I really did not think I would be spending so much Booster ink on the sheriff’s race this year, but there is so much low hanging fruit here and the streak of sarcasm running through me is so wide I cannot resist. Mr. Evans is greatly exercised over the purchase of the Sheriff Department’s new headquarters building in Harrisonburg and has expressed his reservations over Sheriff Edwards’ real estate acumen. But in all this drama about the Catahoula Parish Sheriff’s Office moving out of the aging courthouse in Harrisonburg, we seem to be overlooking a very important question: Does Jerel Evans know how to be a sheriff? He’s never even been a deputy. After all, we’re trying to elect the best sheriff, not the best real estate agent.
At least Evans does concede in his letter that profits from other of Sheriff Edwards’ transactions (the Catahoula Parish Correctional Center) are paying for the new office facility. But I have to wonder whether buying the new facility for the Sheriff Department would have been necessary in the first place if the Police Jury had done its own job and properly maintained and provided space for the Sheriff Department as they are required to do. Evans does share in the responsibility for those decisions.
The Harrisonburg Courthouse is an aging building with a questionable maintenance history. If the Clerk of Court and the Tax Assessor think about jumping ship someday, I have heard that the sheriff has some room down the street. Trying to make the election about a building shouldn’t be a distraction from the fact that the real issue is the man. Whoever becomes sheriff in LaSalle Parish is not my problem, but I liked Jimmy Arbogast’s answer to the question of who he would choose for his Chief Deputy: He said, in effect, it is he who would be sheriff, not his Chief Deputy. The sheriff is the issue. And besides, do you really want the kind of management that the Police Jury has provided running the Sheriff Department too?
I think in four years my wife should be the sheriff. After all, she has the same qualifications as Jerel Evans, plus she’s literate enough to write her own political ads. My wife was part owner of a trucking company hauling steel on 9-foot spread axle flatbeds from Cleveland to Detroit. She used to tell me stories about having to sleep in the garage during those brutal Yankee winters burning charcoal under the oil pans so the trucks would start in the morning.
After that, she managed a truck parts and repair company. She said she loved having a customer bring in a box of greasy transmission parts that she could lookup and solve like a puzzle to put that machine back on the road. Sound like a sheriff to you? Then she’s your gal in ’28. On the other hand, if you want someone who really understands law enforcement and has useful contacts throughout the state of Louisiana (instead of just her relatives in Sandy Lake) then you might want someone else. In fact, maybe you’d want someone like Toney Edwards.
