The Loudoun County Board of Supervisors has taken a step to identify qualifications for candidates to lead the county’s sheriff’s office. Under Virginia law, the only requirements are that candidates reside in the county for six months and be over the age of 18.

Loudoun County Board of Supervisors Chair Phyllis Randall made a motion at the Board’s Tuesday meeting to study changing those requirements. She suggested that the Board ask the International Association of Chiefs of Police (IACP), which contracted with the county to produce the report, to develop a list of minimum qualifications for the role. The motion passed eight to one, with Supervisor Kirsten Umstattd (D-Leesburg) opposed.

Randall said her motion grew out of concerns she’d heard from sheriff’s deputies about the possibility of ending up with an elected leader who had no law enforcement experience.

“The qualifications to be sheriff [are] literally lower than the qualifications to be an entry level person in the sheriff’s department,” Randall said. “It is ridiculous.”

Other Board members cited the last sheriff’s election in 2019, where incumbent sheriff Michael Chapman, a Republican, defeated a Democratic opponent with no law enforcement experience.

“We did have a candidate who was extremely unqualified and thankfully he did not win, but garnered a significant amount of the vote,” said Supervisor Caleb Kershner (R-Catoctin). “So that is a problem.”

The Board’s motion is a first step in a potentially long process, which could ultimately end in a proposal for an amendment to Virginia’s state constitution. That would require approval by multiple sessions of the General Assembly and by a statewide popular vote.

Randall said the Board would add a push for sheriff’s qualifications to its 2023 legislative agenda. Supervisor Tony Buffington (R-Blue Ridge) raised concerns about the viability of such a proposal in Richmond.

“If I’m only going to put things forward that I know the General Assembly is going to do, I might not ever put anything forward. At least let’s try and see if we can get it through. And if we can’t, then we can change what we’re doing,” Randall responded.

The move to explore establishing qualifications standards came following the presentation of a report on the possibility of creating a police department and taking most law enforcement duties away from the Loudoun County Sheriff’s Office. (In localities in Virginia that have both, the sheriff generally runs the jail and is responsible for civil process service, but patrol duties are turned over to the police department.)

Sheriffs in Loudoun County are elected by voters, and once in office have broad authority over approaches to policing, hiring and firing officers, and approaches to public transparency (or lack thereof). A police department would be accountable to the Board of Supervisors, who could appoint the police chief and weigh in on department priorities.

According to the report, creating a police department would give the Board more direct oversight over policing in Loudoun County — but it would also be costly, increasing the county’s annual spending on law enforcement by at least $133 million per year in the first 10 years. The total price tag in that time would be between $213 million and $307 million, according to IACP estimates.

At Tuesday’s meeting, the Board heard extensive public comment on the issue, discussed the report, and asked questions of its authors before voting on Randall’s motion.

Officials and commenters on both sides of the issue diverged from consideration of the structural questions to address controversies surrounding Chapman, the current sheriff, including former deputies’ allegations of a retaliatory workplace culture in the office.

“The term I hear most often is ‘it’s toxic,’” said Randall. “So I don’t know that I would agree that something’s not broke.”

In putting forth the motion, Randall also offered a sharp rebuke of Chapman for using official communications channels to push back on the idea of the report instead of focusing on alleged problems in his own office.

“Instead of attacking me continuously, repeatedly on your own letterhead, in every other way, perhaps we can find out what’s going on with the deputies. What’s really going on with them?” she said.

Considering a new police department

The Board of Supervisors originally tasked county staff with examining the possibility of creating a new police department to operate in addition to the sheriff’s office back in July 2020, as the murder of George Floyd at the hands of a police officer drew scrutiny to law enforcement across the country. The idea of the report, however, dates back to 2012, when it became an issue in the sheriff’s race, Randall pointed out.

Unlike the current system, a police department would fall under the authority of the Board of Supervisors, according to the IACP report. The supervisors would be able to hire a police chief, create and structure a citizen review board to provide oversight, require public data reporting over and above what’s required by law, allow officers to collectively bargain, and set department priorities in training, diverse hiring, and more, according to the report.

Currently, the Board can set the sheriff’s budget, but has little oversight over the day-to-day operation of the office—and some supervisors say that means the sheriff is subject to little accountability outside of running for election every four years. After each election, the sheriff may choose to not recertify deputies, which some have argued is essentially firing employees without cause.

County sheriffs are empowered as independent constitutional officers under the Virginia constitution. A 1983 amendment allows for counties to establish police forces, but only nine out of 95 have actually done so.

Three towns in Loudoun County — Leesburg, Middleburg, and Purcellville — already have their own police departments. Virginia State Police, Metro police, and the Metropolitan Washington Airports Authority police force also operate in the county.

The IACP report doesn’t take a stand on whether Loudoun should create a new county police department, but it does suggest the maneuver would be expensive, requiring the hiring of at least 43 new positions and the construction of a police headquarters. The county might also need to take on millions of dollars in liability coverage for a potential police department. And it would lose state funding currently dedicated to the sheriff.

