He’s running: Ithaca area reporter wants to be your Sheriff

By Jamie Swinnerton
Tompkins Weekly

 

It’s time to re-write the rulebook when it comes to policing at the county level. At least, that’s the platform that Josh Brokaw is running on. It’s possible you already know of the former Ithaca Times writer, and current Truthsayers (online local news outlet) editor and founder. But it’s almost a guarantee you haven’t seen a sheriff candidate like Brokaw. On Aug. 21, Brokaw turned in over 1,450 signatures from county residents to the Tompkins County Board of Elections to be placed on the ballot for Sheriff.

Brokaw said that he’s running in part to keep the competition alive. Both incumbent candidate Ken Lansing, and his challenger Derek Osborne, are running as Democrats. After the Sept. 13 primary one of them will be out of the race, and Brokaw didn’t want to see an uncontested race in November.

“I don’t like boring elections,” he said.

As a local reporter, Brokaw is more than familiar with the various coverage-worthy events that have come out of the Tompkins County sheriff’s department in the last several years. Back in 2014, the Sheriff’s office attempted to take David Cady into custody at his home in Danby. The event turned into a days-long standoff that destroyed the house and ended with Cady dead of a self-inflicted injury. In the months following, Osborne retired as undersheriff and sent a nine-page letter to the county legislature detailing what he saw as the failings of Sheriff Lansing’s response to the event. Incidents like this, Brokaw argues, call for the usual rules of law enforcement engagement to be re-examined, and he’s not convinced that the Democratic candidates would be willing to do that.

“It also seemed like it was going to be an election about differences in how to administrate the office, how much overtime are we giving people, kind of a ‘Who’s the most responsible for doing what we are doing right now?’ And it didn’t seem like there was going to be fundamental questions posed about the status quo, fundamental questions posed about why we police, where we do, how we do things,” Brokaw said, explaining why this was the time to run for an elected office. “We have this opportunity to talk about this stuff publicly, we should be doing that every time.”

One of those status quo items that Brokaw would change is inspired largely by his career as a journalist. The information that the sheriff’s office, and all law enforcement agencies, choose to share with the media in the form of press releases informs and influences local coverage of crime and law enforcement. Here in Tompkins County, Brokaw questions why the sheriff’s office shares so many press releases about arrests for crimes like shoplifting, and early morning raids for “packaged to sell drugs” and sometimes a few weapons.

“But when I asked the question ‘Why?’ I just get ‘You need to trust us. We’re the professionals. You don’t need to know that.’ And that’s not acceptable in a democracy,” he said. Transparency and “the flow of good and useful information” is the cornerstone of his platform.

“My most immediate question, ‘Well, if I can’t get that as a journalist asking these questions, or filing Freedom of Information Requests, if I can’t get that sort of information as a citizen then I guess I’ve got to become law enforcement?’” and a campaign was born.

As a challenge to the status quo, re-examining the policy around press releases and sharing of information is a “day-one” priority for Brokaw. But that re-examination hardly stops there.
“So, policy and practice of course are two different things but we should be looking seriously all the time at what instructions we are giving officers on how they’re supposed to think about doing their job,” Brokaw said. “Another space that I would want to bring in more expertise and more people to have these conversations is in the mediator role for law enforcement officers. I think that’s generally accepted to be an informal job of law enforcement.”

While on the campaign trail this summer collecting signatures Brokaw said he heard stories from residents who were unhappy with the way their concerns had been handled by law enforcement that he sees as anecdotal evidence that the department could benefit from expanded mediation training. The role of law enforcement, from Brokaw’s perspective, is to create a good environment for people to be peaceful. What can he say? He’s an optimist.

While Brokaw comes to the ballot with out-of-the-box ideas, a local perspective, a solid knowledge of county issues, and a wide range of local connections, what he doesn’t come with is experience. He graduated from the University of Chicago with a BA in Political Science in 2009, but he’s never held any kind of law enforcement job. He knows how this looks to some people, he knows how he looks to some people. He knows there is a lot he will have to learn if elected and he takes his strategy from what he does know: reporting.

“Going in there and asking questions like a house on fire,” he explained. “Like I do professionally. And listening. I’m a damn good listener. I will sit down with anyone and listen to their troubles.”

He isn’t afraid to admit his ignorance. What would he do if an officer is found to have been arrested for domestic violence? He’s not sure, but he knows he doesn’t want that office to wield the power of authority. What’s going to happen to Truthsayers, the news outlet he started when he was no longer worked for the Times, if he’s elected? He’s not sure, but he sees value in keeping it up as a kind of local bulletin board of sorts. What does he want to do about the jail? He’s not sure but he’s hesitant to outright accept the suggestions from the consultants hired to study the problem, and he would like to hear more ideas from people who have actually been housed in the jail. Instead of brand new facilities can there be bunking instead? What about satellite offices around the county, and local officers patrolling their own communities? What are the services in the jail like and are they helping people transition when they are released? Is there room in the jail for yoga classes, or meditation? There are going to be many questions about the Brokaw campaign, but there might even be more from the Brokaw campaign.

“If Tompkins County wants to be this great, shiny place that all the people who haven’t lived here who write about it say it is, we need to ask more questions, we need to get answers, we need to keep looking at every aspect of our government and saying ‘How can we do this better?’”