Catherine Rusoff
Watch the CBS Reports documentary “King of the County: The Power of Sheriffs” in the video player above.
County sheriff’s officers are three times more deadly than municipal police, CBS News said investigation discovered.
More people were killed by US authorities in 2023 than in any other year in the last decade, outpacing population growth by eight times. But despite the focus on urban areas, fatal police violence is increasingly happening in small towns across the United States, at the hands of sheriffs, the primary law enforcers in counties across the country.
The revelation is part of the findings of a yearlong reporting effort that documented chronic misconduct in sheriff’s offices and oversight failures that can allow abuses to go unchecked. The consequences can be fatal. But most of these cases go unreported, violating state and federal laws, making patterns of abuse harder to detect and stop.
CBS News gathered and analyzed federal law enforcement data that showed that while more people died overall in encounters with municipal police, deaths in encounters with county sheriff’s deputies occurred at a significantly higher rate. For every 100,000 people arrested, more than 27 people died in sheriffs’ custody, while that number was less than 10 for law enforcement officers in 2022, the most recent year of data available.
“We should be scrutinizing sheriff’s offices as much as we are police departments,” said Chiraag Bains, a former civil rights attorney who served as deputy director of the White House Domestic Policy Council until 2023. “They don’t get enough scrutiny.” ”.
The problem is getting worse. Sheriff’s officers are twice as deadly as they were a decade ago, according to a CBS News analysis of FBI data, and increasingly, they are taking on a more important role in policing America’s cities as small Police departments have been closing down and handing over their responsibilities to county sheriffs.
A dozen sheriffs interviewed by CBS News said they maintain a high standard. But some acknowledged there is little to hold them accountable if they fail to do so. Many attribute this to their unique status as independently elected officials who nevertheless have the discretionary power to take a person’s life or liberty.
“It’s serious business. Not everyone can do this job nor should they be able to do it,” said David Mahoney, a former sheriff of Dane County, Wisconsin, who served as president of the National Sheriffs’ Association from 2020 to 2021 . Although laws and policies vary from state to state, Mahoney said that in most places, “even if you are convicted of a crime, [sheriffs] will continue in office”, unless they decide to resign of their own free will or are forcibly removed.
According to the CBS News investigation, the problems were more prevalent in smaller, more remote communities, where deputies typically had less training, fewer resources and limited oversight. These factors allowed the sheriff’s misconduct to continue longer, becoming more serious and brazen before it was discovered. Even so, they rarely faced consequences.
In McCurtain County, Oklahoma, Sheriff Kevin Clardy was captured on audiotape in March 2023 talking to other county leaders about how they can kill and discreetly burying the bodies of two local journalists who wrote stories about alleged corruption within their office, among others.
CBS News later learned that residents had been making allegations of misconduct for years, ranging from financial improprieties to excessive force and dereliction of duty. An attorney for Sheriff Clardy declined to answer questions from CBS News but denied allegations made in five civil rights lawsuits pending in federal court.
Interviews with members of law enforcement, combined with an original analysis of police data and court records, revealed that three-quarters of reported crimes went unsolved in McCurtain County last year and some apparently suspicious deaths were never investigated or reported by the sheriff’s office. sheriff to independent authorities – a violation of state and federal laws.
But even after a viral news scandal, a documentary trail of alleged violations with audio and video evidence, and calls by the governor to resign, Sheriff Clardy remains in power to this day.
“Nothing happened to them,” said McCurtain Gazette reporter Chris Willingham. He and his father, Bruce, were the journalists whose murders the sheriff and others were heard contemplating.. “They have to feel untouchable, they are above the law.”
Meanwhile, some who consider themselves victims of the sheriff’s office have fled the city, saying they fear for their safety.
Over a 40-year period, people died in police custody at a higher rate in Oklahoma than in any other state, and in 84% of those deaths, police officers or deputies did not report the use of deadly force, according to a published study in The Lancet.
State and federal laws require police to report whenever they use fatal force – but most of the time, this doesn’t happen. An audit by the Government Accountability Office found that 70% of states did not meet their reporting requirements in fiscal year 2021 and warned that this was likely an undercount. According to reports from congressional investigators, government auditors and the Department of Justice itself, the Death in Custody Reporting Act is not enforced.
“Americans are dying needlessly and being killed while in the custody of their own government,” said Georgia Senator Jon Ossof at a Homeland Security and Government Affairs hearing on September 20, 2022. He referred to the state of local prisons – the vast majority of which are overseen by sheriffs – as an “unconscionable” crisis.
Examples of sheriff misconduct are not unique to McCurtain County or Oklahoma. CBS News has documented reports of alleged misconduct or criminal activity by sheriff’s offices in 46 states since 2020.
In recent convictions: A South Carolina sheriff and deputies arrested a man under false pretenses, stole from the county, and then falsified records to cover it up. A Georgia sheriff abused pretrial detainees. A “Goon Squad” of white Mississippi sheriff’s deputies tortured black men. A Nebraska sheriff’s deputy ran a multimillion-dollar fraud scheme. A Northern California sheriff accepted bribes to grant gun licenses to political donors. There are also ongoing cases involving charges ranging from excessive force to unlawful restraint and sexual assault, gang activity, kidnapping, obstruction of justice and harassment of a racial minority in order to drive them out of the county. The list continues with countless other allegations, such as in McCurtain County, that have not been charged.
An estimated 72% of the US is rural, where more than 3,000 sheriffs serve as primary law enforcement officials. Only Alaska and Connecticut do not have sheriffs; the latter abolished the position two decades ago due to high-profile corruption scandals.
What is needed to qualify for the position of sheriff varies from state to state: some require law enforcement experience, while others allow any U.S. citizen over the age of 18 to wear the star. The vast majority of sheriffs are elected, making voters the ultimate check on their authority. But candidates often run unopposed, and it’s not uncommon for a sheriff to remain in power for decades.
Forced removal is rare and elections have historically proven to be an unreliable check on misconduct when abuse is directed at minority communities, which Bains described as “a failure of democracy”.
“The federal government exists, its authority exists for this reason. It can come from the outside and exercise independent scrutiny and judgment,” he said, adding that the FBI and Department of Justice take these allegations very seriously. “It’s not just a bad apples situation; there are systems that need attention as well.”
Thirty years ago, Congress authorized the U.S. Department of Justice to investigate not just individual cases but also patterns or repeated practices of civil rights violations. But with approximately 18,000 local law enforcement agencies to oversee, today the DOJ has only a few dozen people with the experience to conduct long, labor-intensive oversight investigations.
Since 1994, the DOJ has filed just seven lawsuits against sheriff’s offices for what are called “pattern or practice” civil rights violations. The Trump administration has not brought forward a single case. The Biden administration has presented just one.
The Justice Department declined to comment.
~Sarah Metz contributed reporting.
