BY DANE COATS
Los Alamos
Editor’s note: Mr. Coats submitted this letter to broaden the distribution of extensive comments made by him and by the author of the LTE (link below) James Wernicke.
As someone who moved here relatively recently, the debate over abolishing the sheriff’s office has felt somewhat strange. This letter to the editor [referring to https://losalamosreporter.com/2026/05/31/lte-the-sheriff-los-alamos-deserves/] is the first time I’ve seen a clear presentation of facts surrounding the issue, though it still feels one-sided in its defense of retaining the position.
I believe there are reasons to eliminate the sheriff’s office beyond the estimated $8,000 in savings. For example, there are better ways to investigate potential corruption within local government. Rather than relying on a locally elected sheriff to investigate other local officials, those investigations should be handled by a higher-level authority, such as the state attorney general or a federal agency. Ironically, this aligns with one of Mr. Izraelevitz’s stated reasons for running: avoiding the appearance of personal conflicts and local political drama influencing official actions.
The LTE also refers to the sheriff as a more democratic office because it is voted on each year. In recent years, some sheriffs in other jurisdictions have used that status to justify refusing to enforce laws they personally believe are unconstitutional. That effectively allows an elected law enforcement official to act as both interpreter and enforcer of the law through selective enforcement which I would consider deeply undemocratic. Having to wait until the next election cycle to address this flies in the face of a so-called democratic position.
I view the sheriff’s office in general as an outdated institution. While sheriffs are democratically elected, the position itself can become undemocratic in practice by concentrating significant authority in a single individual with limited oversight. Like many offices, it works well when occupied by a responsible public servant, but it can also create opportunities for bad-faith actors to abuse that power.Some sources:
Sheriff refusing to enforce covid 19 restrictions –
https://www.foxnews.com/us/new-mexico-sheriff-refuses-enforce-coronavirus-stay-home-orders
Sheriff refusing to enforce gun laws –
https://apnews.com/article/constitutional-sheriffs-5568cd0b6b27680a28de8a098ed14210
on Los Angeles county deputy corruption and gangs –
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_LASD_deputy_gangs
The entire career of Joe Arpaio is also an example of a sheriff going way overboard and borderline despotic – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joe_Arpaio
Response from Mr Wernicke:
The suggestion that state or federal authorities are better positioned to investigate local corruption assumes they will actually do so. That’s a generous assumption about agencies with limited bandwidth and no mandate to monitor a county of 20,000 people.
If we should abolish the sheriff because sheriffs in other jurisdictions have abused the office, then we should abolish the council because some councils are corrupt, and abolish the police department because some departments have engaged in misconduct.
“it works well when occupied by a responsible public servant.”
That is an argument for electing a responsible public servant, not abolishing the office. I urge you to look at the record of the two candidates.
“concentrates significant authority in a single individual with limited oversight”
You have it backwards. The sheriff has been stripped of nearly all authority, while the police chief operates with significant authority and the primary oversight mechanism is the same council that controls the rest of county government. The concentration-of-authority problem you identify exists in the institutional chain the sheriff’s office is meant to check.
You’re new here, but the residents who have the greatest stake in the propriety of their local government — who have lived under it, paid taxes to it, and watched its decisions accumulate over decades — are the ones who elect the sheriff. That is not an accident of constitutional design. The people governed by an institution are its most reliable monitors, because they live with the consequences of its failures in a way that a state attorney general in Santa Fe or a federal agency in Washington simply does not. Delegating local accountability upward to higher authorities is a democratic retreat—not reform—replacing the judgment of the people most affected with the discretion of officials who have no particular obligation to act, and every institutional reason not to.
My response:
First, I want to thank you for the comment. Honestly, I appreciate what you’ve written even if I disagree, because I feel it is well thought out and your article is much more informative than previous articles.
It is my understanding that the state attorney general IS mandated to monitor corruption in local governments. Is it likely? Is it bogged in bureaucracy? I don’t know, maybe I assume so. It is in the charter for their special investigations unit. We should act as if an agency that says it performs a task, does that thing, and reform that organization if it does not. I know I know, turtles all the way down.
“”it works well when occupied by a responsible public servant.” That is an argument for electing a responsible public servant, not abolishing the office. I urge you to look at the record of the two candidates. “
My understanding from previous articles by the candidates themselves is that they are both generally good people and respect each other? Unless there is some greater context, I can only act as if both candidates are responsible, decent people whose main arguments come down to being for and against the abolition of the Sheriff.
