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Sheriff candidates answer questions
Published October 19, 2008
Answering the questions posed by the Del Rio News-Herald Editorial Board were Jose Francisco “Joe Frank” Martinez and A. D’Wayne Jernigan, both candidates for Val Verde County Sheriff.
The following is a transcription of their answers:
DRNH: What do you feel is the most important quality in a sheriff and why?
Jernigan: Well, first off, let me thank the Del Rio News-Herald for sponsoring this. . .There are a lot of qualities that are very important to serve as your sheriff. I feel one of the most important qualities should be a passion to serve, a passion to serve you, the people of this community, the people of Val Verde County.
I do have that passion. I am committed to serving you, the people of Val Verde County. I’ve had that passion for many, many years, and I promise to continue that passion over the years to come.
Martinez: I think one of the most important qualities in a sheriff is leadership. With leadership, you provide direction, focus, professionalism in performing your job, serving the citizens of this community.
I feel that I’ve had the proper training over the last 30 years to provide these services to the citizens of Val Verde County. Thank you.
DRNH: Are you committed to seeking a significant increase in the salaries of your patrol deputies and how do you plan to work toward that goal, if elected?
Martinez: If elected as sheriff, I know that the salaries of the employees of Val Verde County are low. The tax rate is based. . .the tax rate is where the revenue comes from to pay these employees.
I will seek funds through the commissioners court as they establish – the commissioners court are the ones who establish the budget for the sheriff’s department. The sheriff submits a budget to the court. The court approves the budget. The budget currently right now is at $1.2 million. Two-thirds of that is for salaries.
These employees are working for what I left the city of Del Rio for DPS 25 years ago. Their salaries are low. I think that they need to improve the salaries and I think that with proper training and proper personnel, I think we can approach the commissioners, the citizens of this community, and get those funds allowed.
Not only do the personnel from the sheriff’s office need a salary increase, but also all of the county employees. Thank you.
Jernigan: We are currently working with the commissioners court to get the salaries up. We have a salary committee that meets on a regular basis with one of the commissioners that serve as the lead liaison to the salary committee. We’re also working with the jail, with the GEO Group, to find ways to commit the funds that are collected from the jail so that those funds are committed to the deputies’ salaries.
We feel that we have worked up an equitable schedule. It is being finalized even as we speak now, with Commissioner (Ramiro) Ramon and others on the committee.
We feel that here shortly we will be seeing a substantial increase. It may not be to the point that we want it to be. My goal is to get the deputies to $40,000 annual salary. Currently, we compete, as you know, with the Border Patrol, with ICE, Immigration and Customs Enforcement, and others of the federal agencies who are paying $50,000 to $70,000 a year, which is stiff competition for the police department and the sheriff’s office. We are certainly fighting to get that salary up so that we can compete more evenly with our federal partners here in this community.
DRNH: Are you committed to transparency in the operation of the sheriff’s office and of the jail and what steps do you plan to take to ensure public access to your office if you are elected as sheriff?
Jernigan: It has been my practice ever since being in office, to make the office totally transparent. When I initially took office there are people that advised me that we should not be so transparent; however, I’ve made the local news media, the Del Rio News-Herald, Southwest Live and others, such as the San Antonio Express-News, the TV stations out of San Antonio, have made it very clear to them that we are open and available.
Our records are open to them at any time. The deputies are available to them to answer questions concerning cases that they can address. Of course there are certain limitations on active cases by law that we are not able to discuss, but on those cases that have been closed, we will continue to remain open to the media and to the public as a whole.
Martinez: My goal is to make the department completely transparent. We’ll have an open-door policy. The citizens will be welcome. It’ll be your home. We just work there. We work for the taxpayers, so we will welcome everybody to come in. We will also have a . . .I lost my train of thought here.
We will be transparent, and we will be accountable; that’s the word I was looking for. There will be accountability to all the citizens of this community.
DRNH: What quality or qualities do you possess that make you the best candidate for the position of Val Verde County Sheriff?
Martinez: I’ve had the privilege to work for one of the most professional and respected and trained law enforcement agencies in the United States, the Texas Department of Public Safety. I’ve had the pleasure to work under some very good supervisors. I’ve had the ability to learn from their management skills, from their accountability knowledge, from their administrative skills.
So the Texas Department of Public Safety is a paramilitary-type organization that operates under command and control, and they have policies and guidelines to guide the employees.
So that’s what, that’s how I will run the sheriff’s office. We’ll have a policy and procedure that will guide all of our employees, and we will be accountable to the citizens of this community, and I will settle for nothing less. Thank you.
Jernigan: As most of you know, I have spent some 44 years in law enforcement, with 26 years of those in law enforcement management, managing multi-million dollar budgets annually throughout this country, as well as the past 12 years as your sheriff.
I spent seven years on the local police department in Bryan, Texas, 25 years in what was considered the premier federal investigative law enforcement agency, the U.S. Customs Service, the Office of Investigations, in which I served as special agent-in-charge for the Customs Service for all of west Texas and all of the state of New Mexico and the northern part of Mexico.
I had six subordinate offices that I was responsible for up and down the border and was responsible for all smuggling investigations investigated by the Customs Service in that area.
Also spent a couple of years in Rome, Italy, as the Customs attaché representing the entire U.S. Customs Service to the European community – and my wife wants to go back – gained experience there in dealing with many of the foreign governments, particularly the Italian, the French and the German, and the Swiss law enforcement authorities and learning some of the issues that they’re involved in, particularly as they deal with smuggling issues in their countries from Central America and South America.
I promise to you to be committed to excellence. We’re working on a program now; we’re expecting to, within another couple of years, to be certified by the Commission on Accreditation for Law Enforcement Agencies, which is, there are only two sheriff’s offices in the state of Texas that have been accredited, that is the El Paso Sheriff’s Office and the Harris County Sheriff’s Office. My goal is to be the first mid-sized sheriff’s office to be accredited in the state of Texas. And I believe with the path that we’re on now, we will achieve that goal.
