PHILLIP GOMEZ / PVT Mel Jackson: The retired Las Vegas detective's campaign hangs on the fashionable ideal of community policing. Advertisement

Mel Jackson, who is running for sheriff of Nye County, told Nye County Democrats at a meeting Monday night at the Bob Ruud Community Center, that the current leadership of the sheriff's office is "dysfunctional."

That would be Sheriff Tony DeMeo, who is running for reelection as a Republican.

DeMeo has come under increasing attacks recently as campaigns to replace him have mounted and as recent spikes in crimes and gun violence have appeared in Pahrump's news.

Jackson, a retired 27-year veteran of the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department, told a considerable crowd of senior citizens that if they would only "lop off the head" of the Nye County Sheriff's Office, and replace DeMeo with his brand of leadership, they would see law enforcement become what it should be -- responsive to the electorate.

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

"I would like to take law enforcement down a different road in achieving less crime," he said. "The behavior of society does not change with more jails, more cops ... I'd like to see the sheriff's office take it back in time a bit ... to where the family -- that's where it's got to start -- wants to initiate crime control."

Admitting that foot patrols were impractical for sheriff's deputies in a town the size of Pahrump, Jackson said officers can nevertheless meet with families in neighborhoods to which they are assigned, in order to learn about their particular concerns.

"It's going to take the community to be behind the officers," Jackson said. "It's going to be incumbent on the citizens to get to know the officers. When you build a rapport with an officer, it's going to be a lot quicker that the officer is going to get there."

Jackson called for "getting back to basics" as his sociological message for curtailing crime in a community with a growth curve like Pahrump's. "If we get back to basics, I think we can change society's ills," he said.

For Jackson, that means a sheriff's office with its fingers close to the community pulse, and with a leadership focused on criminal investigation and deterance.

Jackson mentioned the kidnapping and rape of a woman in Pahrump last weekend as an example of how the town's present law enforcement is dysfunctional.

"I know how I would have handled the scene," he said, indicating that detectives needed to respond "as quickly as possible" before evidence became contaminated. But he pointed as well to the obverse side of that coin, the responsibility of citizens to pay attention to law enforcement issues.

"I want to show people what law enforcement is all about, other than enforcing the law," Jackson said. "It's about the needs of the citizens.

"We have to work together to make it function," he said. "But sadly, ... I don't want this to turn into Las Vegas, because I don't want to have to move again."

Jackson said he retired to Pahrump seven years ago so he could ride his stable of horses and enjoy with his family a relatively crime-free environment.

"I don't like criminal behavior," he said with some passion in his voice. "I'm very strict on that."

Jackson portrays himself in his campaign TV image as that of a Western good guy on horseback, with the theme song "It Takes a Hero."

Jackson said he wants to keep law enforcement scaled to the size of its local populace, in contrast to the incumbent's focus on meeting the needs of Nye County's growth and a corresponding growth of the office, its personnel and equipment.

"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 get together."

Currently, he said, "Law enforcement has the attitude that unless you're dealing with kilos (of drugs), it's not worth doing anything about. It's not economically feasible."

But Jackson said that attitude will change if he is elected. "As your sheriff, I'm good at telling people what to do," he said.

"I'm also good at investigations," he added, segueing to the other of his main issues. Currently, he said, "We have no criminalistics," no one 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."

Jackson said his responsibility as a supervisory detective in Clark County was to drive around with law books in his car to death investigations at crime scenes. He would advise on issues where possible civil rights violations were involved.

Jackson said that if elected he would make a clean sweep of the top ranks in the sheriff's office, bringing in his own top investigators from Metro Las Vegas. He mentioned retired Las Vegas detective Dan Forbes.

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

"We'll start trying to change the way law enforcement has been conducted in Nye County for some time," he said. In that respect, Jackson made a number of allegations:

Under Sheriff DeMeo 39 officers have quit, he said. "They're working these officers to death," Jackson said; "then they've got to go to court. They're overworked, they're exhausted, and then they get to your house."

Jackson particularly was critical of the present practice of using deputies to act as coroner's investigators, calling them "half-assed trained.

"That's a big problem with me: A coroner should do a coroner's job. There's a big conflict there," he said. "How can you do a decent investigation? I don't know how that foolishness got started in Nye County, but it's like everything else here."

Officers have been told by the sheriff not to write citations for traffic offenses on Highway 160, he said. Rather, let the understaffed Nevada Highway Patrol take care of it.

"It's wrong that the Nye County Sheriff's Office doesn't know how to handle the fatals on Highway 160," Jackson said. "They have no traffic unit."

Elsewhere in his talk, Jackson said, "Officers are not writing tickets. Those are things that are correctable."

"They don't have a good policy manual," he said of the sheriff's office.

"For the most part, the body of an organization is only as good as its leadership," Jackson said. "The present sheriff is not providing that leadership. It's dysfunctional."

By that last remark, Jackson referred to an "attitude" problem DeMeo had and his "adversarial relationship with officers," all except for nine officers, whom Jackson said were called "the untouchables" -- top-echelon sheriff's office executives above the grade of lieutenant, allied with the sheriff.

During the question and answer period, one man asked about a rumor he had heard of deputies "following young girls around town, down Gamebird (Road) a long way and then flipping on their lights (to get their attention)."

Jackson replied, "I've heard these stories and I know they are true. It should not be a policy of the Nye County Sheriff's Office for deputies to be hanging out at the high school. Ordinarily, that's called pedophilia."

Someone else wanted to know what Jackson thought about the current sheriff always asking for more resources and bigger budgets to afford new gizmos.

"I've seen that budget, and these guys are getting a lot of money," he said.

On another issue, Jackson criticized the alleged secrecy of the present sheriff's office: "You got an administration there that doesn't want anybody looking at anything," he said. "You got to get inside the house to look into the closets," he added. "I guarantee you, somebody gets sneaky in Nye County and nobody's going to know about it."

Turning to Second Amendment issues of gun control, Jackson said it was a matter for the state Legislature, not the county. "Don't fear us," he said. "I'm not out to take your guns.

"What I have a problem with is accountability and responsibility for guns," Jackson said. "If somebody's kids visit your house and they get killed, you're not only going to get prosecuted, you're going to get sued." Irresponsible parents don't lock up their guns, he said. "I'm a single-action-revolver type of guy, myself. I don't have any automatic weapons."

Next, Jackson turned to criminal gangs, which he called "gangbangers." He tied them to issues of gun control. "The minute they get it into their heads they can carry guns (legally in Nevada) like everyone else, ... guys 18, 19 years old -- a whole family of 'em, from 2 on up -- will be getting them," he said.

Jackson concluded as he started, calling for community support of his campaign, and then continued support in office.

"It takes a community to get behind the police to change society," he said. "You have an opportunity to tell me what you want." Elect me, he said, and what you'll get is good service.