“You have it backwards. The sheriff has been stripped of nearly all authority, while the police chief operates with significant authority and the primary oversight mechanism is the same council that controls the rest of county government. The concentration-of-authority problem you identify exists in the institutional chain the sheriff’s office is meant to check.”
I want you to cite the source that says that Sheriff’s exist as a check on the local authority of a mayor or city council because I do not believe that is true in common knowledge. The only mention of corruption in the New Mexico sheriff’s handbook is literally in the list of reasons a sheriff can be removed (page 77). The New Mexico constitution further defines their role: “The sheriff shall be conservator of the peace within his county; shall suppress assaults and batteries, and apprehend and commit to jail, all felons and traitors, and cause all offenders to keep the peace and to appear at the next term of the court and answer such charges as may be preferred against them.” Again, no mention of investigating corruption by local officials.
On the accountability side, the same logic you refer to about the sheriff being voted on every few years is true for the council. I am not against following the voters. I think at the end of the day we will know in a couple weeks what people want and I think healthy discussion is maybe the only way people can learn and grow. I like the idea of having a civilian organization separate from the council having control of the accountability of the police. That idea has come up a lot in police reform discussions I’ve seen online. The local police in town seem like they do a fine job to me, haven’t heard any complaints or about people getting roughed up during arrests. Maybe I would prefer that they focus more on reckless driving than on just speeding, but I think it’s harder to do that because recklessness is not a specific or measurable thing to enforce, unlike speeding. And I guess often the speeding goes hand in hand.
And response to my response, from Mr. Wernicke:
I’d also like to thank you for your good-faith comments. I already addressed some of your points in my responses to Anna. Please read those as well.
I’ll concede to your first point that the SID exists to investigate corruption, but only if it rises to the AG’s priority. The sheriff is obligated to act on complaints from the constituents who elected him. Those are meaningfully different accountability mechanisms, and having both is stronger than having one.
On the candidates, the argument isn’t about character, but about what each candidate intends to do with the office. One has stated explicitly he will work to abolish it. The other has not. Those are meaningfully different choices regardless of how decent either person is.
On the Sheriff as a check on authority, the New Mexico Constitution doesn’t use that language explicitly, but it doesn’t have to. The Federalist Papers don’t use the phrase “checks and balances” either, but the structure produces the function. An independently elected officer with that jurisdiction and no reporting relationship to the county manager or council is, by structural logic, a check on those institutions.
On voting out the Council, the Council and the Sheriff are not equivalent accountability mechanisms, for two reasons. First, the Council controls the institutional chain that includes the police chief. That means the body you would hold accountable for misconduct is also the body that decides whether misconduct gets investigated in the first place. Second, the seven Council seats are staggered. Only three or four appear on any given ballot. A majority bloc can make consequential decisions about the structure of local government while its members are never simultaneously before voters. Some Councilors who voted to strip the sheriff’s duties in 2016 did not face the electorate until 2020, by which time the damage was done. By contrast, the Sheriff is a single independently elected officer whose entire mandate is law enforcement accountability, answerable to the full electorate for that specific purpose, with no institutional relationship to the council or the manager. That is a structurally different kind of accountability that operates outside of the Council’s control entirely.
Rather than drag you through decades of local history, the county commissioned a survey of resident opinion in 2024. Only 38% of residents rate the overall direction of county government positively and only 41% believe the county acts in the best interest of the community. Both are below the national benchmark. Does that sound like a community that is well-served? You don’t take my word for it, but trust the residents who told the county—in its own survey—that something is wrong. An independently elected sheriff is one structural answer to what they’re describing.
Your idea about a civilian oversight board is genuinely interesting and worth pursuing on its own merits, but it would require a charter amendment and probably years of implementation. The sheriff already exists, is already constitutionally authorized, and already on the ballot.
“””
I think this is a reasonable statement and I tend to agree. A solution would be to have recall or votes of no confidence, or some other democratic process for replacing people before a term is over given gross negligence. I guess the steel-man argument against such a thing is that it leads to unnecessary costs in emergency elections, or that the people may turn on someone who can’t get things done quickly enough. I don’t really know the correct answer to this problem, or if there is a correct answer. Just different approaches that work in a variety of circumstances.
To be clear, my argument is against the office of sheriff as an institution, not against any specific individual who has held, currently holds, or may seek the position locally. When I reference examples from elsewhere, I do so to highlight broader concerns about the powers and incentives built into the office, and thus why I support it being abolished, not to imply wrongdoing by any local sheriff.