After 12 years, Sacramento Sheriff Scott Jones is moving on. ‘It’s time for me to go’

Scott Jones was in his office the other day recounting how he had just set up a Linkedin account, a step many job seekers take to network among their peers and peddle their resumes.

After 12 years as Sacramento County sheriff, the 55-year-old Jones will find himself unemployed as of Friday, when Sheriff-elect Jim Cooper is expected to takes the reins.

But what his future holds is still not certain.

“What that looks like, I don’t know,” Jones said. “We’ll see what happens. We’ll see who calls.”

While running one of the largest law enforcement agencies in California, Jones has hired five undersheriffs, promoted 13 chief deputies, 46 captains, 126 lieutenants and 322 sergeants, and had to fire 60 to 70 deputies, he says.

The one thing he is certain of, after three successful campaigns for sheriff and two failed bids for Congress, is that he’s not interested in running another police agency.

“I’m certainly done, I think, with law enforcement,” Jones said as dozens of his deputies, former deputies and ex-Sheriff John McGinness gathered outside the Sheriff’s Office headquarters on Orange Grove Avenue for a farewell barbecue for their leader.

“I have no desire to be a chief of police somewhere. It’s a special kind of responsibility and stress, being the head of an agency, and I’ve felt every bit of it for every day. So, I don’t want that anymore. I don’t to be responsible 24 hours a day for a crew of folks that are going out there and fighting crime.”

The unlikely candidate

Jones wasn’t supposed to be sheriff in the first place.

When McGinness opted in 2009 to leave after serving one term, he gathered his top brass — and Jones, then a captain and legal adviser — to tell them of his decision and ask who wanted to run to replace him.

“I was the only captain in this meeting ... so I’m first wondering why I’m in this room. I thought, OK, I’m the legal guy. Maybe he wants some advice on attorney-client privilege.”

Instead, Jones came out of the room as the only one willing to square off with Cooper, then a well-known captain and Elk Grove city councilman who had the backing of former Sheriff Lou Blanas, the well-funded law enforcement unions and local business leaders.

After a brutal campaign, Jones edged Cooper out by 3,660 votes out of 360,000 cast and began a tenure that is now ending with him perceived as one of the most controversial Sacramento sheriffs in recent history.

He has been the subject of racial justice protests and dozens of lawsuits alleging wrongful shootings by deputies and mistreatment of jail inmates. He has faced criticism for the county’s decision to allocate more than $104 million of $181 million in COVID relief funding to the sheriff to pay salaries and benefits for sheriff’s employees, and outrage over his refusal to cooperate with county Inspector General Rick Braziel.

Braziel, a former Sacramento city police chief whose job included reviewing deputies uses of force, was locked out of all sheriff’s facilities by Jones after he issued a critical report on the shooting death of an emotionally troubled Black man, Mikel McIntyre.

Braziel ultimately left his post after Jones refused to relent on his decision.

“I wish him all the best in his retirement,” Braziel said recently when asked to comment on Jones’ tenure.

Critics: ‘Mini-Trump’

Others are not so subdued when asked about Jones.

“Racist, tyrant, mini-Trump,” community activist Berry Accius sputtered when asked about the sheriff, who openly feuded with Black Lives Matter activists and once banned two Black community leaders from posting on his Facebook page until a federal judge ordered him to lift the ban.

“He never held his deputies accountable,” Accius said. “I think because of the feud with that he had with BLM that was always the focus other than what he could possibly do to support the communities.”

Sacramento civil rights attorney Mark Merin, who has sued the Sheriff’s Office dozens of times and won millions of dollars in settlements, is particularly critical of Jones’ tenure.

“Every time we sue the county we list all the cases that he’s been involved in, in both jury trials in civil cases and settlements, and then we contrast the number of times he’s actually disciplined any officer even though they’ve paid out millions of dollars.” Merin said. “The only conclusion you can reach is, he’s either completely incompetent or he just doesn’t care.

