A framed, hand-written letter on his desk reminds Sheriff Kevin Walsh of why his job matters.
“Frankly, I don’t even remember that specific case,” Walsh admits. “But whatever I did she says turned her life around.”
Walsh, a Republican, is up for reelection this November for his fifth term as Onondaga County sheriff. He is challenged by two deputy sheriffs: Democrat Joe Price and Toby Shelley on the Working Families line. In 2006 election, Walsh defeated Price with 60 percent of the vote.
Price’s candidacy this time around has been hampered by a controversy over comments posted from his username on The Post Standard’s website. The paper said the comments had “racist, sexist and homophobic undertones.” Price admitted to making at three of the controversial comments after originally denying them all. He remains on the ballot as the Democrat but the party has said it won’t spend resources on his campaign.
The election is Nov. 2.
The Onondaga County Sheriff’s office has about 650 employees and a budget of $70,000 a year. The Sheriff’s office is responsible for law enforcement and some rescue operations throughout the county. The office also runs the county jail. The county is about 800 square miles, with a population of over 450,000. The sheriff makes $106,611 a year.
The Democrats have the advantage in voter enrollment, with 111,450 registered voters in the county. There are 94,701 registered Republicans. The Working Families party trails far behind with 1,397 registered voters.
In his re-election bid, Walsh pitches himself as an experienced, effective lawman with a track record of bringing in innovative equipment like the new Air One helicopter, revamping the jail and fighting against budget cuts to his office. Walsh is an honest lawman who has been up front about his office’s failures and triumphs, supporters among his coworkers say. He’s seen his share of emotional stress in the job and has often put his personal life on hold for work, he and his wife, Joan, say.
Before becoming sheriff, Walsh spent a 20-year career as a deputy in the sheriff’s office from 1966 to 1986. In 1986, he became chief of public safety at the State University of New York College of Environmental Science and Forestry. From 1990 to 1994, he was the Onondaga County legislator from Clay and chaired the legislature’s public safety committee. In 1994, he won his first election as sheriff.
His law enforcement aspirations began when he was young, Walsh recalls. His father was director of security at Carrier Corp. His father’s friends were all in law enforcement, he said. Then-Sheriff Sarto Major was a member of his family’s church and his wife was Walsh’s fifth grade teacher. The sheriff was a visible face in the community, he recalled.
His own choices to go into the law and politics, he said, grew from “the influence of the people that were friends of my father’s.”
He and his wife Joan have three adult children: Shannon, Kelly and Kevin. None have followed in their father’s political footsteps. Shannon is the director of green projects for Darden Restaurants, Kelly is an athletic trainer for Lord of the Dance, and Kevin works for College of the Canyons in California.
A long career in law enforcement and politics positioned Walsh to run for sheriff in 1994. During his time in the legislature, federal courts mandated a new jail facility be built. The Public Safety Building jail was overcrowded and in poor condition, causing the federal government to fine the county $10,000 a day, Walsh said, and mandated the county build a new jail.
As chair of the Public Safety Committee, Walsh ran the negotiations for building a new jail. In 1993, the investigative TV show “60 Minutes” did an expose on the jail conditions. Then-sheriff John Dillon decided not to run again around the same time, Walsh said. That’s when Walsh decided running for sheriff was the next step for him. He defeated former Syracuse Police Department Chief Leigh Hunt in the 1994 election.
The new jail, the Justice Center jail, finally opened in 1995, his first year in office.
In this election, conditions in the Justice Center are a main point of criticism from Walsh’s opponents. But he and his supporters reject the criticisms.
One of Walsh’s strongest supporters is Anthony Callisto, chief of Syracuse University’s Department of Public Safety. He used to serve as the chief of the Justice Center, and is now Walsh’s campaign treasurer. The Justice Center has become a national model for jails, Callisto said
Health care in the jail is run by the county health department, Callisto said. Amid controversy over recent deaths in the jail, Walsh is considering contracting a private company to provide health care, said Callisto.
Walsh is a demanding leader who holds workers accountable, Callisto said. He disciplined two deputies in 2008 after an inmate at the Justice Center committed suicide. One was suspended and the other counseled and retrained after failing to do the routine prisoner checkups, according to The Post Standard.
Walsh also wins praise from supporters for fighting budget cuts by the Onondaga County Legislature. At a meeting of the Ways and Means Committee on Oct. 7, for example, Walsh urged the legislatures to reject plans to eliminate 29 positions in his office and to sell the Air One helicopter. The helicopter serves in fire and rescue missions. The sheriff’s office recently made an infomercial on the helicopters rescue missions, with individuals crediting it for saving their lives.
In fighting the cuts, Walsh worked constantly to find support for keeping the jobs and the helicopter, said Warren Darby, undersheriff and long-time coworker. “He’s working day and night,” Darby said.
Deputies also showed up at the county legislature to support the budget. Lawmakers eventually restored the money for the 29 positions. As of Oct. 20, the Air One rescue helicopter was still caught up in wrangling among county legislators and County Executive Joanie Mahoney, who has vetoed the legislature’s cuts in the helicopter’s funding and asked the lawmakers to be more clear in what they want done about the service.
The sheriff’s job is 24/7, say both Walsh and his wife Joan. Even when he was still a deputy, he said, he missed many of his children’s sports games. Once, he recalled, the car was packed for family vacation when he got a call. A woman had been stabbed with an ice pick. That started a round-the-clock investigation. The family didn’t go on vacation.
The family has a house on Lake Ontario, but Walsh hasn’t gone once this summer, said Joan Walsh. “I wrote a check to the cleaning lady and I said, ‘You’ve been there more than I have,’” Joan Walsh said.
In one haunting memory, the Walshes recall the horrifying case of John Jamelske, who in 2003 was convicted of the rape, sexual abuse and kidnapping of five women. Jamelske had been keeping women in the basement of his home in DeWitt since 1988.
In what Walsh concedes was a failure by his office, a young woman came to the sheriff’s office to report she had been kidnapped and kept in a dungeon-type area where she was sexually abused. She had been kidnapped in 2001. But detectives considered that her facts didn’t line up and chose not to pursue the case, Walsh said.
He didn’t know about the case, Walsh said, until it broke. Eventually, more victims came forward and the investigation quickly received national attention. Walsh appeared on “Oprah” with some of the victims, including the first young woman to come forward. Under questioning from Oprah, Walsh admitted his office “dropped the ball” by not believing the first victim. It was, he said, an “uncomfortable” experience.
His wife, Joan, is more blunt: “It was,” she said, “just an emotional rollercoaster.”
If he’s re-elected, Walsh said, he does not have big plans for the next four years. Instead, he proposes smaller projects. Among them are developing computer programs to track sending of child pornography on the Internet and installing digital cameras in all police cars.
The work, said Walsh, is “never to the point where we say ‘Now the job is done and we can sit back and relax.’”
(Kathleen Ronayne is a junior majoring in newspaper journalism.)
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