Between the lines: Ex-sheriff gets a deal

Cradduck’s “no contest” wraps up controversy

You had to figure the situation would work out this way.

Just as Benton County got its new interim sheriff, the county's old sheriff was working out a plea deal in the criminal case that cost him his job.

Former Sheriff Kelley Cradduck pleaded no contest Friday to a misdemeanor tampering charge. He received six months on probation and a $500 fine.

Gone is the felony charge he faced for allegedly tampering with public documents.

And Cradduck will pocket roughly $80,000 from the county government, which agreed to buy him out in exchange for an early resignation.

Given developments on Friday, that agreement may not sit well with local taxpayers.

Whatever the outcome of the court proceedings, Cradduck was not going to be returning to the sheriff's office next year.

He ran third in the Republican primary election in March. The nomination eventually went to Shawn Holloway, a major in the sheriff's office. Holloway has since left to concentrate on the general election in which he will face Glenn Latham, an independent candidate.

Cradduck could have stayed in office, pushing off any resolution of the court case at least until trial, which had been scheduled for September.

Instead, Cradduck conditioned his early resignation on a county buyout equal to his salary and benefits for the remainder of his term.

The Quorum Court agreed to pay him $80,000 to quit early, then promptly began the search for an interim replacement.

Meanwhile Cradduck's attorney, Drew Miller, and Jason Barrett, the special prosecutor in the case, firmed up the plea deal that played out in court Friday.

The good news is that there is a new sheriff on the job in Benton County.

The Quorum Court appointed Meyer Gilbert as the new sheriff on Thursday. Gilbert will serve until the end of the year. County voters will elect a sheriff in November to assume the office in January.

The Quorum Court had several applicants for the temporary post but locked in on Gilbert, a Siloam Springs resident who most recently has been a deposit risk management manager at Arvest Bank.

The 51-year-old had previously spent more than 22 years in law enforcement in Mississippi and in Kosovo.

His career began in the Clarksdale, Miss., Police Department, where he reached the rank of captain. He left there to serve with the United Nations mission in Kosovo from 2001 to 2003 as chief of regional police operations, overseeing more than 1,200 officers in six cities and several hundred villages.

Before his move to Northwest Arkansas, Gilbert worked as chief deputy with the Coahoma County Sheriff's office in Mississippi. He and his wife were looking for a place to raise a family when they relocated here in 2014, he told the Quorum Court.

Gilbert is taking on a challenge, one which was perhaps best illustrated a week or so ago when the mayors and police chiefs of Bentonville and Rogers weighed in on the search for an interim sheriff.

Public officials generally stay out of the business of another entity, but Mayors Bob McCaslin of Bentonville and Greg Hines of Rogers and their respective police chiefs didn't.

They sent a memorandum to the Quorum Court members as they prepared to interview applicants for interim sheriff. The memo expressed specific concerns about the operation of the sheriff's office in recent months, citing three accidents in Bentonville since October involving civilians and caused by deputies driving at high speeds. They also pointed to four "sting" operations in Rogers by the sheriff's office, three of which reportedly involved deputies speeding through the city. At least one of the chases resulted in an accident. Another of the sting operations resulted in shots being fired.

Such operations "result in serious citizen concerns and an overwhelming number of calls to our law enforcement agencies with little or no meaningful information being shared by the deputies involved," wrote Mayors McCaslin and Hines and Jon Simpson and Hayes Minor, the police chiefs of Bentonville and Rogers, respectively.

They said there are many deputies who are doing good work at the sheriff's office, but "some individuals and units within that office are demonstrating reckless behavior further complicated by a continuing lack of leadership."

These are worrisome concerns laid out publicly by officials who could as easily have taken them to individual Quorum Court members rather than delivering them to the full court by memorandum.

The transparency is far better and most welcome, even if it underscores some of the challenges ahead for Sheriff Gilbert.

He apparently appealed to the Quorum Court not only because of his extensive law enforcement history but also because he's relatively new to the area. He brings fresh eyes and maybe different ideas to the job, even though he'll only have it for eight months.

Gilbert had already visited the sheriff's office and was excited to get to work.

"We're off and running," he told the Quorum Court on Thursday. "The Benton County Sheriff's Office is going to be back where it should be in the eyes of the public."

Restoring that confidence is a huge challenge, but even a short tenure should be enough to get the sheriff's office in a better place.

Commentary on 05/01/2016

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