Thread by @modestholdings, Gather round, folks. Please allow me to share some insights from my [...]

Gather round, folks. Please allow me to share some insights from my time as mayor of Lone Tree. https://twitter.com/asherayers/status/1267303104728363009

https://twitter.com/asherayers/status/1267303104728363009

Lone Tree, pop 1,447, contracts with the Johnson County Sheriff for law enforcement service. We're too small to have our own PD (more on this in a bit). But we're required by Iowa Code to have LEOs.

Our contract with the SO provides for 26 hours a week of patrol coverage in town. The sheriff asked for additional hours both years I was mayor. We declined.

We declined for a number of reasons, but if you speak to the council members, I'll bet you a dime you'll hear two things: cost and necessity. Lone Tree isn't exactly a seething hotbed of criminality, you see.

The council members I served with will likely not tell you reason number three: a lack of accountability, responsiveness or meaningful oversight.

Let me flush that out for you a bit. Most months the sheriff would send his chief lieutenant, to council meetings. There were rarely questions, because we had insufficient data to know what to ask.

Most months - most but not all - we'd receive a breakdown of hours spent on patrol and a summary of calls responded to. Exactly what you read in the police blotter, no more.

(Aside to once again plug supporting local news, who keep people like me accountable. Also, you get to read the blotters because of sunshine laws. Also good!)

The reports didn't tell us anything you don't read in the blotter, except for the hours we had deputies in town. This was almost always in excess of the 26 hours per week contracted.

The pitch from the SO was we needed to contract for more hours since they were spending more time here out of charity.

Now, is Lone Tree a fairly safe community because we get free SO patrols, or is even 26 hours excessive?

Hmm. The council made their judgment plain by refusing to add additional contract hours.

In 2018 I prepared a detailed memo for the council with various per hour rates and hours to contract. I fucked up: I should've suggested *fewer* hours.

Mea culpa. But this was less than a week into my first term.

(Aside, again: elect folks who have a balance of sound judgment and experience. Running a business has about fuck all to do with running a muni, especially a small one. Your clerk does that. Worship them.)

Anyway, back to the cops. I've had two OWIs (2004 and 2016, if anyone wants to go fishing for the mugshots). I've been on the business end of law enforcement, and spent some time in the Gray Bar Hotel.

And now I'm on the administrative end of it. Well, let me tell you - back to Ash's initial question - it's mostly to get yelled at and to watch nothing happen.

Every interaction I've ever had with the Sheriff has been pleasant and cordial, if not vapid. I imagine he knows he was my custodian a few times, but if so he never made an issue of it. Kudos.

But when it comes time to get down to the brass tacks of community policing, well folks, the mayor can pound sand. A few examples may illustrate.

As I've mentioned, Lone Tree is a safe town. It is, as one might say, a "community." In many cases we take care of our own. It's usually kids doing dumb shit. (I know all about that!)

But since we're paying for these cops, maybe we can put them to work, right? Since Lone Tree is pretty sleepy, most of the time the deputies are in town they're parked someplace (oft across from the tavern) doing paperwork or at the FD using the loo.

But, yeah, we've got a couple residential streets where speeding is a problem. So we ask, "Hey, can we get some patrols here?"

Also asked: "If you're going to militarize our school, maybe walk through during periods when students can interact with you, instead of when they're all in class?"

(No, I did not frame the request that way.)

So forth, so on. As I mentioned earlier, all the interactions were cordial enough, but the response was always a bit of condescending disdain, akin to, "Hey bud, you're some dipshit mayor a bunch of dipshit townies elected, lol. Leave the cop stuff to cop people."

There are very few minority residents in Lone Tree, but even my fellow white yokels recognize The Law is from elsewhere, rather than the community being in a position to manage its own affairs.

There are two, maybe three, deputies from Lone Tree, at my last check. (It's been a minute.) One's a reservist.

Oh, let me tell you about the time I begged the other to arrest me!

July 3 of last year, getting on late into the evening. At the time, I was moonlighting as a barkeep, IT guy, general roustabout for one of the taverns.

We chuckleheads (the tavern staff, I mean) put our heads together and decided to close early (for the night before Fourth of July) so we could get some suds, and also to support the new tavern down the street.

