There’s been a fundamental change in the dynamics of the Johnson County sheriff election now that incumbent Sheriff Calvin Hayden is out of the running.
With the general election now between Democrat Byron Roberson and Republican Doug Bedford, polarizing issues that Hayden had campaigned on — election skepticism and immigration for example — have dropped in prominence.
In their place are calls for more professionalism and better communication between the sheriff’s office, city police departments and the county commission, along with pledges to keep fighting drug traffic that has resulted in several shootings in recent years.
With the race now between Bedford, a former U.S. Navy SEAL who worked as Hayden’s undersheriff and later opposed him in the primary, and Roberson, who has been on the Prairie Village police force for 30 years and chief for the past four, law enforcement experience has also taken the forefront.
Both candidates have spent about three decades in law enforcement mostly, and both have military backgrounds as well. But Bedford and Roberson emphasize that experience in differing ways.
Doug Bedford
Bedford first joined the Johnson County Sheriff’s office in 1987, but left in 1989 for the U.S. Navy, where he spent eight years with SEAL team three.
In 1997, he went back to work as a deputy at the sheriff’s office, working his way through positions including court security, detention and investigations until he became undersheriff in Hayden’s administration.
He stayed in that number two spot until early 2022, when he became a state police officer for the Kansas Department of Revenue’s Alcoholic Beverage Control division.
Bedford puts a lot of emphasis on building relationships and trust with other law enforcement agencies in the county — an asset that he believes has been lacking under Hayden’s leadership.
Getting police agencies to participate in a drug task force, he said, will contribute to safety by curbing the problem area of drug trade along the Interstate 35 corridor, he added.
Byron Roberson
As chief of the Prairie Village Police Department, Roberson emphasizes his experience as the one sitting in the top spot and making the tough decisions.
“I’ve had a lot of experience making those tough decisions,” he said, mentioning disruptions due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the Black Lives Matter protests and the struggle of recruiting new officers. “When they say the buck stops here, the buck does stop,” with the sheriff or chief of police, he added.
Roberson is in his 30th year at the Prairie Village Police Department, having joined the force in 1995 and served as supervisor of the critical incident response team and narcotics detective, among other roles. He took over as chief in 2021, becoming the seventh in that city’s history.
He also cites his education at Northwestern University’s school of staff and command and at the FBI National Academy. Roberson served eight years in the U.S. Marines, including one year of active deployment in Operation Desert Storm Gulf War.
But there’s one more area of experience Roberson says has informed his views on policing.
In 2010, Roberson was SWAT team leader responding to reports of a woman who had acted erratically in her apartment parking area, then barricaded herself in her apartment and was threatening to set a fire. During unsuccessful attempts to take her in for involuntary psychiatric commitment, the woman threatened officers with a bat and broomstick before throwing a butcher knife, he said.
At that point, Roberson says, he fired three rounds, which killed her.
The Susan Stuckey shooting was the subject of a civil suit filed by Stuckey’s mother, Beverly Stewart, who claimed her daughter’s civil rights were violated and the police used excessive force. The case, filed against the city of Prairie Village along with Roberson and several other police officers and officials, was ultimately dismissed from federal court in 2013.
Later, Stewart filed another suit, seeking to force the city to turn over police reports and recordings related to the standoff. According to KSHB, the records she obtained showed, among other things, that the SWAT team had non-lethal bean bags and pepper spray on site and that a mental health organization's offer to assist was declined.
In a recent interview with the Post, Roberson said that attempts to subdue Stuckey with a taser seemed to have no effect.
After an investigation by the officer-involved shooting investigation team, District Attorney Steve Howe said the officers acted correctly and no charges were filed.
That experience has affected Roberson’s outlook, he said, making him more aware of the need for mental health professionals on police calls. There were no co-responders at that time, he said.
He also stressed the need for mental health care for officers. Roberson spent more than two months on leave after the incident – an experience that he describes as being “on an island,” because others in the department couldn’t talk to him during the investigation.
Calvin Hayden’s shadow
Although Hayden lost the primary and will not be on the November ballot, his shadow remains in some of the issues the next sheriff will have to face — namely transparency and establishing relationships with other county and law enforcement officials.
For example, during appearances with right-wing groups, Hayden often cast suspicion on the election results of 2020, when the formerly predictable Republican preference in the county was upended by a win for the Joe Biden ticket. He followed up his suspicions by assigning an investigator in his office to look into a number of complaints brought by like-minded county residents about mailed ballots, drop boxes, the accuracy of vote counting, ballot security and the voting machine vendor.
In the most recent controversy, Hayden asked county officials to preserve paper ballots from as far back as 2019 that were scheduled for shredding per state law. (Lacking a valid search warrant, the shredding went ahead as planned.)
