Some men (and women) were born to be leaders – candidate for Harris County Sheriff Louis Guthrie certainly fits that bill. From the very first time I met him, he has exuded the confidence that comes from being a two-time high school class president, captain of the football team, 100 Club Officer of the Year, and rising star in the HCSO. During my interview with him about the Sheriff’s race, I think that I pressed him so many times on where that drive to be a leader comes from that I couldn’t blame him if he thought I had a man-crush on him. Obviously, he was influenced by his father, coaches, and pastor but in the end, the best that I could come up with is that he is one of those rare breeds that was born for leadership.

Of course, there is more to being a Harris County Sheriff than raw leadership ability alone, although that aspect of the job is probably the most critical. We discussed a wide range of issues that impact the safety of the citizens of the county and how the department would look under his leadership. He focused on three things:

• Data Driven Policing
• Reserves (staffing in general)
• Budget

After our discussion, my definition of data driven policing would mean using actual, live crime statistics to prioritize resource utilization, thus lowering crime by attacking it where it is. Mr. Guthrie has a much better explanation of that, so if you get a chance to attend a forum, you should take the opportunity to do so. I didn’t know that current Sheriff Adrian Garcia had pulled all of the crime analysts out of their roles as he built up his command staff (I wrote about this a year ago). A simple illustration would be putting pins on a map – if a whole bunch of pins ended up in the 500 block of Shoreacres Blvd., you’d know that something unusual was happening there and would alert your patrol units to drive by more frequently.

Staffing is a huge problem at the deputy level, which makes Sheriff Garcia’s build up of command staff even more questionable. The 2010 FBI Crime in the US statistics show that nationwide, the county average for deputies per 1,000 citizens was 2.7. According to a report titled Patrol Staffing Analysis by the HCSO,  the ratio for Harris county is 0.25 for every 1,000. Mr. Guthrie proposes to help alleviate this shortage by quadrupling the reserve unit, along with reversing Sheriff Garcia’s command staff build up. Not only command staff, but media relations would be cut. He would pay for the reserve buildup by seizing drug cartel assets, thereby attacking two problems at once.

To get a sense of how hard it is to staff deputies for unincorporated Harris County, you have to understand just how large unincorporated Harris County is:

I had no idea how much larger the population of unincorporated Harris County is than other Texas Counties. Wow!

About the budget, I’ve mentioned before (here and here) that most of the primary candidates think that the budget must be increased. Mr. Guthrie was a bit more nuanced in our discussion than he was in the forums – during the forums, he stated that his relationship with Harris County Commissioners Court would result in a larger budget. I asked him point blank if that meant that the Court was playing partisan politics and not giving Sheriff Garcia the resources he needed. His answer was no, that the budget under Garcia had grown and would continue to grow. What he meant was that the Court would see that he was prioritizing the resources better than Garcia and they would be more apt to give him what he asked for versus them seeing that Garcia was building up his command staff and not boots on the ground.

A glaring example of what Sheriff Garcia has done was noted in the Houston Chronicle today in a report by Anita Hassan:

Also, county budget cuts have suspended testing in the auto theft division for now. But overall, testing can help to solve more crimes as well as prevent them, Wilson said.

“If you catch one of those guys (car burglars), you can prevent dozens of them over a period of months,” he said. “They are out there every single day driving those parking lots in every part of this city and county looking for targets. If you get one of them off the streets, there’s no telling how many you may have prevented.”

I asked Mr. Guthrie about this report and he replied:

“Touch DNA is just one of many exciting new techniques now used to help solve crimes that were previously relegated to the “closed with no investigation” file.  While the current Sheriff has created most of his own budgeting problems, cutting funding for programs that help put burglars behind bars is a poor choice for the taxpayers.  Garcia could easily trim fat from his bloated command staff and instead put dollars to work solving crimes and putting more boots on the ground.  That would have a real impact of improving public safety in Harris County.” Louis Guthrie

We talked about the budget for quite some time. I was impressed with his detailed knowledge of how the department works, down to the supplies issued each deputy. I was a bit surprised by this because his highest rank in the department had been Lieutenant and budgeting is typically done by the Captains. He told me that he took it upon himself as a Lt. to break down the numbers passed down by his Captain because he wanted to be certain that taxpayer money was being utilized efficiently.

Okay, now we get to the “bad stuff”. You may or may not know that Mr. Guthrie was fired from the HCSO by Sheriff Garcia in May of 2009 after an incident in July, 2008. Mr. Guthrie appealed his firing but it was upheld 2-1 by the Harris County Civil Service Commission in May, 2010. He has appealed the decision and has also filed suit against Sheriff Garcia. Because of the ongoing lawsuits, Mr. Guthrie was limited in what he could say but he is adamant that his firing was a political move by Sheriff Garcia and maintains that he did not violate the law during that incident.

I have no idea what happened that day and think that we should let the appeals play out before we decide one way or the other. But I will say that putting a black mark on a potential rival’s reputation is not unheard of in politics.

I enjoyed meeting with him and learning more about who he is and what motivates him. There are other good candidates in this race and I hope to meet with each of them in the coming weeks. But I think that if the Republican primary voters choose to put Mr. Guthrie up against Sheriff Garcia in the fall, there will be few charges that they picked the wrong guy. I get the feeling that voters would sleep well at night knowing that Mr. Guthrie was in charge of protecting our county.

Website: LouisGuthrie.com

Facebook: Louis Guthrie for Harris County Sheriff

Twitter: Guthrie4Sheriff