Where’s the sheriff?

continued

disappeared from public view. “I haven’t seen him in a year and a half,” says commissioner Conan Smith. “Maybe longer than that.”

Sheriff’s department spokesman Dave Egeler is usually pretty laconic—but there’s heat in his voice when he’s asked whether Minzey might have abdicated before his term expired. “That is patently incorrect,” says Egeler, who, like most of his colleagues on Minzey’s management team, will be out of a job on January 1. “This is a twenty-four-seven operation, and the management team of the sheriff’s office—including the sheriff—are still very much present managing operations through the end of the year,” he declares. A department staffer who insisted on anonymity adds, “I’ve haven’t seen any commissioners out here for a year, year and a half, either—so how would they know?”   

[Originally published in January, 2009.]