NAACP candidate forum (7-27 version)

Once again, I was back playing intrepid reporter. And there were spills, thrills, and chills aplenty at the forum tonight – just to find a parking space. Yes, the attendance was quite a bit better for the Sheriff’s race version of the NAACP forum, I think we did have closer to the 150 people the paper claimed was there last time.

Actually, I did have to be the candidate for a few moments. The initial item on the agenda after the welcoming remarks and the prayer was to have the candidates for Central Committee rise and introduce themselves. On the Republican side, there was…me. Well, Gail Bartkovich introduced herself on her husband’s behalf. On the Democrat side, there were 5 candidates present and four of them were sitting side-by-side two rows behind me. I suppose it’s a telling statement of party unity there, isn’t it?

The order of events was fairly straightforward after that. State’s Attorney Davis Ruark was the first to go. Aside from us Central Committee folks rising and stating our names, he had the easiest job because he’s unopposed for another term. They did ask him a couple questions, one regarding minority employment and the other about serving the Spanish-speaking population. Ruark said that his office was the first on the Eastern Shore with an African-American assistant State’s Attorney and generally anywhere between 30 and 70 percent of his administrative staff has been African-American. With regard to the Hispanic population, he had hired within the last year an assistant State’s Attorney and intern who were bilingual. Ruark further remarked that the office “need(s) to develop trust” with the Hispanic community.

We then heard from the five aspirants for Orphan’s Court. To me being from Ohio, it’s a curious name for the probate bench, but originally it was set up for children who lost their parents – a more frequent occurrence back in Colonial times. The questions asked were about how the Orphans Court service benefits the county and what the “critical issues” were for the court. This will be placed in the order of their opening remarks.

Incumbent judge William Smith stressed his bipartisanship in his remarks. Despite being the lone Republican of the three, he stated that the trio on the court now hadn’t had a disagreement in four years, always ruling unanimously. To him, the critical issue was being equitable to all people even in this age of rising estate values.

George Ossman, the other Republican running for the post, thought that change in the Orphan’s Court would be “beneficial” and wanted to bring some new ideas to the court, while striving to add efficiency and accessibility to the mix. Moreover, another goal of his was to “promote public trust in politics.”

A longtime judge of 24 years, including 21 as chief judge, Norma Lee Barkley told a supportive gathering (which she addressed as her “brothers and sisters”) that she strove to make court patrons “feel comfortable” and that experience “equips” the judges to do their job, which is to come up with a justifiable decision in all their cases. Barkley did caution that judicial canons prevent much in the way of issue advocacy, a point on which she is correct. But she also plugged her fellow Democrat judge…

Melissa Pollitt Bright, who has “half the experience” of Barkley, Bright being a 12 year veteran. One key point of her emphasis on experience is that she helps to run the “baby judge school” for new Maryland Orphan’s Court judges. Bright brought up an interesting topic, showing a concern about banks not always following court rules about minors not being able to access accounts, talking about instances where banks change hands and court orders slip through the cracks.

Finally, Peter Evans seeks the Orphan’s Court post with a background that suggests he’s been on another side of the court, that of real estate. The Army vet played up his 30 years of experience in that business and made the obvious but otherwise forgotten point that each case is a “critical issue” to those involved.

At this point, we took a short break, but there was a palpable buzz in the room because the red meat of the forum was yet to come. It was sort of like that time after the warmup band leaves and the house lights come on as they set up the stage for the new hot headliner band.

Now, there is one difficulty in reporting on a Sheriff’s forum. Much like I said on a prior occasion, there’s not a sheriff in the land who doesn’t want to cut down criminal activity. With that as a given, honestly the only differences would be with their areas of focus. And of course, most if not all of them stressed communication with the community plus a desire to reopen the substations and maintain the school officers among their key points, so it’s not really worth bearing a repeat of these common ground areas in my summaries.

I must say, while the initial remarks by the moderator claimed this would be a 45 minute period, I’d be willing to bet we took twice that on the Sheriff’s race. We ended up with eight questions, and it went in a little bit of a patchwork order as the alloted time passed and they asked for closing remarks, but the moderator and organizers then decided that more questions were necessary because of the format constraints. In order, the eight questions dealt with:

* Budgeting, personnel, and executive experience.
* Racial profiling, lack of minorities in the department, and division in the community.

