department” of county government. The functions and operation of an Office of Sheriff are entirely and solely the responsibility of the elected Sheriff. The Sheriff is a statutory/constitutional officer who has exclusive powers and authority under state law and/or state constitution. Therefore, a sheriff’s powers are not subject to the directives and orders of a local county government, whereas the heads of county departments are subordinate to the local administration because each department is a division of county government.

In 1889, Sheriff Joe Perry was sworn in as sheriff in St. Johns County, Florida, and he held the office for 26 years. Perry is the longest serving sheriff in Florida history.

National Sheriffs’ Association

The National Sheriffs’ Association (NSA) officially came into being when the organization filed Articles of Incorporation in 1940. However, over 50 years earlier, in 1888, a group of sheriffs in Minnesota and surrounding states joined together to form the Inter-State Sheriffs’ Association. The NSA today is the result of the early group.

The NSA is involved in and provides resources, various programs, training classes, and courses to support and assist sheriffs, deputies, and others in law enforcement and criminal justice.

As of February 15, 2023, NSA has 13,628 active members.

I am one of those members and have been for many years.

Office of Sheriff, Its Historical Roots

“In England, the sheriff came into existence around the 9th century. This makes the sheriff the oldest continuing, non-military, law enforcement entity in history.

In early England, the land was divided into geographic areas between a few individual kings – these geographic areas were called shires. Within each shire there was an individual called a reeve, which meant guardian. This individual was originally selected by the serfs to be their informal social and governmental leader. The kings observed how influential this individual was within the serf community and soon incorporated that position into the governmental structure. The reeve soon became the King’s appointed representative to protect the King’s interest and act as mediator with people of his particular shire. Through time and usage, the words shire and reeve came together to be shire-reeve, guardian of the shire, and eventually the word sheriff, as we know it today.” – National Sheriffs’ Association

It’s Coming. It’s Unique. And IT IS EXCITING!

Full event details TBA

www.writerspoliceacademy.com

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A Loud Crack and She Was Dead: Could’ve Been My Daughter

RILEY TOWNSHIP, Mich. – A 73-year-old woman was in her kitchen doing what everyone does in their kitchen—cooking, cleaning, eating, washing dishes, hanging out, having coffee, etc. You know, “kitchen things.” Her husband was nearby.

The woman’s husband says he heard a loud “crack” and suddenly his wonderful wife of many years collapsed to the floor. She was dead.

The sharp sound was gunfire. The woman had been shot to death by a neighbor who was target practicing on his property, firing at a dirt berm.

Apparently, at least one of the shooter’s rounds missed its mark and traveled through the air, across his property and then across his neighbor’s land, through their walls, into their kitchen, where it came to rest inside the body of an elderly woman who was doing nothing more than enjoying a day at home with her husband. Now she’s gone, forever.

Police say the shooter is cooperating with authorities.

I bring up this tragedy because, first, it’s horrible, and next it reminds me of an incident that occurred just last year in the state of North Carolina. Onslow County, North Carolina, to be exact, and it involves my daughter, her family, their home, their neighbors, and me, in a roundabout way.

Our daughter’s home was struck by gunfire.

The initial round broke a window and penetrated an interior wall of a laundry room.

Thinking it may have been a freak accident, the window was replaced and all was well … for a short while. Then more sounds of gunfire were heard in the area, and those gunshots sounded extremely close with additional rounds striking the house. One lodged in the wood trim next to the front door.

The front door. The door most often used by my daughter, her husband, and our grandson, Tyler. The round hit less than a foot to the right of where a person would stand when unlocking the door, turning the knob to go inside, or to stand watching as Tyler’s school bus arrived, something Ellen liked to do until cancer arrived and made it too difficult for her to enjoy many of the things she enjoyed.

Ellen, our daughter, called the sheriff’s office to report that someone was shooting at her house. In the meantime, she contacted a next-door neighbor who also discovered rounds lodged in the exterior of their home. Also near the front door.

Here’s how the sheriff’s office responded to someone firing live rounds into the homes of human beings.

Day One

  • Ellen called the sheriff’s office the first day/time at 1552 (if nothing else, the daughter of a police detective knows to keep record of everything). The call lasted 1 minute and 12 seconds. She called back at 1606 because the shooting was still going on in the neighborhood. The second call lasted 2 minutes and 26 seconds.
  • No one responded and the sheriff’s office denied she’d called, in spite of her having the records stored in her phone.

Day Two 

  • No response – shooting continues. More contact with the sheriff’s office. Nothing.

Day Three

  • No response – shooting continues

Day Four

  • Ellen tells me about the incident and the lack of response and concern by the sheriff’s office. I bypassed the folks on the front lines and contacted the county sheriff directly and “politely” urged him to do something about the situation. Last year was election year, by the way. A major contacted me immediately. He said he’d follow up.

This is the point where I totally and absolutely lost it

One official wrote me to say, “Not sure why you think we did not respond…..?”

Well, maybe it’s because NO ONE RESPONDED!!

