Washington County Sheriff’s Office Chief Deputy Mark Warden, left, and former Washington County Jail Administrator Greg Nohe, right, both running for Washington County Sheriff, answer questions asked by Washington State College of Ohio Vice President of Academic Affairs Sarah Parker, center, during the sheriff’s debate at the college Wednesday night. (Photo by Michelle Dillon)

MARIETTA — Two candidates spoke in front of Washington County residents at the Washington County Sheriff’s Debate Wednesday night at Washington State College of Ohio.

Current Chief Deputy of the Washington County Sheriff’s Office Mark Warden and former Washington County Jail administrator and former member of the Marietta Police Department Greg Nohe answered a series of questions during the debate while a packed audience watched.

The debate was sponsored by the Washington State College of Ohio Criminal Justice Club and moderated by Vice President of Academic Affairs Dr. Sarah Parker.

* The first question asked of the candidates was: As sheriff you will be responsible for managing resources effectively. How do you plan to allocate resources and how will your approach prioritize community needs and concerns and resources?

Nohe said that resources need to be put where they are needed. He would do that by doing a complete audit of the Sheriff’s Office operations to determine what is effective and what isn’t and then put the resources where they are needed, into things such as drug trafficking, criminal investigation and uniform patrol officers, Nohe said. It takes a cohesive team to put together resources, which is something he has done his entire career, he said.

Warden said that when you are allocating resources that the most valuable resource an agency has is its employees. So you have to look at each and every division and to do this you need to build an effective team. Warden said the team you build has to understand the needs of the agency and what the budget is for the agency. You can effectively do all of this by thinking out of the box. He wants to think outside the box by changing protocols at the sheriff’s office to change the way the agency works, Warden said.

* The second question the candidates were asked was: Nationwide recruitment of employees is a concern for criminal justice agencies. What role do you envision your office playing in the recruitment and promotion in this profession in our region and what role do you see Washington State playing in the ongoing efforts to build and support the local criminal justice workforce?

Warden said that we need to start changing the way we do things in recruitment and that we need to build programs in schools and pathways that direct children into the path of law enforcement. Warden also said we need to start thinking outside the box of how to effectively use Washington State. While working at the Sheriff’s Office, Warden said he got a grant from the state and started a cadet program at Washington County State College of Ohio. The program opens cadets’ eyes to different professions in law enforcement. He said he encourages all law enforcement agencies to start a cadet program.

Nohe said that recruitment is a basic fundamental of leadership. You can do this by setting an example. He has done the work of being a good example. People want to work for a good boss, somebody that supports them and has their back, and he has done that. He also said the best recruitment tool is officers on the street. They spread the word that they work in a good department for a good sheriff. Nohe said he was instrumental in working with Washington State to bring corrections officer classes to the school when he was the jail administrator. He believes law enforcement should go into schools early and start mentoring children as a way to recruit.

* The third question the candidates were asked was: Technology is evolving. Cyber crime is on the rise. What is your vision for adapting the department to combat these issues?

Everything that people do now revolves around cell phones and computer related stuff, Nohe said. One of the reasons he is running for sheriff and one of his top priorities is increasing training for officers, Nohe said. Training helps officers serve the public and helps the public to have trained officers responding to incidents. He wants to put emphasis on acting cyber crime when he is sheriff, he said.

“It affects the most vulnerable people that we have, our children and our elderly,” Nohe said of cyber crime, adding training is the most important thing you can do in law enforcement and he plans to send officers to the best cyber crime training possible.

Warden said that the monster, the criminal, that commits cyber crime is in childrens’ bedrooms because of the devices they are on and we need to attack that. He said the Sheriff’s Office currently has individuals trained in cyber crime and that he plans on sending individuals that are trained when they get a call for a cyber crime. He also plans on sending employees away for training and using resources like the Buckeye State Sheriff’s Association to see how other agencies handle cyber crime.

* The fourth question the candidates answered was: Citizens are concerned about drug activity in the community. What plans do you have to address their concerns?

Washington County is more than 2,000 miles away from the Mexican border, but drugs affect each and every member of the community, Warden said. The Sheriff’s Office needs resources to fight drugs and he plans on having a working K-9 unit on every shift and to offer unparalleled training to officers. Warden will send offices to work on drug interdiction units in other states as part of that training. To deal with drugs, the Sheriff’s Office needs to work together with the community. If elected, he is going to come to the community and talk to residents about the problems they are seeing in the community, and then he is going to develop a plan to fix it, Warden said. He wants to change protocol on how calls are handled. You have to keep uniformed deputies on a more proactive stance, so for any felonies there will be a protocol that a detective will automatically be dispatched to the scene, no matter the time, so the uniform deputy is freed up to be in the community, he said. Warden said that Washington County is a user community. He and several other offices applied for a grant for $135,00 that will take drug users off the street and put them in rehab if they want it.

Both Warden and Nohe agreed that drug traffickers should go to prison when answering the question.

Nohe said he was an investigator with Marietta PD for many years and worked on the Major Crimes Task Force as a representative for the department. He has worked with agencies in Washington County and the surrounding areas. Handling drugs comes down to collaboration with other agencies. Agencies have to work together towards the common goal of putting drug traffickers in prison. Nohe believes that users should be treated differently than drug traffickers. Pathways need to be found to help users get off drugs. No one is born wanting to be a drug addict, he said. Nohe said he will put resources together to put drug traffickers in prison. He has built a network in all his years of work and people know his tenacity for getting the job done. Nohe would also put more deputies in the street and in the communities where they can get information and successfully investigate drug trafficking, he said.

* The fifth question answered by the candidates was: How do you plan to ensure a safe community and maintain a positive relationship between your department and the citizens?

