To the Tarrant County sheriff: Stop campaigning in uniform, for all officers’ sake
Sheriff Bill Waybourn, leave us out of political ads.
Stop wearing our Tarrant County uniform, emblems and badge in campaign ads, like the TV commercial with three of your deputies and three county constables backing congressional candidate Beth Van Duyne.
That county uniform, emblem and badge are not yours to wear for partisan politics.
They are ours.
They belong to everyone in Tarrant County.
Not only is wearing your uniform for political campaigning wrong — it’s also damaging for law officers working to maintain the public’s trust.
You’re better than this.
The more the public sees you in uniform taking a partisan side, the more they see your deputies as political, and the less they trust all law officers in uniform.
Federal law actually bans law officers and public employees from campaigning in uniform. But a special advisory grants a loophole for elected officials like sheriffs and constables.
(They don’t answer to anyone but the voters Nov. 3.)
“When people see police lining up on one side or another, they shake their heads,” said Dean Emeritus Stephen Sheppard of the St. Mary’s University School of Law in San Antonio.
He wrote a 2007 book, “I Do Solemnly Swear: The Moral Obligations of Legal Officials.”
“In the old days, sheriffs would wear a suit when campaigning, but that kind of went away when they realized the power of the uniform,” he said.
Now, he said, “a sheriff can get away with it. But I would like to think the rules are a minimum standard. I would like to think a thoughtful, careful leader would do more than the minimum.”
The “No Police, No Peace” TV ad is part of Van Duyne’s Republican campaign for the open Congressional District 24 seat against Democrat Candace Valenzuela.
The ad also includes elected constables Clint Burgess of Mansfield, Jon Siegel of Fort Worth and David Woodruff of Arlington, along with three county deputy sheriffs wearing black T-shirts or jackets marked “Sheriff.”
Judge Rick Hill of College Station is president of the state Justices of the Peace and Constables Association.
“My personal opinion is that if you have officers in uniform involved in campaigning, that’s not OK,” Hill said.
“But there’s nobody to punish them.”
Van Duyne’s and Valenzuela’s campaigns declined comment.
Waybourn’s Democratic opponent, former police captain Vance Keyes of Fort Worth, has not publicly made the ad a campaign issue.
The sheriff’s chief of staff, David McClelland, pointed to a U.S. Office of Special Counsel’s advisory opinion saying elected officials “may attend campaign events” in uniform under the Hatch Act, the federal law that restricts campaigning by all public employees of agencies spending or connected to federal funds.
All three deputies were wearing personal gear and off-duty, McClelland wrote.
(It also would be illegal if Waybourn asked deputies to campaign.)
McClelland wrote: “The sheriff is a very public elected official. ... He is seen hundreds of times throughout the week/month at events where our team members might be attending on their own time. Our opinion is simply being seen with the Sheriff in a photo or video does not mean they are pushed into an official capacity.”
Waybourn also drew attention in 2018 over political posts on Facebook and Twitter accounts that appear to be official county property but are actually operated by his political campaign.
County Administrator G.K. Maenius of Fort Worth, a former San Marcos police officer, said the county uniforms, emblems and badges are definitely public property, although elected officials choose designs.
Sheriff and constables have “some degree of autonomy” to wear them in campaigns, he said, but deputies should not wear any equipment they wear during work or that was bought with public money.
“You really can’t use your uniform in a political ad,” he said.
For the sake of law officers everywhere, stop.
Note: Updated Thursday to correct that Election Day is Nov. 3.
This story was originally published October 3, 2020 at 11:50 AM.
