With his brief, no-questions-allowed media appearances in the midst of what he considers politically motivated attacks on a blameless elected official, it's impressive how effective Sheriff Kelley Cradduck nonetheless is in delivering a message.
On Wednesday, the two-term chief law enforcement officer for the county stood behind a lectern flanked by four members of his command staff to announce he would reinstate two deputy sheriffs to positions he removed them from earlier. Jeremy Guyll, a captain at the jail, and Robin Holt, a jail lieutenant, lost those jobs a few weeks ago when Cradduck moved them to lower-paid positions. Cradduck claims a video made by Guyll and Holt as a joke and circulated among jail staff reflected insensitivity, leading to his decision to demote them.
What’s the point?
Residents of Benton County deserve stronger, more effective leadership at the sheriff’s office.
Perhaps that's what Cradduck has now convinced himself of. He often appears completely convinced, notwithstanding evidence to the contrary, that nothing wrong with the dysfunctional Benton County Sheriff's Office has anything to do with him. He's the sheriff of all good stuff happening in the agency, but the buck for the now-routine foibles and failures within his department always stop with -- anyone but Cradduck.
The two deputies he demoted claimed Cradduck took action against them because they cooperated with an Arkansas State Police investigation into the sheriff's hiring of a friend. Cradduck hired Gabriel Cox to work in the jail on Oct. 7. In paperwork filed with the county, Cox listed his place of residence as the same Rogers address listed for Cradduck. Cradduck has declined to elaborate on how the two know each other.
The two deputies and Cradduck's executive assistant have testified Cradduck ordered hiring paperwork on Cox to be backdated to Sept. 27. The effect would be that Cradduck's friend would be paid for time he didn't actually do anything for the sheriff's office. If Cradduck were running his own business, who would care? It would be his money and he could pay an employee for working or not working. But Cradduck is in charge of taxpayers' money. Paying someone for work they didn't do would be an abuse of a public office.
Word of the transaction's peculiarities reached Benton County Prosecutor Nathan Smith, who sought and received appointment of a special prosecutor to examine the situation for any criminal violations. That investigation continues. It's relevant that Maj. Shawn Holloway is the sheriff's office employee who delivered the information to Smith. Holloway is running for the GOP nomination for sheriff, challenging his boss for the next two-year term at the agency's helm.
Guyll and Holt stood to lose hundreds of dollars a month in pay. Meanwhile, others involved in the video were not disciplined. Only the two people Cradduck knew to be cooperating in the state investigation faced demotion.
The sheriff has reinstated the two, but only after a Benton County Quorum Court grievance committee reviewed the deputies' claims and issued a finding that Guyll and Holt were protected by the state's Whistleblower Act. The act says a public employer "shall not take an adverse action against a public employee because the employee participates or gives information in an investigation, hearing, court proceeding, legislative or other inquiry, or in any form of administrative review."
The grievance committee's decision was surprising, not because of the evidence put forth but because other county officials could not recall a grievance committee ever siding with an employee over a department head who had fired or disciplined them. Kurt Moore, one of the justices of the peace on the committee, applauded Cradduck being big enough to reinstate the pair. He was under no legal obligation to do it even after the grievance hearing. But Moore and others also questioned Cradduck's original motives in coming down on Guyll and Holt.
"The question I asked myself was if this was conduct that, if you had taken away the State Police investigation, would anything have come of it? We felt pretty strongly that what went on was an everyday occurrence. Barring the investigation, this would not have happened," Moore said.
Justice of the Peace Michelle Chiocco noted an internal investigation recommended all of the people involved in making the video should be disciplined. But that didn't serve Cradduck's own political interests. Cradduck has managed to deliver his message effectively: Mess with him and there's a price to be paid. The unprecedented decision by the grievance committee can only be seen as a no-confidence vote in the sheriff's management of the sheriff's office.
The sheriff dismisses all this as dirty politics. Sometimes, in a publicly elected office, it is about politics. But sometimes officeholders lose ground politically because they're doing a bad job. If Cradduck has political enemies looking to use weapons against him, he's enabled them by handing them the ammunition.
The Benton County Sheriff's Office suffers from a lack of leadership and good management. It's clear, in the testimony before the grievance committee, that Cradduck has lost much of his staff's confidence. Nearly 100 people filled the chambers of the four-hour grievance committee hearing, many of them deputies and some in uniform. They broke into applause when the panel recommended reinstatement of their colleagues. Symbolically testifying to a chronic problem involving Cradduck's leadership of the agency, the sheriff was not there. Guyll's testimony reflected that issue. Asked how often Cradduck's wife was at the sheriff's office, Guyll responded "I would say if he's there eight days a month then she's there seven."
When deputies have taken to calling the sheriff's wife the "she-riff" because of her involvement within the department, there's a problem.
Benton County taxpayers deserve a sheriff who is fully devoted to leading an critically important agency. Cradduck looked like that kind of sheriff in the first year or so of his tenure, but his leadership has since been erratic at best. Even something so simple as developing policies to prevent deputies from abusive use of public property -- one drove his family to Florida for vacation in a Benton County-owned vehicle -- has proven either too difficult or not important enough to merit Cradduck's focus without admonishment from outside his office.
Earning the faith and confidence of his staff, other county leaders and voters takes a continuous commitment. Cradduck, through his combative blame-everyone-else style and inadequate attention to the administrative role of being sheriff, has allowed that confidence to erode on all fronts. Taxpayers deserve better. And Cradduck would serve them best by stepping down and letting the Quorum Court appoint someone to restore order to the sheriff's office so whoever is elected next year doesn't have to start by cleaning up a mess.
Commentary on 11/22/2015