County Sheriff candidates Shelley and Lenhart claim they each have more relevant “experience” to run the department. How do they plan to do it?

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Onondaga County Sheriff Toby Shelley, a Democrat, is running for re-election for the first time this fall and faces Republican challenger RJ Lenhart.

In 2022, Shelley became the first Democrat to become sheriff in almost 50 years.

The race for sheriff is important given local and national developments: The winner will likely be tasked with moving the jail to Jamesville, managing the county’s relationship with federal immigration officials and integrating new technology into the department.

Central Current interviewed both candidates to learn where they stood on a range of key issues.

When each candidate was asked what differentiated them from their opponent, they both gave the same answer: experience.

Lenhart said that he brings a range of experiences across different sides of law enforcement. He said that he has experience helping run a sheriff’s office from his time as Madison County’s undersheriff.

Shelley said that he brings the institutional knowledge that comes from having been sheriff for four years.

“My team right now has more than 200 years of institutional knowledge in this office,” said Shelley.

Moving the jail

After County Executive Ryan McMahon announced a plan to move the downtown jail operations to a new joint campus in Jamesville, the location of the county’s correctional facility, Shelley started planning what that might entail. The county has given the sheriff’s office $500,000 to study the issue.

Shelley has been adamant that only someone with experience running the jail will understand the move. He believes before incarcerated people are moved, kitchens and medical infrastructure would have to be installed. The downtown jail would have to continue operations while that happens.

The downtown jail and the Jamesville facility have separate unions, another point of contention that would have to be managed by the sheriff.

The sheriff’s office has been watching as New York City closes one of its Rikers Island facilities to see what it would entail, Shelley said. He estimated it could cost $34 million to expand the Jamesville Correctional Facility. Shelley came to that conclusion by comparing the cost per square foot to build the Hoosock-Jensen Salina Community Center in Mattydale to the square footage Shelley envisions for his ideal version of the new jail.

Lenhart questioned the effects of transporting people to and from the jail on road patrols officers and the courts. An “awful lot” will need to be considered, Lenhart said. Lenhart declined to discuss how to handle the unions, saying only that it would be a conversation once he’s elected. Lenhart is undecided whether or not he supports the move, he said.

“I see the pros and cons both ways, and I think having a seat at the table — which I don’t right now — is imperative,” he said.

Opioid response

Lenhart is a former Syracuse police officer and previously served as Madison County’s undersheriff. He currently works in the Onondaga County District Attorney’s Office, where he is the director of opioid response strategies.

The program has two main goals, he said: “One was to keep people from dying, and the second was to keep people out of the criminal justice system for as long as possible. And I see that expanding into law enforcement.”

Law enforcement officers are called into situations like this all the time, Lenhart said. He imagined setting up a “co-response” program in which deputies will be sent out with counselors or peers to make contact with people who might have had multiple overdoses. The deputies would be to provide safety or investigative intelligence, he said.

The program might also help with community relationships with police, he said.

“We’re not just guys looking to throw you in jail,” Lenhart said. “We’re looking to help our community, like we signed up to do.”

Shelley said when it comes to things like drug addiction, deputies usually go out alone and try to connect people to resources. Sometimes they get them emergency care. Deputies are trained on how to help people in crisis, Shelly said.

“We’re more of a bandaid to try and help get these people help because we’re not counselors and we’re not medical people,” Shelley said. “So knowing where those resources are and trying to get the right resources for the person based on their needs, that’s what we would do.”

Immigration

Lenhart said that should be elected, he plans to cooperate with federal immigration officials as much as possible to “rid our community of the dangerous, violent criminals that hurt our people, hurt our community,” he said. Lenhart did add the county does not have the manpower to enforce federal immigration law.

He added that New York state has prohibited some cooperation with federal immigration officials. The Local Cops, Local Crimes Act banned 287(g) agreements between federal immigration agents and local law enforcement, but some law enforcement agencies told the Times-Union they don’t plan to follow it. The Attorney General’s office is currently suing Rensselaer County for failing to comply.

If elected, Lenhart said his sheriff’s office would be limited to helping U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement when an undocumented person has been accused of a crime.

“You’re talking about someone that’s been arrested for hurting somebody, for stealing, damaging property, whatever it may be,” he said. “So they’ve committed another crime in our community. So it would be communication to find out what we need to do to keep our community safe, not let that person back out.”

Shelley emphasized that he currently works with federal partners at the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration, the FBI, and the U.S. Marshals Service.

The sheriff’s office doesn’t help ICE with administrative warrants and what he called “48-hour detainers.” New York State Attorney General Letitia James has said that state and local agencies are not legally required to comply with 48-hour detainers signed by ICE officers without a judicial warrant, so Onondaga County Sheriff’s deputies don’t honor them, Shelley said. If a criminal warrant is signed by a judge, the sheriff’s office will help ICE, Shelley said.

“If there’s a criminal warrant signed by a judge, doesn’t matter who they are, where they came from,” Shelley said. “We’ll go find that bad guy.”

Final thoughts

To Lenhart, one of the biggest issues facing the sheriff’s office is recruitment and retention. He believes that part of that is connected to the workplace environment.

Lenhart told Central Current that the department should create a progressive discipline schedule to navigate when things go wrong. He did not want to be looking for the “aha, gotcha moment,” he said.

“If you’re always looking over your shoulder because you think you’re going to get in trouble for something, how are you able to best serve your community?” Lenhart asked. “We need to provide that environment.”

Tom Newton, a spokesperson for Shelley’s sheriff’s department, said the department already had a progressive discipline schedule.

Asked what else might be important for voters to know, Shelley reminded them that he was running on the We The People line as well as the Democrat line.

“Let’s just cut to the chase,” said Shelley. “If you’re trying to get to heaven, vote for Toby Shelley on that Row F We The People line.”