It is a long process; these agencies, I’ve talked to both Harris County and El Paso, they say it took them some six years to accomplish this and their agencies, I anticipate in another couple of years we will complete that process. Of course there are benefits to this, including some insurance breaks, et cetera, for the citizenry.
DRNH: If elected, what is your vision for the sheriff’s office for the next four years?
Jernigan: The first priority is salaries. We must be competitive with the city and with the federal government in order to have applicants that meet the qualifications that are demanded by the public.
Also as I just mentioned, the certification by the Commission on Accreditation for Law Enforcement Agencies, I feel is extremely important.
I look forward to completing the communications system that we started here in this county and throughout the region. It’s being looked at by the federal government and by the local agencies. This comm system is a system that was designed to serve not only first responders but also other agencies as well, throughout the region, and gives us direct connection to the Department of Emergency Management and DPS in Austin direct from the patrol car.
Another one of the issues that I hope to take up; we see it as an emerging issue, has to do with cyber-crime investigations. I feel that we need to increase our efforts in that arena, as we are beginning to receive more and more complaints in that area.
Mental health. Mental health issues are becoming a major issue in our community and have been for quite some time. If you’re mentally ill, and if some of you have family member that have these issues, they don’t belong in jail, and we need to find a way to get these people the help that they need and not be incarcerating them in our jail system.
We need to get these people out of the jails, and we’ve already started some initial work with Texas Rural Legal Aid and others on addressing this issue, but I feel that over the next four years this is going to become a major issue and it is one that we as a community must address and must address it soon to help these people.
For those of you that don’t know, there are many people, there are several people in this community that get arrested for such things as trespassing, for going to the grocery store and there are trespass warnings issued by every grocery store to keep these people out of the grocery store. My God, they have to eat, but they are arrested for trespassing and are thrown into our jail, and they don’t belong there. And we need to find a way to solve that. We as a society need to find a way to solve this problem and get it behind us and get them the help. . .(Jernigan stopped by moderator.)
Martinez: One of my goals for the next four years is to take care of our greatest assets, the employees of the Val Verde County Sheriff’s Office. The sheriff, I disagree with him on one little thing, on the salaries. I think that training ought to be a priority for the next four years.
I think through training we develop leadership, we develop focus to better serve the citizens of this community. Also I would like to implement or see it started up and carried through, instead of just dropping the ball, the DARE program that gives the kids life skills to avoid drugs, gangs, violence and crime. Also another program is the GREAT. It’s a Gang Resistance Education and Training Program. I think we need to take care of our kids. We need to teach our kids, the youth of our community; eventually they will be our leaders and that’s where all our resources lie right there.
So that would be my focus, is to establish programs for the youth of this community and also to take care of the employees of Val Verde County, the sheriff’s office. Thank you.
DRNH: Why should the citizens of Val Verde County vote for you for sheriff?
Martinez: I’ve had 30 years of law enforcement experience. I started my law enforcement training right here in Del Rio with the Del Rio Police Department back in 1977.
In 1982, I went to the Texas Department of Public Safety DPS Academy in Austin, Texas, and was assigned to the traffic law enforcement division. In 1998, I promoted into the narcotics service, the criminal law enforcement division, for the Department of Public Safety and served there.
I’ve investigated numerous crimes, both with the city and the county, to include capital murder offenses, murder, such crimes as that, and I think that my experience in investigating these cases with the police department has opened the door for me.
Now I’ve been in charge, in Eagle Pass I was assigned to Eagle Pass for 10 years as the criminal investigator in Eagle Pass. I was in charge of narcotic investigations in Eagle Pass on the Rio Grande. They put me by myself on an island and said go out and seize dope. It took me a little while to learn the ropes, but once that I was comfortable with my surroundings and developed good relationships with different agencies, Border Patrol, Immigration. We became very successful in seizing, in taking a lot of drugs off the street. One of my abilities is, that I think I have a knack for bringing people together, bringing agencies that don’t work well together. For example, in Eagle Pass there’s a different agencies that don’t have a good working relationship, and I have established good working relationships with Border Patrol, Immigrations, and I will treat the supervisors or the people in charge of those divisions, the chiefs, as an equal instead of a superior. I would like to be treated as an equal also. And I think that we can establish a good working relationship where everyone works together for one common goal and that is to serve the citizens of this community. Thank you.
Jernigan: I started my career in 1964 as a police officer in Bryan, Texas and have serve continuously, almost continuously, since 1964, with some 26 years in law enforcement management.
The job of sheriff requires you to be an administrator. It requires you to manage large numbers of people. There’s some 50 people, employees in the sheriff’s office, and not only in the sheriff’s office, you also have the oversight and management responsibility for the jail, which includes some 300-plus employees and a $9 million a year annual budget, payroll budget.
These are all issues I have dealt with for the past 26 years, the types of issues I’ve dealt with. I was heavily involved in the negotiations in bringing the facility here at no cost to you, the taxpayer, some $50 million in construction to build the jail, both sections, the latest one that opened back in January. As you know it’s roughly a 1,500-bed facility. (Garbled) basically converted that piece of property into paying roughly, almost $1 million a year in taxes to the local taxing entities that previously was tax-exempt and no taxes were being paid into the local taxing entities, previous to this.
I brought some $16 million-plus into the county that has been spent here locally, in grants.
And I desire to serve you. As I mentioned earlier, my passion is to serve you, the people of this county, the people of Val Verde County. I love each and every one of you, and I will do my absolute best for you as your sheriff, as I have done in the past and I will continue to do for the next four years.
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