“I think he’s done a horrible job as sheriff.”

Merin’s lawsuits and a legal intervention by The Bee in 2019 led to Merin winning the right to release of 79 internal affairs and jail-abuse case files, at the time the largest release ever of internal affairs and jail abuse complaints from inside Sacramento’s Main Jail downtown and the Rio Cosumnes Correctional Center in Elk Grove.

The files include allegations of beatings, misuse of pepper spray, an illegal body cavity search, efforts to avoid being caught on video surveillance and recommendations of deputy discipline and firings.

Jones also resisted releasing some disciplinary files as required under SB 1421, a law that took effect Jan. 1, 2019, until The Bee sued to force disclosure.

And the sheriff faced backlash over allowing the Netflix reality show “Jailbirds” to be filmed inside the jail.

Rebuffs jail criticism

Jones says he doesn’t see himself as particularly controversial, that he looked at his job through a black and white law enforcement lens.

“I’ve been pretty predictable in the last 12 years,” he said. “I mean, I’ve been kind of a one-trick pony. I don’t really talk about other political issues. I don’t weigh in on city council races. I don’t talk about any legislative bills, except when I’m running for Congress.

“As I’ve been sheriff, I’ve only weighed in on issues affecting public safety or crime victims... in my own jurisdiction. And I only commented on, on matters of, of public safety.”

Jones says many problems in the jail stem from changes in state law that contribute to only the most serious inmates not being released while awaiting trial.

“Looking at the population change over the years, even when I worked there 30 years ago, we used to separate pods into what we called lightweight and heavyweight and medium weight,” Jones said. “(Now), you don’t have any lightweight or medium weight in there.

“Everybody’s heavyweight in the jail. Everybody else gets out. There’s no room. Everybody in there is a bad person, or at least accused of very bad things. Compounding that is, you have an exponential increase in the amount of psychiatric and or medical problems.”

Jones says blaming him for medical or mental health problems is not fair because that is now the responsibility of the county, and that he has advocated for private firms to be hired to provide health care services.

“They take over the liability, they take over the complaints, they take over a lot of processes,” he said. “That, ultimately, will be a benefit. They know what they’re doing. They do with their own staffing.”

Jones: ‘It’s time for me to go’

Jones also has faced criticism as a supporter of former President Donald Trump, and for running a campaign commercial when he was campaigning for Congress this year that declared he “stood up to BLM and stopped the riots.”

Trump ultimately endorsed Jones’ primary opponent, Kevin Kiley, but that doesn’t stop Jones from showing visitors to his office an Oval Office photo of Jones and Trump together. He also has a photo of himself with President Biden from before Biden’s election.

McGinness, the former sheriff-turned KFBK radio show host, is one of Jones’ biggest backers and says his friend is simply misunderstood by many.

“I wish the public had a better knowledge of who he is,” McGinness said. “I think people would be surprised to know he’s a light-hearted guy. He’s extra bright.

“But I don’t think the public sees that, and I’m a little bit at a loss to identify why. I think he’s blessed with a lack of concern about how he’s perceived, and that’s a rare ingredient.”

McGinness said morale within the Sheriff’s Office ranks is extremely high, and that officers from other departments routinely give up seniority and rank within their own agencies to take jobs within the Sheriff’s Office.

Jones agrees, saying the Sheriff’s Office doesn’t lose deputies to other agencies.

“No one’s leaving, no one,” he said. “And that’s gratifying to me.”

As for his future, Jones has one child headed to college and another in high school, so he’s interested in finding some sort of work to keep himself busy, although he rules out running for office again.

And he says he has kept communication open with his successor and wants to be certain Cooper is ready when he assume the position as sheriff.

“I feel like I am leaving this place in a good way,” Jones added. “I feel like I’m anxious to see what Jim’s vision is. I mean, I know it’s time for me to go. So I want Jim to be the best sheriff we’ve ever had.”

This story was originally published December 9, 2022 at 5:00 AM.