The Pima County Sheriff’s race has often been contentious.
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Sheriff Mark Napier, a Republican, is facing former sheriff Chris Nanos, a Democrat, in the general election this year. Napier beat Nanos in the 2016 race, after Nanos had served as interim Pima County sheriff for a year.
Napier recently threatened to sue Nanos, saying Nanos “intentionally, and with actual malice, disseminated complete falsehoods and defamatory statements about Sheriff Napier.”
He called Nanos’ tactics dirty politics and demanded a public apology and that Nanos take down a website and Facebook page both titled, “No More Napier.”
Nanos has called Napier’s demands and lawsuit threat “political theatrics.”
On Thursday, Nanos said Napier’s threat is “right out of the Trump playbook.”
“Note he never addressed the lie ... just deflecting,” Nanos said in an email. “He’s been accused of lying 4 different times ... where there’s smoke there fire.”
None of Napier’s demands were met, and Napier says he’s consulting with his lawyers on possible next steps.
“He ignored my effort to have him simply appropriately apologize for a defamatory statement so we can move forward,” Napier said, adding that Nanos called him a bully.
Nanos wants to reform the department and reduce the jail population. He was interim sheriff from 2015 to 2016 after Clarence Dupnik, who held office from 1987 to 2015 retired. Before being the county’s top cop, Nanos spent 41 years in law enforcement, starting as an officer with the El Paso Police Department.
In 1983, six years after becoming a police officer, Nanos moved to Tucson and joined the Pima County Sheriff’s Department as a correctional officer. He worked his way up the ranks over a three-decade career.
During his year leading the department, an FBI investigation found that several members of the department “conspired to circumvent the restrictions on the use of forfeiture funds.”
Nanos did not face charges in the investigation, which he has said he inherited from his predecessor.
If elected, Nanos said he wants to reform the Sheriff’s Department, starting with equipping deputies with body cameras.
He also plans to reduce the jail population, using ankle monitors and a deflection program similar to that of the Tucson Police Department, he said in an email.
“Such a program could result in savings of several thousands of dollars in associated jail and court costs, by effectively placing those who suffer from drug abuse and/or mental illness with the right social service providers,” Nanos said.
The ankle monitors would also help the department keep track of low-level offenders who are released from jail to go to work while serving out their sentences, he said.
“Although these are low-level nonviolent offenders, we have no way of actually knowing whether they actually went to work or not,” Nanos said. “But with today’s GPS technology, we can track their every move, keeping our community safer and saving taxpayer dollars.”
Nanos said in his time with the department he created and oversaw programs that helped reduce crime and keep the community safe. One such program is the use of school resource officers, he said.
“I know that if our kids graduate high school they stand a seven times greater chance of not ending up in our jail,” he said. “I will always work hard to ensure that our kids’ future is bright because they are our future, and there is no better crime prevention program than when you invest in our kids.”
Napier: reforms to continue
Napier has 38 years of law enforcement experience in four departments, including 21 years with the Tucson Police Department.
If reelected, Napier says he wants to continue implementing the department’s ACT reform plan, which stands for accountability, community engagement and transparency. Napier presented the reforms this summer.
“This will take some time to fully implement but is fundamentally necessary to answer the community’s desire for law enforcement reform,” Napier said in an email.
Part of that reform includes a newly created citizen review panel which will have input on discipline and use-of-force cases within the department, Napier added.
Napier also wants to complete operations for better service in rural parts of the county and Robles Junction, near Three Points west of Tucson. The department has federal grant funding to hire 10 more deputies to provide more service to western parts of the county and Arivaca, Napier said.
“Our deputies will be cross-trained in search and rescue to ensure we have a more effective response to distress calls,” Napier said. “Finally, this will better position us to address transnational crime threats coming up from the border, which will improve public safety for everyone.”
He wants to also serve another four years to focus on running the department like a business, which will include a strategic plan for staffing and recruiting, fiscal management and effective community engagement.
“Over the past three years we have sought to enhance the skills and level of engagement of our commanders,” Napier said. “We are now a far more capable and competent organization than we were.”
Napier said his diverse professional experience and education will be an asset in continuing to lead the department if he’s reelected.
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