PicoBlog

Next week, the voters of Culpeper County, Virginia, will have the opportunity to cast their ballots for sheriff. The incumbent, Scott Jenkins, faces a host of challenges, including a federal indictment for selling badges at the low-low-low price of tens of thousands of dollars in campaign donations.

In Virginia, sheriffs can have an auxiliary deputy force, which is a part-time, unpaid civilian police force that can conduct arrests and traffic stops. According to the federal indictment, Culpeper auxiliary deputies got a badge that said “deputy sheriff” on it, so no one would know that the auxiliary deputy wasn’t a “real” deputy. Virginia law requires that such auxiliary deputies receive formal training, but local reporting suggests that Jenkins did not adhere to these requirements.  Nothing quite like an untrained, unpaid (i.e., wealthy), unaccountable posse licensed to exercise the state’s monopoly on violence.   

As an aside, the Culpeper Star-Exponent received a list of 25 auxiliary deputies after submitting a FOIA request. When I FOIAed the same information, I got a list of 15 people, with an annotation that there were “ten names of individuals who are known to be either deceased or not currently serving.” So, 10 people either died or quit between August and October. How convenient for them.

In addition to allowing monied civilians to play cop, however, Jenkins also apparently allowed his teenage son to do the same.  Here’s what happened as reported in the press. In early September, a school employee found a box of ammunition hidden in a bathroom ceiling tile at Culpeper County High School. The school issued a “stay in place” order while local law enforcement conducted a sweep for firearms or other ammunition.

Depressingly familiar—perhaps hardly even newsworthy these days—until things got weird.  From the NBC News I-Team:

Two law enforcement sources close to the incident and a high school parent confirm to the News4 I-Team the 17-year-old boy left the school during the three-and-a-half-hour stay-in-place order, grabbed a sheriff’s office tactical vest from his truck and joined the sheriff’s office response inside and outside the school.

It’s unclear who directed him to do so or why.

So, Jenkins’s 17-year-old son, a senior at Culpeper High, left the school building and donned a tactical vest that said “Sheriff” and … went to work?

The incident generated confusion. Why was this kid allowed to leave the school, which was “on lockdown”? Why is he joining the sheriff’s office response team? 

According to records, Jenkins Jr. is indeed an “employee” of the Culpeper Sheriff’s Office, earning $19,000 per year as a part-time employee. (According to the sheriff, his son is now 18 and will work for the sheriff’s office when he graduates. No word on what happens if Scott loses the election.)

In a forum sponsored by Culpeper County 2A – which endorsed Jenkins for sheriff – Jenkins Sr. tried to explain the situation. “He works for the sheriff’s office in the afternoons,” he said, “the way other kids go to Chick-fil-a.” He then went on to explain that his son had been at yet another emergency response incident, a “barricade homicide scene,” alongside dozens of law enforcement and “a couple other non-sworn staff.”

On the day of the incident, Jenkins said his son was a “scribe” as well as some kind of gopher. As for the vest? “There was one vest laying by the coolers…my son was told yo grab it and put it on…so he had an identifier on,” Jenkins said, accusing the NBC I-Team of acting like his son had a “machine gun.”

He went on to condemn the “hate-filled” statements and then accused “liberals” of being hypocritical for protecting their children while his son was engaged in noble work. “He’s not getting any special treatment,” the sheriff insisted.

Chuck Jenkins’s two brothers already work for the sheriff’s office, one of them as the head jailor. At this rate, he can fill the ranks with his genetic material. Another example of the law enforcement baronial class – why hire based on “resumes” or other nonsense when you can just hire your progeny who won’t’ question your orders or rat you out to the feds?

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