Sheriff Who?

Still, Roberts acknowledges that the rank-and-file would have liked Valdez to publicly address the situation. "We thought she should be out there, but she didn't think it was necessary to be public about it."

Scott Chase, a recent candidate for county commissioner who served on Valdez's transition team, says that the sheriff had her reasons for not coming out in front of the AIS issue. "I think a lot of her advisors thought she should have been more aggressive stating what the facts are," he says. "But she's not that confrontational a person, and to get out in front of it she would have gotten crosswise with the commissioners who control her budget."

There are times, however, when a sheriff has to be confrontational for the good of her department. A county employee says, with astonishment, that Valdez has never given first-person feedback to the commissioners court about the still-troubled AIS program. Nor did she ever talk to them personally about UTMB even as allegations continued that inmates were not receiving medication. Peritz says Valdez has a liaison to the court on both AIS and UTMB issues. "They spoke for the sheriff at her instruction," he says.

The department's various unions also touch on the theme of Valdez's low profile. For many, Executive Chief Jesse Flores, hired by Valdez last November, has become the go-to guy. "We've been cut off from the sheriff," says Roberts, who likes Valdez. "We're to take all our concerns to the executive chief, but in our opinion that's not such a bad thing. He's a real decision-maker."

Interestingly, the minority unions at the Sheriff's Department are the most troubled by her leadership style. "She's not accessible at all," says Mark Robinson, president of the Dallas County Peace Officers, a largely African-American union. "She doesn't have an open-door policy, which is what we were accustomed to."

The National Latino Peace Officers Association's Dallas chapter feuded with the county's first Latina sheriff last year after claiming that the department's DWI task force selectively targeted Hispanic neighborhoods, resulting in a disproportionate number of Hispanic drivers being arrested for drunken driving. Even Anglo officers have complained that the task force was unfairly going after Hispanics, in part because they were less likely to contest the charges. Peritz says the department ordered an investigation of the union's claims and found them to be unfounded, but the Dallas chapter insists that a problem exists. "This pattern is deeply disturbing, as is your repeated refusal to take corrective measures," reads a letter from a union official to Valdez. "Sheriff Valdez, it is far more irresponsible to allow your deputies to abuse the public trust. It is far more troubling that you have let nearly a year go by without rectifying this situation."

The theme of Valdez's lack of hands-on management style came up again this week when the county auditor's office released the Sheriff's Department's overtime expenses for the first half of the 2006 fiscal year. From October 2005 to March 2006, the department had nearly 35 detention service officers earn more than $15,000 each in overtime, almost as much as they earned in non-overtime pay. One jail employee made an incredible $35,000 in overtime pay for the six-month period, with two others making more than $20,000.

Peritz explains that the department has been forced to pay overtime costs in order to adequately staff the jail and keep up with state standards. Dallas County Commissioner Ken Mayfield, however, says that the department is just about fully staffed and that Valdez, not unlike her predecessor, is paying scant attention to overtime costs.

"Overtime is just ridiculous. These numbers are just ridiculous," Mayfield says. "There's very little management being exercised."

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After it became clear that the health care crisis at the jail was not going to magically disappear, the U.S. Justice Department announced in November that it would investigate health and sanitation at the jail. Justice, which finished the bulk of its investigation earlier this spring, is expected to deliver its strongest words about the county's former medical provider, UTMB. The department also will likely single out the county's malfunctioning computer system for sanction. It's not clear what exactly they're going to tell us about our sheriff, although Justice Department investigators have noted problems with the operation of the jail as well, according to a county employee. In any case, whether the Department of Justice chooses to apportion blame among Valdez, the medical provider and county or if it just brands them together as a part of a monolithic jail-health industrial complex, few people expect that the agency will merely slap everyone's collective wrist.

"There's little likelihood DOJ will let them off the hook easily," says Mark Haney, who is one of the attorneys representing Mims and who has talked to investigators about the jail.

Through her spokesman, Valdez declined to answer any questions about the Justice Department's investigation. On the subject of jail health, however, she says that Chief Deputy Edgar McMillan, who is responsible for inmate detention, issued a written directive last year giving supervisors the authority to take action whenever they believe the medical department has failed its duties, "even to the point of sending the affected inmate to the hospital."

But a Sheriff's Department employee points out that Valdez has made no significant changes concerning how officers and supervisors are trained. This is a significant issue, especially considering that the department's own internal affairs investigators blamed the guards after Mims went without water. Through her spokesman, Valdez does not specify any change she's made in training other than those mandated by law. Insiders say the sheriff has no chance to improve the operation of the jail if she fails to overhaul how the jailers approach their jobs.

"There is a big difference in providing the minimum standards required to keep an employee licensed and providing extra training to improve things," says one employee at the Sheriff's Department.