November 30, 2005

Orange County deputies shine

By Brendan Scott
Times Herald-Record

Goshen – The days of under-trained deputies, orders-by-memo and blank pages in policy books are over at the Orange County Sheriff's Office.

So, too, sheriff's officials hope, are the petty scandals and administrative oversights that made the 300-year-old institution synonymous with mismanagement in the late 1990s.

Next week, the 117-member road division that carries out the sheriff's most visible duties – parks patrols, drug raids and evictions – will receive certification that it now meets high professional standards of law enforcement.

The office expects its deputies to be accredited by the state Department of Criminal Justices Services, a distinction only a handful of local police agencies can claim.

"It raises the level of accountability for the officers," sheriff's office Investigator Michael Murphy, who helped draft the office's new policy book, said. "It gives people a source of pride about being part of an organization that strives for excellence."

It also represents a remarkable turnaround for an office that just four years ago was so marred by scandal that lawmakers seriously considered dismantling it.

There was the former deputy who stole drugs from an evidence locker, the moonlighting deputies who reported working two public jobs at once and the tawdry sexual-harassment suit the county settled for $200,000.

In an effort to recover from such flaps, then-Sheriff Frank Bigger applied for accreditation and ordered the office's sparse and outdated policy manual replaced with a new, more professional handbook in 1998.

But the 1,092-page, two-volume tome was too verbose to be implemented (there were eight pages devoted to operating the office copy machine). After Sheriff Carl DuBois took office in 2003, officials pared down the book and restarted the accreditation process.

Only eight other police agencies in Orange, Sullivan and Ulster counties, including the state police and the Ulster County Sheriff's Office, have met the rigorous standards. Next year, Orange hopes to extend accreditation to the 300-employee Correction Division, which runs the county jail.

But all the policies and procedures will mean little if they're not properly implemented, Michael White, a political science professor at John Jay School of Criminal Justice, said.

"It will still be up to the department to adhere to those policies and make sure officers who violate them are held accountable," White said.