(Again, the theme here: supporting one another.)

So now the shindig has removed to Thirsty's. I go out back for a cigarette, because that's the shit that keeps me living, even as it's slowly killing me.

Well, somebody comes running up, and *my* tavern is on fire.

Ope!

I run the 50 feet around the corner and call it in. Someone else already had.

The SO is rolling up just as I get there and our volunteer fire department is on scene like it's not the night before the Fourth of July. (Community again: all of those folks live in the Big Twig.)

The Blue Top Tap is a restaurant / tavern over a two bedroom apartment. The bar is closed, that's neat, and the apartment is rented by the tavern manager, who I'd just been slinging back nasty cocktails with next door.

But: she's got cats and we've got firefighters spraying water all over the goddamned place. So I enter the building to switch off the mains electrical and gas utilities.

I've got a deputy yelling at me, the mayor, "Do not go in that building." Remember, I'm literally the guy who signs the 28E (in Iowa jargon, the contract with the SO), who pays the bills, who should be accountable to my citizenry for the performance of the SO.

So I tell her to arrest me. As I mentioned earlier, I've been in the clink before. But this was my first burning building.

She did *not* arrest me. A reminder this deputy is one of the few who actually live in Lone Tree. Maybe that had something to do with it.

So I get the juice and the gas turned off - #protip: turn off the fucking gas! - and come back topside to watch the show with about half of the rest of Lone Tree.

At this point half of the Johnson County Sheriff's Department is on scene, watching bedlam.

@asherayers and all, I've strung you out through this long thread for what I'm going to boil down for you in just a moment, so tune in. This is going to answer your question with crystal clarity.

So I've got a posse of deputies standing around, exercising discretion in not ticketing any and all for open container violations, because everyone brought brews to the BBQ. Good work. But then I make a request.

Lone Tree is between Iowa City and Columbus Junction. You may have recently heard of Columbus Junction during the CoVid crisis. They've got a meat rendering plant there.

Lot of them folks live in the IC metro and commute to CJ. It's time for shift change. (If you live in the fucking community you get to know its rhythms, amirite?)

So I've got a bunch of drunk folks, myself one of them, wandering around a blaze while I've got a bunch of tired folks coming off a stretch of preparing your ham - about to intersect.

So I ask the garrison of sheriff's deputies a small favor. They ain't doing shit but watching a part of my town burn.

"Might I impose upon you to do some traffic control?"

"WHOA RIGHT THERE MISTER MAYOR"

We've now got firefighters from... five? departments responding, bless each and every one of them. Mutual aid saves lives, folks. (And property, too, if that's your jam.)

So we've got Lone Tree, Riverside, Hills, Nichols and Conesville all doing what they do. Serving their neighbors. Someone remind me to write a thread about volunteer rural FDs sometime.

But the SO can't be bothered to do traffic control.

Now me, being Mister Fucking Fancypants Mayor, I've got a problem and the folks we're paying money to can't (won't) help.

Oh, and not only do they get their contract $ from the city, the county pays them out of your property taxes, too.

And don't you believe for one second we didn't try and get funds figures from the county about how much we pay for policing on top of what we contract for. "All the dollars, they go into a pot, and somehow some, many, of those dollars go to the sheriff."

But, circling all the way back to the top, the SO has us by the short hairs. Code of Iowa: you either have your own PD or contract with the Sheriff.

Anyway, deputies won't do traffic control. I rouse the few residents left who are wise enough to be sleeping, including our two public works guys, and a friend who conveniently enough has a Deuce and a Half.

Alright, the cops want to watch the show instead of flag traffic. Whatever. So I narrow my request. Can we borrow vests, lights, anything like that?

"Hmm, derpy derp derpo, no, I'm afraid you cannot."

When I was a journalist some years ago, I got a @wyopress traffic vest. Neat!

So. In my admittedly limited experience, the sheriff does not work for you, regardless of what the contract says. Due to the state law requiring your own financially ruinous PD or a SO contract, keeping your head down and your mouth shut is the way most of us come out.

The circumstances are different, I'm sure, in a Big City like Des Moines. While I may not have been successful in getting the SO to direct traffic, everyone on the spot knew it wasn't for lack of trying.

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