It is time to start hiring, instead of electing, district attorneys and sheriffs

[jmowreader]

Every jurisdiction I know of has an elected district attorney and an elected sheriff. A lot of them do a good job. But the thing is, every elected official who's in a job that allows her or him to stand for reelection is very concerned about being reelected...and these people run for reelection on "I locked up x number of criminals." The Maricopa County DA will never get reelected on a "I turned loose 500 people Sheriff Joe wrongfully arrested" platform. And most sheriffs would rather run, say, a prostitution sting that'll throw 200 men in jail or set up a series of DUI roadblocks that issue "700 citations" of which two are for DUI because the drunk drivers are smart enough to figure out where the roadblocks are and not go home that way because they generate raw numbers. (In Fayettenam they quit doing the DUI checkpoints because they finally realized the checkpoints were catching people with expired inspection stickers, and the drunk drivers were being caught by patrolling officers.)

So I figure it like this: We get rid of the election system for these two positions, and hire competent people instead. At their annual reviews we judge them on one huge criteria: what has the crime rate done? Under that standard Arpaio would have been out on his ass years ago because, grandstanding apart, crime is WORSE in Maricopa County now than it was when Arpaio was first elected.