Readers of STARK COUNTY POLITICAL REPORT (The Report) will recall that some time ago The Report started a series on the Stark County sheriff race.
The Report has listed in its July 8th installment all the reasons that Dordea claims (on his website) as a basis for Stark Countians to replace Tim Swanson ( the current sheriff) with Larry Dordea (former Alliance police chief).
Today, The Report picks up with the series by considering reason #1 that Dordea gives as a reason Stark Countians should vote for him rather than Swanson:
SWANSON IS UNABLE TO RELATE TO FAMILIES ACROSS STARK COUNTY.
Sheriff Swanson did sit down with a lengthy interview with The Report. Dordea has refused several requests for an interview after complaining to The Report about a piece on him positing the notion that Dordea might be too provincial to be sheriff on the basis of his reservations about a centralized 9-1-1.
Dordea wrote The Report saying (paraphrase) "once The Report got to know him, The Report's thinking would change." After complaining in this vein, he refuses to meet with The Report. Go figure?
Anyway, The Report has deciphered on its own (from Dordea's website) why he thinks Swanson needs to go.
Back to reason #1 stated above.
Sheriff Swanson denies that he is aloof from Stark citizens. He cites that he has on numerous occasions has met with folks who complain about his deputies and their on-the-job conduct. Swanson says he involves himself in neighborhood disputes in a quest to resolve problems before they become law enforcement problems.
A number of the sheriff department encounters are with persons with mental health issues.
Swanson's policy is to identify these factors and get the folks the help they need outside of the legal machinery.
He spends time in Stark County's schools in order to get Stark County youth comfortable with law enforcement and he is pleased to be involved in a "turn around program" in which Swanson gets volunteer prisoners to talk with jail-touring students (six at a time) about avoiding running afoul of the law as they did.
Sheriff Swanson points out how his department goes out into the community with his fingerprinting kids project.
So their you have it folks. Swanson's thumbnail sketch on why he thinks he has good community relations.
The Report renews its request of Dordea to come forward to The Report (either direct or via his website with the specifics on the complaints he has about Swanson and community relations. The Report will confront the sheriff with the specifics, once Dordea sees fit to reveal them.
It could be that this Dordea bases this complaint on the recent area media publicized strip search of a female prisoner incident. If so, he needs to say so. For the record, the sheriff denies his people did anything wrong.
Even if the court system was to determine that the sheriff's department did not handle this matter property, The Report's question is this:
Would a finding of fault on the strip search incident equal not having good community relations, in general?
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