Democrat candidate for Smith County Sheriff Gary Pinkerton, left, is challenging incumbent Republican candidate Larry Smith.

In the race for Smith County sheriff, Republican Larry Smith will face his Democrat challenger, former top jailer Gary Pinkerton.

Smith won a 2012 race to replace J.B. Smith, who served as sheriff for more than three decades. Pinkerton was the chief jailer under J.B. Smith.

The Smith County sheriff supervises 387 employees in law enforcement, dispatch and the jail, amounting to nearly half of all county employees.

The winner of this year’s race for sheriff will oversee more than 100 law enforcement employees, including patrol deputies covering 960-square-miles. The sheriff also is responsible for 27 dispatch employees and the county’s emergency operation center.

Perhaps the most important function of the sheriff’s office is running the Smith County Jail. The Smith County Jail employs 254 jailers who currently supervise more than 600 inmates.

The sheriff currently manages a $29 million budget and receives a salary of about $83,000.

 

ABOUT LARRY SMITH

In his campaign for a second term in office, Sheriff Larry Smith is running on his record. Smith took over the office from J.B. Smith, who held the post for more than 30 years. He also came into office as the county was beginning a $35 million jail construction project.

“Some of the promises I made four years ago when running for election last time were to improve the response times, transparency, more training for employees, constitutional training for command staff, more emphasis on drug law enforcement, improved homicide clearance rates, to fight crime and corruption both inside and outside the sheriff’s office and to begin a chaplain program for the SCSO for the employees and to raise the expectations and accountability for all employees,” Smith said.

Smith points to more press releases, more press conferences, a new sheriff’s advisory board made up of citizens from different parts of the county and social media activity as components his office has put into place to increase transparency.

“We’ve had 92,104 calls for service from Jan 1, 2013, to about Dec. 18, 2015,” Smith said. “Out of those calls for service, we have an average response time of just under 15 minutes.”

Smith also has changed the structure of patrol shifts in an effort to keep more deputies on the roads.

He said the 12-hour shifts (from 6 a.m. to 6 p.m., 6 p.m. to 6 a.m. and an overlap shift from 1 p.m. to 1 a.m.) allow his office to field up to 19 deputies at a time.

Smith also notes success in reaching full staffing and the capacity to house outside inmates as a way to bring in revenue.

He estimated two full units of federal prisoners, 96 total, would net the county about $1.1 million annually.

“It’s not beneficial to me, it’s not beneficial to the employees of the jail to do that,” Smith said. “But I think it’s the right thing to do, because we spent $35 million on this jail.”

Part of his attempt to improve the office has been a restructuring of jail command. Smith said he felt it was in the department’s best interest to bring investigators into the jail to improve accountability and efficiency. He also has brought on three K-9 teams, two of which he said were responsible for more than 130 narcotics arrests in 2015.

 

ABOUT GARY PINKERTON

Democrat challenger Gary Pinkerton, has spent most of his adult life working for the justice system in Smith County, including serving 28 years under J.B. Smith.

Pinkerton worked his way up to chief deputy over the Smith County Jail. Pinkerton retired from Smith County in 2012 alongside J.B. Smith. He then spent two years running the jail in Upshur County, before returning to Smith County as the director of pretrial release.

Pinkerton holds a Master Peace Officer license, Master Jailer license and TCOLE Instructor license.

He is a former president of the Texas Jail Association and the East Texas Peace Officers Association, as well as having served on many other boards for law enforcement organizations.

Pinkerton also believes transparency is key. As part of his approach to transparency, Pinkerton wants to take a community first approach to the sheriff’s office and said he believes it’s important the sheriff is active and visible in the community.

He believes his experience running the jail makes him the right man for the job.

“The statutory responsibility of the sheriff is the county jail,” he said. “I look at it like this: J.B. (Smith) was the sheriff for a long time. Just because I worked with him doesn’t mean I don’t have fresh ideas.”

Pinkerton has proposed changing patrol shifts to 10 hours instead of 12. He also wants to make the organization less top-heavy by moving some command staff and criminal investigators back to patrol.

Pinkerton has proposed setting up a Citizens Advisory Committee for the Smith County area to grow partnerships between law enforcement and community groups.

Pinkerton said the new jail is ideal for rehabilitation and a way to improve the community is to make sure those who come to jail have opportunities to evaluate their decisions and find ways to improve their lives. He said he wants to bring in classes to help inmates work on life and job skills while they serve their time. 

“We need to bridge the gap between youth and law enforcement,” he said. “We can’t go in and assume this person is going to be bad just because they make mistakes.”

Pinkerton also serves as chaplain for multiple peace officers associations.

“I wouldn’t say I’m a preacher, but any time I’ve got an opportunity to speak on God, I will,” he said. “As a peace officer and a child of God, they’re going to look at you as an example.”

He said although the area has not had to directly deal with the tension in the law enforcement community, it is better to head the problem off and build relationships to prevent tragedies from occurring.

Twitter: @TMT_Cory