The previous Wake sheriff wants his job back. Can a Democratic candidate win again?

One local contest in the 2022 elections is a rematch between two lawmen who want to be sheriff of North Carolina’s most populous county.

Willie Rowe, a retired 28-year veteran of the Wake County Sheriff’s Office who beat incumbent Gerald Baker in the Democratic primary, wants his first term as sheriff.

Republican Donnie Harrison, the county’s former four-term sheriff who defeated Rowe in 2014 only to lose his 2018 re-election bid to Baker, wants his old job back.

Wake County voters will choose between the two candidates on Tuesday, after in-person early voting ends Saturday.

Veteran NC sheriff faces rematch

First elected in 2002, Harrison is familiar with being in charge of a $100 million-plus budget and around 1,000 employees.

Harrison was previously a 26-year veteran of the N.C. State Highway Patrol, assigned to Wake County.

“I know what it takes to run the Sheriff’s Office,” the 76-year-old said. “That don’t mean that we don’t need to improve. It’s helped me sit back and watch what’s going on and come up with a team of people ... to make this the best sheriff’s office that we can to save this county.”

Harrison touts his years as sheriff as a time when the county had less violent crime and many fewer staff vacancies.

Violent crime in the county has gone up since Harrison left. It rose from 166 incidents in 2018, his last year in office, to 254 incidents in 2020. There 224 violent crimes reported in 2021, according to FBI crime data on Wake County.

The FBI violent crime statistics are only those reported in the sheriff’s jurisdiction. They do not include crimes inside cities and towns, which are the jurisdiction of local police departments.

Voters in 2018, however, denied Harrison a fifth term. Baker won, helped by groups like the American Civil Liberties Union of North Carolina and Latino voters after vowing to end the county’s participation in the federal 287(g) program. The controversial agreement enabled the Sheriff’s Officer under Harrison to collaborate with federal officials to detain and deport immigrants arrested in the county.

Harrison has recently said he would not reinstate 287(g) but defends his previous use of it.

The most recent campaign finance reports show Harrison’s campaign well-positioned with $200,000 more than Rowe in cash. He also raised almost $300,000 more than Rowe, who raised a total of about $67,000, The N&O reported previously.

Rowe desired to replace Wake Sheriff

Baker ousted Harrison in 2018 riding support from Trump-era Democratic fervor, activists and Latino voters.

But the 2022 primary made it clear that, while Republicans still preferred Harrison, Democrats no longer backed Baker.

Rowe got just under 30% of the primary vote to Baker’s 24%, triggering a runoff between the two in which Rowe took about 75% of the vote.

“I am of the people and for the people,” Rowe, 62, told The N&O. “I have a track record of working with all communities in Wake County.”

Rowe counts on support in large part from voters of color, whose experiences with racism he said he knows intimately.

He was born in St. Agnes Hospital on the campus of St. Augustine’s University when it was a Black-only facility during segregation, which he lived under for the first 10 years of his life.

His background, he says, informs his policy plans like opposing 287(g) and rebuilding trust in the Sheriff’s Office among people of color.

Rowe has emphasized social justice and promoting racial equity in his campaign.

He agrees with Harrison that proactive community engagement is needed but said he’s been talking about it since he last ran for sheriff.

“If I was sheriff for 16 years, I would have put these things in place,” Rowe said. “I wouldn’t have waited until now to talk about it. I brought these things up in 2014 and they weren’t addressed by him in ‘14 to ‘18, or before.”

He has proposed Spanish-language outreach, hiring a new full-time Latino community liaison, and hiring “more officers representative of the community.”

His platform also proposes a Sheriff’s Advisory Council with 18 members who would meet quarterly to review best practices and the performance of the Sheriff’s Office.

Harrison told The N&O he would not establish an independent review board, and said any criminal misconduct of an officer in the Sheriff’s Office would be investigated and reviewed by local and state authorities.

Current issues in the Wake Sheriff’s Office

Baker is the first Wake sheriff to lose re-election to a second term in decades, according to the county’s electoral history.

There were six Democratic candidates and four Republicans in the primaries.

“When you see 10 people running for sheriff, you know there is a problem,” Harrison previously told The N&O.

Records obtained by The N&O show that as of Oct. 7, there were 225 full-time vacancies among 837 employees at the Sheriff’s Office, with at least 100 of those in the Wake County Detention Center.

Both Rowe and Harrison say hiring is a priority they broadly intend to tackle through lateral hires and working with the Wake County Board of Commissioners to raise pay.