Everyone he talks to says they never see any deputies, Nohe said. Washington County is 646 square miles and there are three deputies patrolling the area, and that is unacceptable, he said. Nohe plans on finding the resources to put more deputies on the street because it is imperative to have more uniformed deputies on the streets. Priority number one for Nohe is more deputies on the street and in the community. As sheriff, Nohe will open himself up to the community and will go out and talk to the community because sometimes people want to talk to the sheriff, he said.

Warden plans to put more deputies on the streets, too, at no cost to taxpayers, he said. Warden said that right now in Washington County he could put five deputies on the road, but can’t because he is not the sheriff. When he is the sheriff he will put five deputies on the road, and when the school resource officer is off he will put six officers. If he does schedule changes he could put seven to eight deputies in the community with no cost to taxpayers. Warden said when doing all of this you have to be careful of what is in the sheriff’s reserve fund. If the reserve is gone then the Sheriff’s Office as you know it is gone. He plans to build upon the criminal division at no cost to the taxpayer and build a robust detective bureau, but he will have to rearrange things to do so.

* The sixth question the candidates were asked was: Effective communication and collaboration are important in our area. How do you envision fostering relationships with other agencies to ensure effective services throughout the region?

Warden said that to be an effective communicator you have to be an effective listener. You have to listen to problems to get better answers and to foster relationships you have to meet with those individuals. Warden said you have to break down barriers. It costs nothing to collaborate. Warden would like to start a Washington County version of COVIEO, where industrial sites have resources and if something happens at one industrial site all industrial sites can share. He would like to work with every agency on all assets. He also wants to open up RMS, the sheriff’s report wiring system, so every agency can see what the other is doing, he said.

Nohe said collaboration, teamwork and cohesiveness are the bedrock of effective operations. Over the course of his career he has worked with agencies in surrounding areas when working on drugs, homicides and high profile cases and has developed relationships with those people. He said the people know his passion to deal with drug trafficking, and he has the ability to communicate, which is a fundamental responsibility of a leader. Leaders need two-way communication and cannot be effective without it.

* The seventh question the candidates answered was: Transparency and accountability are important topics nationwide. How will you address this at the county level?

Nohe said that transparency and accountability are built on trust. The deputies working in Washington County trust him because he has demonstrated that. Trust needs to be put into the community. They need to trust their law enforcement to provide public safety for them and positive criminal investigations. Body-worn cameras protect officers in their jobs against false allegations consistently made by criminals and help with accountability and transparency. He is 100% in favor of body-worn cameras, Nohe said.

Warden plans on addressing accountability and transparency by bringing back the sales tax accountability committee. Citizens would be on it and oversee the sheriff’s office budget. Warden said he recently assigned body-worn cameras to corrections officers for transparency. He will have his office open to the community where there will be a room set aside in the courthouse that will have a machine to look at documents for public record requests.

* The next question the candidates were asked was: How would you begin to prepare your employees for the variety of mental health crises they may encounter?

Warden said the sheriff’s office recently started a wellness program. That program involves peer support individuals and two clinicians that look out for employees. They also offer the employees one hour a day to work out. This is an incentive program they started to help the officers and retain employees. Mental health is a huge issue in law enforcement. It is hard for officers to talk about mental health issues. When you create programs and policies that effectively address those issues you are making your agency stronger and employees stronger for their families. You also have to foster mental health with mentorship, Warden said.

Nohe said leadership should protect and serve their employees. Employees are the bedrock of law enforcement operations. He said that he knows of three employees that were treated poorly and did not receive support from the Sheriff’s Office administration for mental health related issues.That’s not something that he is about. Nohe believes that the Sheriff’s Office needs to put resources into employees. The Sheriff’s Office has to support employees in their professional life and personal life to be an effective agency, he said.

* The last question the candidates answered was: Many voters are concerned about individual rights or privacy, property and individual freedoms. How do you plan to maintain the delicate balance between protecting individual rights and fulfilling the responsibility of law enforcement and government?

“I consider myself to be a constitutional conservative. What does that mean? Individual liberty, limited government, and law and order,” Nohe said.

Nohe said he fully supports the second amendment and will not permit nor be a part of any attempts to take away second amendment rights. Nohe said it is very important that individual freedoms and individual liberty be protected by the sheriff and he will do that. He said he would also protect all the amendments of the Bill of Rights, because that is his job.

Warden said each and every deputy sheriff takes an oath to defend the Constitution and he holds that dear to his heart. Citizens are guaranteed all rights under the Constitution and you police that by good police work and good training, which is what the Sheriff’s Office does today, he said. Warden said that each officer is trained on search and seizure and search warrants and that they are trained well. He will hold all employees under his command accountable for individual’s rights and that if that is done right then they will be held accountable.

The candidates gave closing remarks summing up their beliefs and plans for if they become the next Sheriff of Washington County.

“As your sheriff I will be there for each and every one of you. I will be coming to your community,” Warden said in his closing remarks. “I’m taking the Washington County Sheriff’s Office out of the courthouse and I’m coming to your community. I believe strongly in community engagement.”

Warden said his guiding principle is simply “What can I do better to better serve each and every one of you.”

Nohe said in his closing remarks that leaders have two fundamental responsibilities, to accomplish the mission and to take care of the people doing that for you, and that he has proven he has done that in his career.

“That’s why 90% of law enforcement supports me, because they’ve seen it, they’ve experienced it and they’ve worked with it,” Nohe said. “Leadership, being a leader, (is) very very important. I have the experience, I have the dedication, I have the passion and I have the commitment of what it takes to be the sheriff, the leader of law enforcement in this county.”

Michelle Dillon can be reached at mdillon@newsandsentinel.com