Everybody likes transparency when the answer makes the department look good. It’s easy to talk about accomplishments, successful investigations, improved response times, or something the department has done particularly well. The harder part comes when I have to acknowledge that something inside my own organization isn’t working the way it should, especially when admitting it…
Everybody likes transparency when the question is easy. It’s a lot easier to talk about openness when you’re announcing something good, explaining a successful case, showing off new equipment, or releasing numbers that make the department look good. The harder test comes when somebody asks about an arrest, a use of force, a complaint against…
Most people who pass through Barbour County, Alabama, see a road. They see U.S. 431 through Eufaula, maybe Highway 51 toward Clayton, maybe one of the smaller roads cutting across the county. They pass gas stations, churches, fields, timber, old houses, a few businesses, and signs for towns they may never actually enter. Then they…
A police chief answers to somebody, and the people he answers to are allowed to ask hard questions about how the department runs, how the money gets spent, and whether the town is getting what it expects. That part isn’t the problem. The problem starts when the question stops being about the department and becomes…
After nearly three decades as sheriff of Lee County, Jay Jones lost the May 19 Republican primary to former deputy Cam Hunt by just 307 votes. Hunt received 9,301 votes to Jones’s 8,994, according to the unofficial results. Jones first took office in January 1999. He had spent nearly thirty years building his career, his…
Jay Jones has served as sheriff of Lee County since January 1999, following his election in 1998. Nearly three decades in office gives him a substantial record to campaign on, along with relationships and experience that a challenger can’t easily match. But it also gives voters nearly three decades of decisions to examine, and former…
I don’t expect everybody in my small town to agree with me, and I’d probably be a little suspicious if they did. I’m more interested in what happens after we disagree. In a place this size, the person who thinks I made a terrible decision today may be standing beside me at the store tomorrow….
I’ve never had a problem with a sheriff wanting deputies he can trust. I’ve felt the same way throughout my career in both the public and private sectors. When you’re responsible for an organization, you need people who will carry out your decisions, follow your direction, and represent it professionally. That expectation doesn’t change with…
Small-town accountability gets personal pretty fast. There’s a good chance I know the person I’m dealing with. I may know his parents, his kids, where he works, or what he ordered the last time I saw him at lunch. Sometimes I know everybody involved. That’s part of living and working in a small town, and…
Software can do a lot more than organize job applications. It can decide which applications anybody bothers looking at, and that’s the part of Mobley v. Workday I find more interesting than the AI label. Derek Mobley and other applicants allege that Workday’s hiring technology scored, sorted, ranked or screened applicants in ways that discriminated…