Bubbaworld

Publication Date: 5/10/07
Last Updated: 5/10/07

If you have business with Adair County Sheriff Charles Hartshorne do not bother going by his office or even calling on the phone, as his staff will tell you the sheriff is not in.

And they would be telling you the truth, for Sheriff Hartshorne is not in his office.  He is not in the courthouse.  He is not in the town of Stilwell, the county seat.  He is not even in Adair County.

All of which makes sense, as he is also not in the state of Oklahoma or the United States for that matter.

It turns out that Adair County Sheriff Charles Hartshorne is in Iraq, working for a private company that trains Iraqi civilians to become law enforcement officers.

Recently Sheriff Hartshorne, in a published letter to the “Adair County citizens” said:

I will still be your working sheriff.  Let me assure you I am not deserting you or my office.  No matter where I am, I am always in contact with and overseeing the daily operations of my office.

A published report by the Muskogee Phoenix revealed that Undersheriff Tim McCollum said he speaks with Hartshorne via telephone about every two days.  That same report indicated that Commissioner Sam Chandler said the last time he was aware of Sheriff Hartshorne being in the county was on April 1st.

Sheriff Hartshorne also announced in his letter to the public that he was going to resign from office effective July 15th and made the following statement:

I feel we have accomplished what we set out to do. When I first took office, I promised the people of this county that when I felt I had accomplished all I could that I would move on.

Charles Hartshorne has been the Sheriff of Adair County, Oklahoma for over ten years.

Adair County Commissioners have instructed the district attorney’s office to contact Sheriff Hartshorne seeking his immediate resignation.  If Hartshorne refuses, the County Commissioners will move ahead with impeachment.

In an impeachment process, a judge will appoint a temporary sheriff pending the impeachment hearing.  When a sheriff resigns or is impeached, the County Commissioners appoint a permanent replacement.

Commentary and Opinion

Who among us would not benefit nicely from getting paid for two jobs while only working at one of them?  And if the two jobs were in the private sector, it would be the business of no one other than the two employers and the person getting paid for a job they are not performing.

That is not the case with an elected official ignoring a job they swore an oath to perform and who is in fact out of the country and working in the private sector.  Many law enforcement officers in Oklahoma ‘moonlight’ at a second job just to make ends meet.  There is nothing wrong with their doing so.  But those officers, unlike Sheriff Hartshorne, actually show up for work on a full-time basis to perform their duties and ‘moonlight’ on their off-duty time.

That Sheriff Hartshorne would make the claim that he was “always in contact with and overseeing the daily operations of my office” is ludicrous on its face and an insult to the taxpayers of Adair County, Oklahoma.  That Undersheriff Tim McCollum acknowledges that he speaks with Hartshorne via telephone about every two days simply confirms this fact.

If Sheriff Hartshorne wants to make the ‘big bucks’ available to private contractors in Iraq, then more power to him and we wish him well in the effort.  In order for him to devote himself to that effort he needs to resign from office immediately.  Anything less is immoral in the least and possibly criminal, in that he is defrauding the taxpayers of Adair County by taking money he is not earning and not performing a duty he swore an oath to perform.

Update:

On May 16, 2007 Adair County Commissioners met and declared that Sheriff Hartshorne had resigned via a phone call from Iraq. They immediately appointed retired Oklahoma Highway Patrol trooper and former Adair County Sheriff Gerald Coleman as Hartshorne’s replacement.