In fairness, I feel sort of confident the official was relying on the “word” of the deputy who reported that he’d handled the incident. But …

Finally, it comes out, sort of …

The deputy who was assigned the original call, four days earlier, told his boss that he’d been too busy that day to actually show up. Instead, he claimed he’d tried several times to call Ellen on the phone, using his cell phone, and that he left messages on her voicemail. There are no such records. They do not exist. No one called.

Next, I was told that the sheriff’s office has records of all calls made by the deputy. However, they could not produce them when I requested them (I knew they didn’t exist).

Sheriff’s officials again claimed Ellen did not call, asking me, “What is the address? Is your daughter a minor? Who are you calling when you call?”

Keep in mind, the person who asked these questions was the same person I’d spoken with about the issue. The same person who took the information from me—name, address, phone number, nature of complaint— after the sheriff had him contact me. AFTER the deputy said he’d been too busy to respond to the call made by Ellen. After Ellen called several times. After neighbors called.

It was within the same written message to me, the official made the “Not sure why you think we did not respond…..?” statement. Just seconds earlier, remember, he/she claimed Ellen had not called. Why would someone respond to a call that hadn’t happened? Curious, I know. 🙂

But … if there was a record of Ellen calling, why did they not know her name, address, age, the number she called? Puhleeze. I made up better excuses when I didn’t do my homework in elementary school. Anyway …

Convoluted, huh? But wait, it gets better!

Okay, back to the deputy. The major sent him out to speak with the shooters (by this time, everyone knew who was pulling the trigger) but he opted to merely drive by—he didn’t stop—reporting that the activity had ceased—he didn’t hear gunfire as he drove through the area (like people shoot nonstop, without eating, drinking, tending to needs, and /or sleeping, 24/7).

Four days later, the posse arrives

Anyway, the deputy finally showed up at Ellen’s house four days after her initial call to the sheriff’s office. While there, like in a Perry Mason episode, he used a knife to dig the rounds from the house.

He also finally paid a visit to the shooter. I was told that as long as the shooter was 500 feet from the nearest house there was nothing the sheriff’s office could do. They actually said it was okay to fire guns toward an occupied dwelling as long as the shooters were outside of the 500-feet-range.

Fortunately, this shooter used common sense and realized the danger and agreed to not shoot until he erected a dirt berm. Now, after hearing the tragic details from the Michigan shooting, we all know just how safe/unsafe a dirt berm can be. There’s a dead woman and her grieving husband who are proof that these berms are sometimes not safe, especially in a residential area.

I recall a well-known author posting about a similar experience in her super-nice neighborhood, and that guy was firing a fully-automatic weapon.

By the way, on the day the deputy finally spoke with Ellen and then visited the shooter, someone else from the sheriff’s office contacted me to say the matter had been resolved (case closed) several days earlier to everyone’s satisfaction. The message was extremely defensive, taking the side of a deputy without knowing the circumstances at all. No clue, but was quick to discount me, Ellen, and the shooting—case closed. This person was in no way involved in this mess, but she/he saw the correspondence and felt the need to chime in, without knowing a single detail. Not one. Four days after the fact while the situation was still fully in play.

Today, the shooting continues, with a dirt berm in place.

In the midst of all the buck-passing and possible fibbing and defensiveness of a deputy who was possibly a bit less than honest, I wrote this to the sheriff’s office command – “I know it’s none of my business how you conduct the business of your office, but this, trying to cover up after-the-fact, is part of the reason the public distrusts the police. I’ve devoted the past ten years of my life educating the public about police and that we really are the good guys and that they can trust us, and then all it takes is a few words to tear down the little progress we make. My blog alone has reached appr. 4 million people worldwide and it’s a battle each day to present positive information that’ll help build that bridge between the public and the police.”

Note – It’s a crying shame it took so long and to have so many people involved to stop a life-threatening situation. I sincerely appreciate that the top brass within the sheriff’s office handled this for me, but three or four days of someone shooting at your house before a patrol deputy could find time in his schedule to stop a potential death by shooting is, well, it’s beyond me. And why did I have to pull the “I was a cop card” before anything at all was done? Would they have eventually shown up had I not contacted the sheriff to mention I was a former detective who’s investigated more shootings into occupied dwellings than I could possibly begin to count? It’s illegal to do so, by the way.

I don’t know the answers to those questions, but I do know that 500 feet is not ample distance to completely prevent injury or death from a high-powered rifle round. Nor is it possible for improperly constructed dirt berms to stop rounds if the berms are too short, too narrow, or too thin. Even rocks or pieces of metal on dirt berms can cause ricochets, or lead to break apart sending shrapnel off in various directions. By the way, shrapnel is a fancy name for smaller projectiles that could also be as deadly as an intact round.

The rounds above each struck a hard surface before coming to rest. The item at the top is ejected brass from a .45.

Commonsense. Sometimes that’s all it takes to save a life. That, and not shooting toward homes.

#proactivepolicingsaveslives

#respondtocalls

#behonest

#shootresponsibly

#irresposibleshootersgiveallothersabadname

#baddeputy

#alwaysknowthepathofyourrounds

Finally, please continue to pray for our daughter, my little girl. She’s very ill.

Again, if you can help, please do. Contact me at lofland32@msn.com for contribution details. Thank you so much!

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