The next question returned to racial profiling because moderator B. Orville Penn deemed that no one answered the question. Eventually, it became a question of whether the candidate thought there was racial profiling in the department. As this is my blog, I’ll handle that as a separate theme after I deal with each candidate.

* Gun crimes and community cooperation.
* Whether there were gangs in Wicomico County. (Duh.)
* An interestingly worded question: why do the kids know where the drug dealers are but not the cops? That brought a pretty good chuckle.

We had the so-called closing statements at this point, but ended up with two more questions:

* Initiatives on crimes against women and children. I thought this was the weakest question, akin to asking someone “have you stopped beating your wife?” It led to too many bland and similar answers.
* Dealing with drug dealing.

Again, WCSD and “the department” are shorthand for Wicomico County Sheriff’s Department. I’m not wanting to type this all night! Once again, I’ll feature my impressions of the candidates in the order they made their opening statements.

This means I start with Ken Pusey. Pusey hammered on just a few main themes, stressing his experience in the department, having the department be more “aggressive” and “proactive” yet also becoming more diverse, claiming there was no recruiting system set up for the department. On the question of budgeting, Pusey claimed that, while he hadn’t done a large-scale budget like the WCSD has, it’s “twice as hard” to do a budget like the ones he did for a non-profit agency because the money’s not so much of a given. Ken also brought up a need for four-person special operations units to fight specific types of criminal activities deemed a problem by the Sheriff. Above all, Pusey wanted a more cost-effective and accountable WCSD that was efficient for “all citizens”, not just a “small group” of them.

Claiming that “I need to make a difference”, Wayne Lowe also warned that there were “no easy answers” to the crime problem here. Lowe thought that the officers should be held to a higher standard as they would be out in the community more – Lowe is one of the candidates who notably advocates community policing as a goal for the WCSD. He also said that the department needs to “hit the streets” in order to recruit officers and create a more diverse force. Lowe also raised a few eyebrows by saying that the gang problem was “going to get worse”, but it was still his task to make sure “kids were safe from doorstep to doorstep.” As he did in the last forum, Lowe also took a few moments to stress the court side of the task, again making a goal of his “better documentation” by the WCSD as part of “aggressive” investigations.

Another WCSD veteran, Robin Roberts went through a laundry list of tasks he’s done since joining. Vowing to make “no false promises…or excuses” but find solutions, Roberts spent a lot of his alloted time on the idea of “working together”. He claimed that he’d be “the people’s sheriff” and “lead by example.” One intriguing comment he made was on treating those who were arrested well, the idea being that they may be more cooperative in a later situation. He also had the idea of training someone to be a recruiter to local colleges to find those interested in a career in law enforcement. Working together with the public also inspired him to seek a “Sheriff’s Advisory Board” that would meet quarterly if he were elected. Above all, he wanted a department which would have good role models.

Starting right out of the gate by saying that he was “eager to accept the position” and “change the tide” of crime that’s overwhelming Wicomico County, Mike Lewis seemed to have the loudest support. He made it plain that his experience in drug interdiction (frequently speaking about his narcotics busts) would be his best asset, so as for the administrative side he would keep the people in place who already handle it. The plain-speaking Lewis further vowed he “will eliminate” gangs with enforcement “like never seen” and called the fact that there’s 2 African-American and no Hispanic deputies in the WCSD “unacceptable.” (If you haven’t noticed, yes I find Mike very quotable.) Another thing that’s “unacceptable” to Lewis is that people, particularly seniors, are “captive in their own homes” which is a “quality of life issue.” I think the best line he uttered was that crime prevention starts at home, and we need to get kids “from crack houses to churches.” I was sitting next to a lady who was curious to see how people would answer the question about the kids knowing the drug dealers more than the cops did, and eventually I think Lewis came closest to pinning the tail on the donkey with that answer (although it was actually spoken to a later question) because he brought parents into the mix.

Chris South was one candidate who seemed to enjoy mixing a few facts and numbers in with his presentation and attempting to be concise. During his opening remarks he eschewed a lot of the personal information, claiming it was available on items at the forum or through his website. On several occasions he had a ready statistic, as in citing that while 32% of all Maryland youth were African-American, 72% of incarcerated youth were. But one approach he alone seemed to take was having the thought that the WCSD is a “professional service” and should be managed like one. Instead of “running radar” the WCSD should get back to patrolling the neighborhoods, and most importantly they need to begin teaching kids earlier about the police officer being the good guy and the gangbanger being the bad guy despite the lucrative nature of the drug trade.