After about three years of warning audiences about what he viewed as problematic election procedures, however, Hayden failed to produce any prosecutable evidence. He submitted only one offense report for prosecution, but District Attorney Steve Howe said there was not enough evidence to go to court on.
Now that Hayden is out of the race, questions remain about how much money was spent on the investigation, how it was conducted and what exactly it turned up.
Bedford and Roberson each have said they have doubts that the investigation is worth continuing and they expect to release the records of it. But both also said they wanted to have a chance to look at what’s there first.
Bedford criticized the investigation during the primary campaign season and continues to be skeptical of it. He said tying up that loose end would be one of the first priorities if he is elected.
“If there’s something there, we’ll write it up and send it to the DA. If there’s nothing there, then we’re going to close the investigation,” he said. He added that releasing records of it is “the transparency we have to have at the sheriff’s office. That’s one of the biggest things I’ve been campaigning on.”
Roberson also said he would like to look at whatever Hayden’s investigator turned up, but based on what he’s heard, there is nothing that would lead to any further investigating. “I want to see what he saw,” he said. “I would educate myself on what it is he was looking at, but as far as tying up any manpower or sending it over to Johnson County DA’s office and tying up their manpower, no I wouldn’t do that.” He also agreed to release the records.
As for the cost, Hayden has said that because the investigator wove election procedures into his other work, it is too difficult to figure out exactly how much county resources were spent.
But both candidates said they’d like to try. “I would love to find out how much money was spent on it,” Bedford said. “Did we spend millions (as Hayden indicated during a hearing in Topeka) or did he misspeak? I won’t know until I can get in there and take a look.”
And both would also like to know about the cost of a trip made by Hayden and some of his staff to the U.S. southern border. Hayden often talked about immigration during the campaign.
Roberson called that trip, “Nonsense. Complete nonsense and a waste of my taxpayer dollars.”
“I think it was a political stunt, and when politics are involved in law enforcement, I think that is problematic,” he continued.
Bedford said the border trip was unnecessary because “everybody can recognize where drugs are coming from.”
Relationship building
Building better relationships with other law enforcement agencies and the county commission has also been a priority for both during the election. Agency participation in a county drug task force is one example that has come up often.
Currently Shawnee is alone among the county’s 17 city police departments in joining the county drug task force. Bedford said he can succeed where Hayden failed because he’s more willing to “talk to them and not get up from the table. “It was too easy for the previous administration to just say, well the conversation’s done,” Bedford said. “We have to be willing to work together, and that’s going to be one of my biggest goals.”
But joining a task force means dedicating an officer to it when the agency may already be short staffed.
Agencies have a hard time getting around that, which may be one reason the participation has been low, Roberson said. The decision for Prairie Village not to join was made by a previous chief, he added.
The way the task force was rolled out and its supervision under the sheriff’s office was also a big part of the problem, Roberson said. “Municipal chiefs of police didn’t have any input,” he said, adding that there was a lack of collaboration and trust between the chiefs and the sheriff.
“I believe that I can change that because I do believe it could be an important crime-fighting tool in Johnson County. But it has to be run right,” Roberson said. “It starts with trust from the sheriff’s office and the other municipal police chiefs.”
He added that he has good relationships with the area chiefs.
Bedford said the danger of drugs like fentanyl are too important not to have a functioning drug task force because drug use powers so many other crimes. Getting participation from some of the larger agencies will depend on teamwork, a value Bedford often stresses in his campaign.
“I haven’t been in the position to enhance or rebuild those relationships, and that’s one of the biggest things that needs to be done,” he said. “Everybody in the agencies needs to put egos aside and then look at the citizens of their community,” and work together toward a common goal.
The sheriff’s relationship with the county commission, which sets the office’s spending limits, has also come up. The relationship deteriorated under Hayden, particularly after he spent part of a speech to a right wing group describing certain commissioners as “communists” who were reluctant to fund his office.
Bedford said he looks forward to a good working relationship with the county commission on the budget. He added the sheriff’s office needs to be more involved in helping out city police agencies when they need it. “I want to come in under budget every year,” he said, adding that could be done with careful staff management.
Roberson said he’s worked with the Prairie Village City Council on the police budget with good results. “Those decisions are made together. It doesn’t mean that someone has more power or less power. It just means that you’re willing to work together to come to a final budget.”
He also said more could be done by the sheriff’s office, with its larger staff, to help out agencies like the smaller ones in the northern part of the county. For instance he said the sheriff’s office could offer transportation to jail or the hospital, since that ties up officers in smaller departments.
Both candidates said they support having sworn deputies in the jail, rather than civilians, because of their level of professionalism.
This story was originally published by the Johnson County Post.
