Sheriff Bill Elder reflects on eight years as El Paso County's top lawman

Dec. 31—Eight years after he was first elected to office, El Paso County Sheriff Bill Elder is hanging up his hat as the county's top law enforcement official.

It's a transition he's embracing, he said.

"It's good for agencies, large or small, to have change in leadership," he said, sitting at the end of an empty conference table with a pad of paper and a laptop in front of him. "... Fresh leadership provides fresh vision and perspective on things."

He is not dressed in uniform, instead opting for a pair of nondescript dark jeans and a blue plaid button-up shirt under a black pullover sweater.

The rest of Elder's office, neat and almost bare, also hints at the shift to come.

No plaques hang on the wall. No paperwork peppers his former desk. Only a handful of reading materials remain on the bookshelf behind him.

Elder's readied the room for his successor, Undersheriff and Sheriff-elect Joe Roybal, who will be sworn into his new position Jan. 10.

"I accomplished what I wanted to accomplish, and I feel comfortable that it's in good hands. I'm ready to move on. I'm ready to do something different," said Elder, who has spent more than 30 years of his life in law enforcement.

When he took office for the first time on Jan. 1, 2014, Elder inherited an agency that had been rocked by the scandals of the previous administration. He promised to restore stability, make the office more collaborative and "repair some of the damage" it faced under disgraced ex-Sheriff Terry Maketa.

Nearly a decade after first taking his post, Elder said he accomplished his goal by forging positive working relationships with other local law enforcement agencies, who collaborate to fight crime.

"He took steps forward with both transparency and credibility," El Paso County Justice Services Department Executive Director Pete Carey said.

Carey was the Colorado Springs police chief from 2012 to 2019 and was Elder's undersheriff from March 2019 through August 2021.

"That was hard to move forward," Carey added. "There were a lot of issues he had to work on regarding morale and implementing new procedures. ... He did a good job on restoring that trust in the community, and trust is a big deal with law enforcement."

Elder was also part of a team that launched the Pikes Peak Regional Office of Emergency Management to save resources, improve communications and coordinate response and recovery efforts on a regional level during a crisis, he said.

"I think we're doing things as well as a group as we can," Elder said.

The sheriff's collaborative approach fostered a sense of trust among local law enforcement agencies as well, Carey said.

"As police chief ... I counted on Bill when we had Waldo Canyon fires, active shooting situations like at Planned Parenthood — he was the guy I could depend on without having to call him," he said.

Elder's employees and the community are also better off after he made efforts to raise salaries by 45% — an accomplishment Elder said he counts among his biggest successes in office.

Alongside annual cost-of-living increases county commissioners approve in the county's yearly spending plans, Elder said he also strategically used his department's budget to ensure employee salaries were competitive.

"That was my goal, to have them competitive with the local market," he said. "... I focused specifically on line-level personnel to get their salaries up."

Other accomplishments include upgrades to the department's firearms systems, training centers and the El Paso County jail, Elder said. The work was part of a strategic plan he formulated early on during his tenure, informed by feedback from employees and an independent assessment of the department.

Another highlight, he said, is the department's prestigious Triple Crown accreditation from the National Sheriff's Association.

The El Paso County Sheriff's Office again in 2022 earned the accreditation, Elder said, bestowed to law enforcement agencies that have received accreditation from the American Correctional Association, the National Commission on Correctional Health Care and the Commission on Accreditation for Law Enforcement Agencies.

"That tells the community we are doing things at best practices and nationally accepted practices around the country," Elder said.

During his tenure Elder has also weathered criticism as the department faced a rash of lawsuits; saw the state's largest COVID-19 outbreak at the county jail; and announced a spate of inmate deaths in 2022.

Elder said he's willing to "right the wrongs" of the Sheriff's Office when needed, but said it can be "frustrating" to counter public opinion when lawsuits are filed because officials "can't talk about it."

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"We get a black eye instantly when someone files a lawsuit. So when we (make a mistake) then we should own it, and I try to do that," he said. "... But the frustrating piece is that we fund a significant amount of settlements simply because it's cheaper to settle than it is to fight, even though we know we'd win."

Health care at the jail has been a constant challenge.