“What do I offer to you?” was the question Kirk Daugherty opened with, and he spent his time giving several answers to it. He focused a great deal on two groups – children and seniors. As he did in the first forum, he advocated a program for “at-risk” youth to attempt to steer them away from getting into the criminal justice system and messing up their adult lives. Further stating that it’s not just a village, but a “community that raises a child” he promised to work with the Board of Education on school officers and kids’ safety. While I knew that Daugherty was the president of the Maryland State Troopers Association, I was unaware that he served as sergeant-at-arms for the Maryland Senate, which he claimed gave him insight on the legislative process. Since a great deal of WCSD money comes in one form or another from the state, that’s possibly a useful asset.

Generally in life ladies are first, but as it happened Doris Schonbrunner was the final candidate to make an opening statement. Each candidate played up their strengths, and in the case of Major Doris, her strength lies in the administrative and budget sides. However, as second in command, she is also acting Sheriff when Hunter Nelms is absent. Certainly no one can question her educational background, as she has two degrees and is working on a third (a Master’s Degree in Public Administration.)

In some ways, she’s actually the simplest candidate to sum up: she has the experience “to step into Hunter Nelm’s shoes” and the education “to lead the WCSD into the future.” She also wanted to form a Citizen’s Advisory Board for the Sheriff’s office which would have monthly meetings, and got to be the one to announce that after five years of trying, the budget this year will allow them to reopen substations. Doris was also an advocate of establishing youth programs like a Police Athletic League in order to lessen community mistrust of law enforcement and possibly reduce the fear of retaliation. The more kids involved, the harder it is to single one out as a narc.

This brings me to the question of racial profiling. Eventually as it was, moderator Penn had those who believed racial profiling was a problem in Wicomico County stand and those who didn’t stay seated. Standees were Lowe, South, and Schonbrunner. This is the part of his presentation where Wayne Lowe cited the need for the WCSD to follow a “higher standard” and Chris South related the statistic about the percentage of incarcerated youth. For her part, Doris Schonbrunner stated she thought that racial profiling was a problem because of community input she’d received in her campaign.

The naysayers had vastly different reasons for their stands. Pusey simply said that profiling wasn’t a problem here, but Roberts claimed it “exists everywhere”. He added that the WCSD keeps track of racial statistics as far as those who are stopped for violations, etc. Mike Lewis claimed that he only profiles “criminals” and is prejudiced against them. This brought a loud burst of cheers and applause. Kirk Daugherty noted that he’d not worked in the WCSD since 2000 so he couldn’t address the issue.

So finally the forum was finished and I was standing up and putting my stuff together when Ken Pusey and his wife came up to me. They wanted me to clarify a remark I’d made in the post I did on the first Sheriff’s forum where I said:

“as part of a restructuring (Pusey) promised he would as quickly as possible place five more deputies on the road.”

I think when I said “deputies” I misspoke somewhat – to me, all those who are under the sheriff are what I call deputies. What he wanted to clarify was that there were five officers in the department who wouldn’t have a problem with returning to road duty, and there weren’t going to be new hires. So I was happy he and Mrs. Pusey came over to tell me this, I have no problem with attempting to get the story straight. What was funny is that they didn’t know me until they heard me introduce myself as a candidate for Central Committee. At that point I was busted. Oh well.

The other thing that should be interesting is that I received a NAACP questionnaire called “Value Our Vote.” What’s going to make my day is that the NAACP position is automatically “support” for each question, and just looking at the back four questions I already oppose two of them. As the survey says, “If the candidate answers “oppose” to any of the questions, please ask for an explanation for that response.”

Oh, this ought to be fun! I have the feeling I’m going to find out why Rush Limbaugh calls them the “NAALCP” as the L stands for Liberal. And I doubt the NAACP is bargaining for a multipage response but they’ll get one. Actually, now that I look at this full thing – I might just oppose all but about two or three of these. Yeah, I’m going to be one of those “racist, bigoted, sexist, homophobe Republicans” but my guide sits by my desk, it’s called the Constitution.

Author: Michael

It's me from my laptop computer.

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