“We’re the capital county; you want to be the example for the state to follow. You want to have a level of professionalism and respect,” said David Blackwelder, the Wake County chapter president of the NC Police Sheriffs Alliance.

The reputation of the current sheriff has not been good in the law enforcement community, he said.

Although the N.C. Police Sheriffs Alliance endorsed Harrison, Blackwelder said they likely be satisfied with Rowe as well, because of dissatisfaction with Baker.

Frank Sancineto, head of the Wake chapter of the Fraternal Order of Police, says both their chapter and their statewide organization endorsed Harrison.

“Either way, you’re gonna get another sheriff,” said Sancineto. “Willie Rowe could probably make a good sheriff, also. I just don’t know. I couldn’t tell you anything about the man.”

Harrison said he will rely on his reputation to begin robust hiring efforts, some which will involve hiring officers he said no longer wanted to work under Baker.

Performance-based incentives and rearranging shifts to give officers time off are among plans Rowe mentioned to boost morale and hiring.

Both candidates want to reduce jail populations because understaffing endangers both inmates and detention officers. But they talk about it differently.

While working in the Wake Clerk of Superior Court offices, Rowe was part of the Pretrial Reform Project steering committee, which works to release people in jail for nonviolent crimes, including people who cannot afford bail.

Being jailed hurts people economically and can lead people to commit crimes and being jailed again, Rowe said.

Harrison is open to working with the district attorney to see which people in jail can be let out on pre-trial release, but he said he’s concerned about any potential harm that might pose to victims of crimes.

Dealing with crime

Harrison says Wake County has become “soft on crime.”

“We’ve got to have law and order in this county,” Harrison said in an interview. “I know we can do it with having more deputies on the street and better training with helping people with mental illness, drug problems.”

His platform emphasizes hiring, training and putting more deputies on patrol as a crime deterrent.

Increasing jail staffing will improve safety for all, he said, noting that the jail population also struggles with mental illness.

Rowe, specifically mentions community programs for residents, youths and jail inmates to prevent crime proactively.

“You can’t arrest your way out of crime,” he said.

“Most crimes are committed to address a particular need,” he said. And so if we’re able to provide resources to address that need, then people will not have to resort to crime as a means of survival, acceptance or control. That’s where community engagement is so important, because you get to see people face-to-face, interact, understand the ‘why.’”

Issues with Black, Latino voters

The ACLU called Harrison’s reversal on 287(g) a “step in the right direction,” but said “we cannot forget the harm caused by policies he implemented when previously in office.”

It spent over $100,000 in 2018 on ads attacking Harrison for collaborating with federal immigration authorities. Around 8,000 people arrested in Wake County were detained by ICE to be put in removal proceedings from 2009 to 2018 under the program, according to a Syracuse University immigration detention database.

The topic remains relevant. In one forum in Raleigh, Harrison did not declare his opposition to future legislation that could mandates collaboration with Immigration and Customs Enforcement, while Rowe did.

On two different occasions, K-9 dogs used by Harrison’s deputies resulting in the dogs attacking unarmed Black people.

One involved teenage girl, then 17 years old, who ran away from the scene of a Raleigh crash in 2016 into the woods.

A K-9 deputy was deployed to search for her, which “broke off” from the deputy and mauled the girl, ripping her pants off and biting her legs, WRAL reported. The handler of the dog called it off once he located the girl.

“We don’t want to hurt anybody, but we have a job to do,” Harrison said then. “And if we don’t do our job, crime is going to escalate.”

In the case of Kyron Hinton, a man with mental health issues found standing in the middle of Raleigh Boulevard in April 2018, a Wake deputy unleashed a K-9 dog on him.

Two state troopers on the scene were also involved. Hinton was beaten by officers while he was on the ground, according to body camera footage.

Hinton said he suffered 21 dog bites, a broken nose and a fractured eye socket, The N&O reported previously.

Harrison responded by saying that some supporters of Hinton were trying to “exploit” the case and defended the officers until they faced trial.

One of the K-9 deputies pleaded guilty to charges in the case and was fired by Sheriff Gerald Baker in 2019.

“He was terrible on Black and brown people issues,” said Dawn Blagrove, an attorney with the civil rights group Emancipate NC. “Re-electing Harrison will set Wake County backwards from the type of progressive reforms and ideals that the people of Wake County want to see.”

While Harrison said he doesn’t agree with that, he said: “We’ve learned a lot of lessons. … You hate to say it, but you learn from failure. And so, I am always open for better relationships with our community.”