A culture of de-escalation

McGuffey promised “stricter discipline for those who use excessive force” as well as “better training on de-escalation, diversity and inclusion.” She has already begun to review incident reports with commanders. For the time being, her focus is on a “change in the environment that will help de-escalate situations.”

“I will create a culture of de-escalation,” McGuffey said. “I believed in de-escalation. I think it is the way we work safely.”

Criminal justice reform

Both men that McGuffey beat in the elections wanted to build another jail, but McGuffey did not think that was the answer. “The solution to the problem of mass incarceration is certainly not more mass incarceration.”

Sheriff McGuffey spent four years as major in command of jail and court services, during which time she was able to oversee improvement in jail compliance with state standards. But she is not resting on her laurels, and she knows the details. McGuffey talks about how prison conditions can amount to a use of force over inmates. For example,”the food in the jail is horrible, and it’s been horrible for a very long time,” she admits. “It makes people angry.”

“We can fix that, so that’s what we’re going to do.”

Let ICE do its own work

Customs and Border Patrol

McGuffey says the work of immigration investigations are best left to the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). Of course, her department will make an arrest if a warrant is signed by a judge, but otherwise, “the sheriff’s office should not be doing the work of the federal government.”

McGuffey wants to do the job she was elected to, enforcing local laws and protecting the people she serves. “I want people to feel they can work with law enforcement when they’re reporting a crime,” inviting her constituents to, “come forward to law enforcement regardless of their documentation.”

The Liaison Unit

Unsplash / Icons8 Team

During McGuffey’s time in the sheriff’s department, she frequently encountered people who could not find answers to their questions, anything from how the legal process works to where to pick up a released inmate. Along with diversity and criminal justice reform, she wants to create a Liaison Unit where people can call for answers. It’s not just the confusion among people, McGuffey said, but that, “communities want to engage, and that’s what we’re going to do. We’re going to engage with people, and we’re not going to be afraid to move forward with change.”

From the bottom to the top

McGuffey came into the national spotlight during her campaign, when she ran against her former boss (who had fired her) for the Democratic nomination, and crushed him with 70% of the primary vote. She had already received the endorsement of the local Democratic Party, who went looking for a new candidate after the former sheriff appeared in uniform on stage with then-candidate Donald Trump in 2016. The former sheriff’s attitudes on racial disparities were not in line with the Democratic Party either.

In the November election, she beat her Republican opponent, Police Lieutenant Bruce Hoffbauer. The Cincinnati Herald characterized Hoffbauer as, “trying to become the first person in the United States in half a century to be elected sheriff after having been found guilty of using excessive force to kill an unarmed Black man.”

Ancient history

McGuffey worked for 34 years in the sheriff’s department that she now helms. But her gender and her orientation made it hard, and in 2018 she was fired for her attempts to get Hamilton’s County’s previous sheriff to act on systemic misconduct against women. In her federal lawsuit against the office, McGuffey claimed that she was also fired for being openly gay.

McGuffey told LGBTQ Nation that her firing came after she and her old boss had, “a pretty serious disagreement about the practice of him not holding officers accountable for use of force and harassment of women, female officers, and female inmates.”

But she also told WYSO that she received threats and harassment because she is a lesbian. “Things would happen to me. People would threaten me,” McGuffey remembers. “I never bowed to any of that pressure. I worked hard. In this business, as a woman, and a lot of women can relate to this, you have to work twice as hard as the men.”

But when the harassment was bad enough that she complained, “they just laughed at me.” McGuffey felt she was on her own in those days.  “I knew that there was nobody to help me.”

While the county has not admitted fault in her firing, they have paid McGuffey for lost wages and benefits, along with court costs to be assessed. Meanwhile, the taxpayers of Hamilton County have elected a sheriff who is determined to expand diversity, and chip away at the legacy of discrimination that made her own path so difficult to walk.

Promises made