© Jerimiah B. Brown

Where’s the sheriff?

Dan Minzey keeps a low profile

by James Leonard

posted 1/6/2009

“Dan Minzey seems to have fallen off the face of the earth,” says county commissioner Leah Gunn. “The fact is nobody I know has laid eyes on him since the election.” That election would be the August Democratic primary—the one where Minzey backed Gunn’s opponent, and Gunn backed his. Gunn won, Minzey lost, and the already reclusive sheriff pretty much 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.]