In 2017, Elder led the charge to end El Paso County's nearly 20-year contract with its controversial for-profit jail health care provider, at the time called Correct Care Solutions, of Nashville, Tenn. The proposed switch came as the company faced broad scrutiny and more than 40 pending lawsuits in Colorado at the time over claims of substandard care.

In July of that year, Miami-based correctional health care provider Armor Correctional Health Services, took over as the county's medical provider at the jail while the company faced lawsuits alleging it cut costs to keep profits high. Armor and El Paso County cut ties in 2019 as Elder faced mounting claims that inadequate care was leaving inmates in dire straits.

In December 2019 El Paso County hired Tennessee-based Wellpath to take over health care in the jail. Since it had parted ways with the county in 2017, Correct Care Solutions had merged with another company to form Wellpath, which also faced dozens of lawsuits in federal courts across the country alleging violations of inmates' civil rights.

A year later, the American Civil Liberties Union of Colorado in December 2020 filed a class-action lawsuit against Elder, claiming his policies led to what he at the time called an "inevitable" COVID-19 outbreak at the jail that had sickened more than 1,000 inmates since it erupted two months earlier. It was the largest coronavirus outbreak among Colorado jails and prisons.

Elder said the office moved quickly to protect inmates in the state's largest jail and settle the ACLU lawsuit that left in place several safety and mitigation measures at the facility.

After a spate of inmate deaths there in 2022, a community coalition demanded reforms at the jail and increased county oversight of the Sheriff's Office.

Sheriff's spokeswoman Lt. Deborah Mynatt previously said the agency conducts a "comprehensive" review after every "critical incident at the jail" to examine the office's emergency response and, when appropriate, "relevant factors" concerning the inmate's medical care.

This allows officials to determine which operations are working well and how to improve others, she said.

"It's a constant learning environment for us," Elder said.

The sheriff was also vocally opposed to Colorado's so-called red-flag gun law while it was being debated. The controversial measure, which went into effect in 2020, allows law enforcement officials and private residents to petition a court for permission to confiscate guns from people considered a danger to themselves or others.

The topic has garnered renewed debate following the shooting that killed five people and injured nearly 20 others in late November at Colorado Springs' Club Q, an LGBTQ+ nightclub.

Elder said while he appreciates the authority the law gives to law enforcement, he thinks the way it's currently written violates a person's constitutional right to protection from unlawful search and seizure as well as their right to due process.

He also believes it makes the sheriff personally liable to possible litigation, he said.

"I'm not going to set up a system to arbitrarily take someone's guns away without probable cause," he said. "Write the law in a manner that gives us United States Constitution protection. How many times have we, with a probable search warrant, seized guns and put somebody under a mental health hold? We've done that a number of times. That's the same thing as a red-flag order. It's just not part of the red-flag process."

As he prepares to leave office, Elder said he's both hopeful and a little nervous for the future amid increasing crime, changing perceptions of law enforcement and seemingly uncompromising political discourse.

"I don't care if you're a Democrat or a Republican or Independent. All I care about is do we do what's right for our community? And do we do it in a manner that they expect us to do it?" he said. "... The political divide that is created by factions in both parties have made it difficult to run for office, to do the right thing. It chases away people that may have some kind of blemish, maybe deserved or not, but that could be good leaders."

He thinks the next administration will need to focus on how to better recruit and retain employees to help run the largest sheriff's office and jail in the state; address mental health issues among inmates as well as in the broader community; and weather challenges that could come from legislation such as the statewide legalization of marijuana and the decriminalization of psychedelic mushrooms.

Elder says he's confident Roybal is the man for the job.

"He gets it. He's spent almost 27 years learning this craft," he said.

Now, Elder plans to spend more time with his family — wife Joy, their four children and 10 grandchildren. They plan to split their time between Colorado and Arizona, where they also have a home, he said.

He also plans to do state-level legislative consulting work in Colorado.

"It's been good," he said as he reflected on his more than three decades of law enforcement service. "I think I've weathered a ton of criticism, but I want the community to know that I never did anything that wasn't with the community in mind.

"If I were to ask for anything, it's to understand that the people who work here are as dedicated as they can be."