SPRINGFIELD — Sangamon County Sheriff Paula Crouch thinks the office has “turned the corner” and is in a good place less than two years after a former sheriff’s deputy fatally shot a 36-year-old Black woman and mother of two and was convicted of her murder.
Retired sheriff’s deputy David Timm, Crouch’s Republican primary opponent on March 17, said “the good old boy system” is still alive and well but he would shake things up by having members of the public partake in interviews for deputy candidates.
Crouch, 52, and Timm, 51, are running for office for the first time.
The only Democratic candidate, Marc Bell, dropped out of the race Feb. 9. The party will have until June 1 to slate a candidate.
A nearly 25-year veteran of the Springfield Police Department, reaching the rank of lieutenant before her retirement, Crouch’s appointment was approved by a Sangamon County Board vote on Sept. 18, 2024. She emerged from 15 candidates to become the first female sheriff in the county’s 200-year plus history.
Crouch succeeded Sheriff Jack Campbell, who declined to heed calls from, among others, Gov. JB Pritzker, to step down after Sonya Massey’s shooting, before retiring on Aug. 31. Sean P. Grayson was convicted of second-degree murder in the Massey case on Oct. 29.
Timm was among the applicants for sheriff in 2024, though he was not one of the seven finalists. He said he had begun thinking about a run for sheriff “months before” Massey’s shooting.
Timm was a deputy his entire career with the sheriff’s office, serving at different times as a field training officer, an advance explosive breacher for the SWAT team and the author of the department’s policy on the use of Tasers.
Timm was fired in 2008 after he allegedly asked an officer from Leland Grove to release a man for drunken driving as a professional courtesy. A union arbitrator later restored Timm to full duty.
The aftermath of the U.S. Department of Justice investigation, a consultation over the jail and a roadmap for new hiring practices all converged to make Crouch want to run again.
“We’re just really getting good at what we’re doing,” Crouch said. “Running for election and getting elected kind of allows some of these better practices to stick.”
Crouch admitted she and her opponent have different ideas for the sheriff’s office.
“We came from different places,” she said. “I have more experience to bring to the table from working with different communities, working in different divisions of a police department, leadership abilities, education. I think there’s a lot of deputies here, especially my young deputies, who are looking for a leader who can change the sheriff’s office to be more of a modern sheriff’s office.”
When she came in, Crouch said the public “had beaten up the sheriff’s office.” Critics wanted outside agencies to look into things and that’s why a lot of deputies left, she said, in the first few months after Grayson.
“They didn’t see the light at the end of the tunnel. I think the deputies now see the light at the end of the tunnel, not that any of them want to forget what happened, the horrific incident that happened,” she said.
Staffing levels are improving among sheriff’s deputies, Crouch said, and a new contract with better pay for correctional officers should boost candidate numbers. “I’m optimistic we’re going to turn that ship around and get better,” she added.
Because a sitting sheriff is rarely challenged in the primary, “I gave them a choice that they never have had before, and it’s showing that that’s what (the people) want, is something different,” Timm said.
The “voices” part of his campaign slogan “Trust restored, voices heard” not only refers to the voices of the employees as to how they feel, but “the 195,000 people in this (county) who have never had a voice.”
As for his lack of a supervisory role, Timm pointed out former sheriff Neil Williamson, who is backing Crouch, was a patrol officer hand selected to run the sheriff’s office. When Timm was hired, his goal was to be a deputy “and to retire as a deputy, not change for the system.”
Timm insisted there were “better candidates” for sheriff than Crouch in 2024, but “the system handpicked who they wanted to be there, just as they have for years. When these sheriffs are selected, they feel like they have to cater to the party because the party is the one who picked them and put them there. They forget about the people. They forget about the employees. I’m not that person.”
Timm contended morale in the office is “very, very bad.” Part of that is the fallout from the Massey case and part of it stems from a lack of leadership, he added.
“They don’t feel the administration has their back, and I don’t mean from a protection purpose for negative reasons, but just to be out there and be the face of us,” Timm said.
Acknowledging that the merit commission is being used in deputy hires, Timm said the “downside is that (commission members are) picked by the sheriff.”
In addition to two of his officers, Timm said he would involve Sangamon County Board members and regular citizens in the deputy interview process.
All background checks, Crouch said, go to the merit commission, which wasn’t routinely used by her predecessors. It also certifies all written tests.
Crouch said if the merit commission fails a candidate on a background “then I don’t have the ability to say…I’m going to take (him or her). That’s not the process we have in mind.”
Crouch said she verbally agreed with the Massey Commission that she would not hire a deputy who had a DUI conviction five years from the time they were applying. Grayson had two DUI convictions, but that would have been outside of that window of time.
A representative from the Massey Commission said there was no verbal or written agreement that stated “unequivocally that no candidate with a DUI conviction in the last five years would be hired by (the sheriff’s) department.”
Crouch has the support of the Sangamon County Republican Central Committee, which has been paying for commercials featuring Campbell’s endorsement of her.
Timm is supported by the Fraternal Order of Police Lodge 55.
Contact Steven Spearie: 217-622-1788; sspearie@sj-r.com; X, twitter.com/@StevenSpearie.
This article originally appeared on State Journal-Register: Sangamon County sheriff candidates debate office’s future
Reporting by Steven Spearie, Springfield State Journal-Register / State Journal-Register
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