Summit County Sheriff Kandy Fatheree doesn’t want four more years in office — she’d rather have eight.
“I just have so many things I want in place,” the first-term law enforcement professional told Signal Akron.
But to get to eight, she must first get four — and that starts with defeating Shane Barker, a former sheriff’s deputy, in a rematch of the race Fatheree first won four years ago.
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Fatheree, 66, has had a busy first term in office.
The first female Summit County sheriff and one of only a handful ever elected in Ohio, Fatheree said changing the way the department hired, trained and promoted deputies was a key part of her work.
Instead of paying to enter a training program themselves, she said, new recruits are now paid by the department to go. More women and people of color are now being trained and are rising in the departmental ranks. And a full-time chaplain was hired to help manage mental health issues in the sheriff’s office.
Fatheree said she’s also been working with the county executive’s office to make improvements to the criminal justice system and has expanded a remote video option so that inmates don’t have to be transported from the jail to court as frequently, such as during pretrial hearings, or if they’re disruptive during a trial.
There’s now a sheriff’s department app that residents can use to see who’s on the most-wanted list or to communicate with someone in jail, and inmates now have tablets where they can check their correspondence, watch movies or take classes.
The Democrat said she also held the first fugitive safe surrender event for the department in a decade; more than 400 people turned themselves in.
A program to match inmates with caseworkers to help reduce recidivism, THRIVE, has been “extremely successful” in the 18 months it’s been in existence, Fatheree said, and an ancillary transitional housing program, THRIVE House, recently had its first graduate.
Even with a laundry list of accomplishments, Fatheree said there’s a lot yet to do. Like other jails nationwide, Summit County’s is “really struggling” with suicide attempts and overdoses, she said. Fatheree said the jail averages as many as 20 people on suicide watch daily, which creates a drain on staff who must keep constant watch over inmates to ensure their safety. The number of people who come in and must detox presents a similar issue.
Fatheree said she’s been researching what bigger jails do to handle the issue and is looking at the possibility of creating a pod just for mental health and medically detoxing inmates.
“We’re looking at a change in the way the jail is structured,” she said. “I don’t think mental health, addiction, are going to go away any time soon.”
She’s also welcomed Faith & Blue into the jail, a law enforcement faith-based community that focuses on helping to build relationships.
Outside the jail, Fatheree is working collaboratively with other law enforcement agencies to curb gun and youth violence, she said.
The Green resident, who has spent more than 30 years in law enforcement, also pushed back against some of the accusations made against her in the course of the campaign, including inflating the number of escapes from the jail.
“It’s really disheartening,” she said. “Here’s a man [Barker] who says he wants to be your top law enforcement officer, and he’s doing a disservice because you’re twisting the truth. What kind of message are you sending?”
Republican candidate Barker wants to find solutions to department issues
Barker, 57, said he wanted a rematch because he thinks there’s still a lot of work to be done to improve the department, particularly at the jail.
“If not me to fix the problems that I outlined, who then?” the Republican asked. “My No. 1 goal is to fix those problems.”
The problems the Macedonia resident identified deal with jail safety, including jail deaths and what he classified as escapes; Fatheree said what Barker was referring to as escapes did not, in most cases, involve an inmate leaving the jail when they weren’t supposed to.
Barker suffered from health issues in 2022 that required months of rehabilitation and was only pressed into the race again, he said, when deputies came to talk to him about issues they saw with the department. A retired Summit County Sheriff’s Office captain, he’s now working as a deputy in Portage County. Barker said he disagreed with public threats the Portage County sheriff made to Democratic voters and others.
“That’s not the way I talk to people; I don’t do that,” Barker said. “I would not have said those things.”
Preferring to deal in solutions rather than enumerating problems, Barker said that, under his leadership, the department would be more transparent and he would create a citizens’ review board that would serve him in an advisory capacity, giving advice about what the department should change.
Barker said he would spend more time at the jail supervising the command staff and lower-level employees; he also wants to spend more energy on recruitment and retention. Barker said he’d like to see a department-wide audit, but he didn’t point to any specific spending concerns — he just wants to make sure the department is getting exactly what it pays for, he said, especially from contracts.
Barker said he would want to again be part of the Northern Ohio Violent Fugitive Task Force; Fatheree said she left the task force because her own warrant crew was having more success than that group was. He also said he wanted to reintroduce a program called Broken Chains Ministry to the jail; Fatheree said the group left as part of a mutual agreement and she was seeing more participation with Faith & Blue.
In addition to his time in law enforcement, Barker also served two terms on the Macedonia City Council, then was later appointed council president for a partial term after the mayor resigned and the existing council president moved into that job. He also ran for Summit County Council, but said he did so in 2022 while he was still recovering from his health issues and did little more than have his name on the ballot.
Succession planning is another one of Barker’s priorities; he said he wants to be sure to train the next sheriff while he’s in the role. And he said he wants to keep looking for ways to solve the problems he’s identifying.
“There’s a lot of work to be done,” he said. “It’s going to be a lot of hands on for me.”