The report also warns the conversion might take away county resources from other priorities, like a mental health treatment facility and a facility and staff in the sheriff’s office to serve the fastest-growing parts of the county. And it notes there’s little room for error or gaps in service in making the switch, which could take more than two years.

“There is no backup, so the transition planning must include fail-safe, safety-net and/or overlapping services,” the report says. “Ultimately, both temporary and permanent duplication and significant expansion of the number of positions and the annual budget simply is unavoidable.”

According to the report, in order to complete a transition, the county would have to lay off a number of sheriff’s deputies — and hope that they apply for jobs in the county’s new police department, in the midst of what Supervisor Matt Letourneau (R-Dulles) pointed out is a “shortage of law enforcement officers.”

“If we had essentially free agents now from Loudoun County, there could be competition for those officers,” he said.

Chapman, the current sheriff, has opposed the idea of a new police department from the beginning, calling it “a power grab.” Instead, he’s argued for increased resources to his office.

“Instead of putting Loudoun County through the unnecessary cost and risk of replacing LCSO with a police department, we should be talking about providing more resources to help LCSO, county mental health and substance abuse services, and others to support our youth and adults in crisis, including a facility that provides a safe and supportive environment pending their transfer to a hospital or other location,” Chapman said in a statement posted on the department’s official Facebook page following the release of the report.

The statement also claims the independence of the sheriff’s office is a selling point for the office in recruiting deputies from other area law enforcement agencies.

The IACP report found that the Loudoun County Sheriff’s Office has a generally positive relationship with the community it serves, and provides service to residents in line with other area policing agencies. Loudoun has the lowest serious crime rates in the Northern Virginia region, though it is third in population size.

Critics don’t dispute the public safety services the office provides, but they have raised concerns about accountability, transparency, and office culture. The report mostly stays away from those subjects, but it does suggest that the sheriff’s office could consider some changes in operations to improve its work, including changes in management and reporting structures for patrol officers, added strategic planning, data analysis, and community outreach.

The Board and sheriff’s office have collaborated on some reform initiatives, including the rollout of body-worn cameras for sheriff’s deputies. Speaking briefly at Tuesday’s meeting, Chapman indicated that he was open to some of the suggestions, including working with the Board to create a citizens’ advisory committee for his office.

Concerns over morale, diversity at the sheriff’s office

Randall framed the idea of studying minimum qualifications for sheriff candidates as a matter of listening to concerns of sheriff’s deputies over the current culture and future direction of the department.

While Randall said she believed Chapman is highly qualified to run the sheriff’s office, she and other speakers brought forward concerns about Chapman’s management relating to the office’s culture and lack of diversity.

“I have had sheriff’s deputies approach me in huge numbers, at the mall, at Loudoun United games, at the gas station, at parades, on the walking trail, at a church,” said Randall. “It’s not one or two or here and there. It’s fairly continuous.”

Under the current arrangement, sheriff’s deputies are independently employed by the sheriff’s office and are not county employees, as police officers would be. The sheriff can refuse to recertify deputies after each election cycle, effectively forcing them out. Board members who pushed for the IACP report say their motivation for the added scrutiny was negative reports about workplace culture from current and former employees of the office.

A number of former employees spoke about working in the office during the public comment period.

“[The report] states the sheriff is held accountable by the voters, but mentions nothing about the high risk of demotion, transfer or termination for any deputy who tries to report upper level misconduct,” said one ex-deputy, who said he had served the office for 29 years. “Our sheriff seems to be held accountable only by his campaign contributors.”

Chapman’s office has become a focal point in several high-profile political disputes in the county, including parent anger over schools. After one particularly contentious school board meeting, he refused to provide deputies for security at subsequent board’s meetings, despite a request from the school district.

But the IACP’s findings about the office’s internal culture were generally positive. A survey of nonsupervisory sheriff’s deputies and interviews with other staff found good morale in the office, high rates of retention, and a low 4.3% rate of staff vacancy. It also touted that 89% of respondents strongly agreed or agreed that the office is welcoming of staff “regardless of race, color, religion, national origin, age or sexual orientation.”

Some Board members questioned whether the report had done enough to ask for perspectives from women and people of color in the sheriff’s office. No women in the office’s command staff were interviewed, IACP staff said in response to a question from Supervisor Juli Briskman, D-Algonkian. Briskman said she’d counted two women in command roles and nine in supervisory roles out of 76 total positions on the organization’s chart.

“I would think that would be a point of equity that they might want to focus on,” she said.

Similarly, IACP staff said they’d made no specific attempt to speak with employees of color in the office, and had not tracked the race or ethnicity of the employees who completed interviews.

County staff will now work with experts from the IACP to define minimum qualifications necessary for candidates for sheriff. They’ll present those findings to the Board, which may include them in their list of priorities for next year’s General Assembly session.