Where to locate a new jail and how to replenish vacant positions in the department have emerged as top issues in the race for Lucas County sheriff on the March 17 primary election ballot.
The four candidates seeking the Democratic nomination to run in the November general election are Ronald Collins II, a Lucas County sheriff’s lieutenant who leads the administrative services section; Gary Johnson, a Toledo city councilman and sheriff reserve officer; Maurice Morris, a private security officer and former deputy; and Mike Navarre, Oregon police chief and former Toledo police chief.
Sheriff John Tharp is retiring and not seeking re-election this year. He was sworn in as Lucas County’s 45th sheriff in 2013, and elected to his second term in 2016.
All four candidates said one of the top issues facing the sheriff’s office is the need to build a new jail — a contentious project that has been delayed multiple times. Voters in 2018 rejected a levy to pay for a new jail. Then in 2019, a citizen-led ballot initiative restricted the location of any new jail in Toledo to downtown's boundaries.
Chief Navarre, 64, and Mr. Johnson, 65, are both solidly in favor of building the jail downtown in close proximity to the courts.
“It’s really the only thing that works, for a number of reasons,” the chief said. “Because it’s a pretrial facility, people come in and out 24 hours a day, seven days a week. They may or may not have transportation, and even if there’s a bus stop, you can’t guarantee they’ll get on a bus. You can’t have that in a neighborhood.”
The availability of numerous attorneys, bail bondsmen, and other related entities in the downtown area would make building the jail elsewhere inconvenient for more reasons than simply the transportation of inmates to court hearings.
“I just can’t see where it’s going to run in a fashion that would be beneficial to all concerned by putting a jail some place other than downtown,” Mr. Johnson said.
Mr. Morris, 55, is also in favor of a downtown location, citing public opinion.
“We are public servants, and the public has spoken,” Mr. Morris said. “They want it downtown. What’s most important is that we don’t lose sight of what the citizens have already voted on.”
Mr. Collins, 46, does not have a strong opinion on where a new jail should be constructed. A downtown location would be convenient, he said, but there are ways to handle business efficiently if building elsewhere is ultimately more feasible.
“Being downtown offers access to courts, but we’re doing a lot of video arraignments and things now,” he said. “We can keep a central hub downtown where the current jail is located if that helps resolve problems.”
Short-staffing and budget issues in the sheriff’s department also require prompt attention, candidates said. The department is currently seeking to hire 20 to 30 additional corrections officers for each of its three shifts to relieve overworked staff and cut down on costly overtime expenses.
Mr. Collins and Mr. Johnson said the county should negotiate with the unions and work together to find ways to operate more efficiently. They joined Chief Navarre in specifying that base pay for corrections officers should be bolstered to be more competitive with other area law-enforcement positions and make the difficult job more attractive to potential applicants.
“We’re sitting here risking our lives sometimes,” Mr. Collins said. “We can take some of those overtime costs and put them on the front end” by increasing hourly pay rates.
Mr. Johnson added he would like to create a way for officers to earn college credit for required corrections training like they do for training to become deputized, which may help with recruitment.
“That makes it a starting point in criminal justice,” he said. “They could then complete some general courses and have an associates degree.”
An emphasis on recruiting in advance of upcoming retirements will help the department have new officers trained and ready to step in with little delay after those departures, Mr. Morris said.
“The first thing we need to do is find out who’s retiring and what the staffing level should be for the jail,” he said. “I don’t want to take money and throw it at it. I want to come up with a viable plan to reduce overtime, and put in place necessary officers we need for staffing levels.”
Chief Navarre would also take time initially to evaluate the total situation and get a better sense of where improvements can be made.
“I would have to spend time observing and talking to employees to find out what the needs are, what’s working, what’s not,” he said. “I don’t want to go in and try to fix something that’s not broken.”
Whomever is elected as the Democratic candidate in the primary will face other competition in the general election Nov. 3. Brett Warner, the community affairs director for the sheriff’s office, is the lone Republican candidate. Earl Mack, a retired Ohio Department of Public Safety official, had originally filed as a Democratic candidate but withdrew those petitions and has said he intends to file as an independent. The deadline to file as an independent is March 16.
First Published March 8, 2020, 1:07 p.m.
