Mel Jackson Advertisement

Mel Jackson is a retired 27-year veteran of the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department. He is running on the issue of leadership, which he claims DeMeo is not providing, and wants to make the Sheriff's Office more responsive to the people.

"We put people in government and sometimes don't get our voice in government after we elect them," Jackson said recently.

Jackson's criticisms fall into three main areas: officers' lack of training and customer service, the need for "criminalistics" and better traffic control.

"If we get back to basics, I think we can change society's ills," Jackson said. Mentioning the recent kidnapping and rape of a woman in Pahrump, he called the present Sheriff's Office "dysfunctional," a charge also taken up by candidates Wade Lieseke and Jeanette Smith.

"When you have that much of an outcry, there's got to be a problem," Jackson said on Tuesday. "It seems every candidate has one objective in mind: to remove the current regime."

Candidates have proposed remedies such as a Crime Scene Investigation (CSI) Unit and better detective work in solving crimes.

"I'm good at investigations," Jackson said earlier. "We have no criminalistics," that is, no personnel qualified to conduct death investigations on the Pahrump scene. "I've been handling forensics and working death investigations for years and years and years, and I'm good.

"Out here the officers have to do too much," Jackson charged anew. "They have no skills at collecting or photographing evidence. They do haphazard investigations. Nye County should have its own criminalistics to read fingerprints, instead of having them sent off to be read at Metro," said Jackson. There, it takes three to six months for a document to go through the process, he said.

Jackson said he wanted to keep law enforcement scaled to the size of the local populace, in contrast to the incumbent's record of trying to keep up with the needs of Nye County's growth through a corresponding growing of the office's resources, its personnel and equipage needs.

"When the system gets too big, it gets out of control," Jackson said. "We need a hands-on, citizen-involved sheriff's office. The people in the neighborhood have to work together."

Jackson called for citizen involvement with the setup of a civilian review committee, which he said would "keep the Sheriff's Office on the straight and narrow.

"If you're operating within the confines of the law, you shouldn't have anything to hide," he said. "I don't have any problems with a citizen review committee or board to oversee certain incidents when use-of-force issues, such as with Taser guns, are involved."

The FBI is investigating the Sheriff's Office, Jackson claimed, "and other in-house conditions, such as sexual harassment and sexual discrimination."

He also said deputies often behave like bullies because they are overworked and disgruntled with their leadership. "Citizens are scared of these guys," he said.

The remedy is better training so that "more experienced cops can enforce the law using their discretion" when encountering violators, Jackson said, rather than just intimidating people.

Jackson cited numerous complaints from disgruntled Pahrump residents about Sheriff's Office dispatch operators, "officers pulling people over looking for drugs," officers lacking experience conducting flawed investigations and other citizen complaints.

Jackson said people just want to see their tax dollars spent wisely. "They want to know that wrongs will be righted by strict enforcement and successful prosecution," he said.

Jackson said DeMeo's office isn't making use of the resources already allocated. Take the mobile crime unit, Jackson said. "It's been parked in the same spot for four years. It's tools like this that get wasted poorly.

"The computers in the patrol cars don't work," he alleged. "DeMeo bought that mess, put 'em in the cars, and they don't work. And here we are getting ready to give these guys more money to do communications and they don't even have the computers working.

"I got to clean house, bring in people who think just like me," he said in July. "I'm not going to have anybody working for me that I can't control.

"We'll start trying to change the way law enforcement has been conducted in Nye County for some time," he said.

Among the specific charges Jackson made were the following:

Under Sheriff DeMeo, 39 officers have quit, Jackson said.

Jackson claims that officers have been told by the sheriff not to write citations for traffic offenses on Highway 160 but let the Nevada Highway Patrol do it.

Jackson claims the Sheriff's Office does not have a good policy manual, indicating a lack of guidance for new officers.

Jackson accused DeMeo of having "an attitude problem" and "an adversarial relationship" with officers on the front lines -- with all, in fact, except for "the untouchables," those above the grade of lieutenant.

Sheriff's Office personnel warrant special training in elderly abuse and other crimes targeting senior citizens, said Jackson. Currently, the office is without anyone trained to handle those cases, he said.

"For the most part, the body of an organization is only as good as its leadership," said Jackson, and the leadership is presently "dysfunctional."

"This is not about putting a new person in there," he said. "It's about putting the right person in there."