Springfield Business Journal this year is part of the nonpartisan Informed Voter Coalition. The Informed Voter Coalition is a 13-member nonpartisan group with the goal of educating voters and engaging candidates with citizens.
Here, the Informed Voter Coalition interviews two candidates for Greene County Sheriff: incumbent Sheriff Jim Arnott and challenger Ben McMains.
A transcript is below.
Springfield Business Journal presents the following transcript of interviews with two candidates for Greene County Sheriff: incumbent Sheriff Jim Arnott and challenger Ben McMains. Republican voters will be asked to choose between these candidates in the Aug. 6 primary election. There is no Democratic candidate for the office.
The interviews were conducted by Lisa Langley of the League of Women Voters of Southwest Missouri on behalf of the Informed Voter Coalition, a collaboration among nonpartisan community organizations. Other organizations that along with SBJ make up the Informed Voter Coalition are Be Civil Be Heard; Drury University’s L.E. Meador Center for Politics and Citizenship; Junior League of Springfield; KSMU Ozarks Public Radio; Leadership Springfield; Missouri State University's Office of Public Affairs; NAACP Springfield; Ozarks Technical Community College's Social Sciences Department; Rosie; Show Me Christian County; Springfield-Greene County Library District; and Springfield News-Leader.
Candidates were interviewed individually and asked the same questions. They had one minute to introduce themselves and two minutes to respond to each question. Questions were submitted by Informed Voter Coalition partner organizations and were not provided to the candidates in advance. The order of the candidate interviews was determined by a random drawing.
The following transcript was prepared by SBJ reporter Karen Craigo using Google Recorder.
Lisa Langley:
Our first candidate is Ben McMains. Thank you very much for joining us.
Ben McMains:
Thank you, Lisa. It's an honor to be here.
Langley:
Let's begin by having you introduce yourself and tell us why you decided to run for Greene County Sheriff. You have one minute.
McMains:
My name is Ben McMains and really what it boils down to is I think we need as a sheriff's department get back in touch with our community. Um, that's the reason I decided to run. Uh, I’m married. I have four kids. My oldest kid just had a little one-year-old, so I’m a grandpa now; he's getting married next year. So, that's the love of my life is my family. But in doing that also, I'm here to protect them. I want to see them safe when they come to town and, you know, I don't have to worry about them when they're out on their own. So that is one reason I'm deciding to run for sheriff of Green County.
Langley:
What is the biggest threat to public safety in the Greene County community right now, and if elected, what do you intend to do about it? You have two minutes.
McMains:
I think our biggest issue right now is the drug problem. I mean, we're looking at meth; we're looking at fentanyl. Those things are rampant in our community right now. In order to address those, we really have to team up with our cities as Greene County as well. We need to start working better as one unit to start fighting this crime. We can't just keep letting it go by because this is killing our youth. We are having this fentanyl crisis. Fentanyl is laced on everything. Kids are going out there and trying things, and they're dying from it because they're overdosing. So we need to get out there. We need to be more proactive. We need to start combating this. And in order to do that, what I propose on my end is really going out there, teaming up with the cities saying, all right, chief, tell me what your high crime rate is, where the highest problem is in your city, and having a squad of guys that go out there and just dedicate themselves to that area and just start hammering that. We're looking at being a deterrent. I don't want tickets; I don't care about tickets. But in order to deter crime, we need to be putting cars on the side of the road so people can see that, because your drug crisis is also leading into property crimes because they're going to need money for those drugs. So in order to that, we need to get out there and we need to be a lot more proactive than what we are.
Langley:
Greene County taxpayers funded a $150 million jail new facility that officially opened in May 2022. Is that a worthy expense of taxpayer money? In your opinion, how well is the jail currently serving the community? You have two minutes.
McMains:
Honestly, I do think it was needed – absolutely, because as crime rates grow we needed a bigger facility to hold inmates. We need to hold them accountable for those actions that they have. Do I think it's being used appropriately? No, I do think there needs to be a new leadership gone into the jail so we can better – oh, I would say better serve the ones in there, as well as citizens as well. Um, we had four deaths in four months. That is crazy that that would happen. And so we need to look at how we can better the staffing because right now, they're understaffed in the jail; we need more people in there so it's less ratio of inmates to jailers so we can keep them safe and also create a better environment for them. I say that, and I also want that jail to be treated more like a jail. This should not be going in there and being a kind of a time away. It shouldn't be like a motel. We should be a little bit more stricter in that aspect, as well as doing what we can.
Langley:
What is the proper role if any of the Greene County Sheriff's Office in helping to address homelessness on the local level in terms of clearing trespassers from encampments on privately owned land, do you think it is helpful for sheriff’s deputies to share information about available resources with unhoused individuals?
McMains:
Absolutely. That is a question that's come up several times in my campaign is, how can I as Greene County Sheriff help the homelessness around Springfield because it's coming out into our county. I just talked to a lady the other day that was from Ash Grove that said they are starting to get him up in Ash Grove. I think that's a very hard question to answer, because we are faced with the homelessness that A, are addicted to drugs; B, don't want to help themselves; C, don't know how to help themselves. Or we are faced with, you know, situations that are out of their control. So they need those resources. Just going out there and clearing their homeless camps, they're just moving to another location in Springfield, moving to another location in the county. We need to provide them with information on how they can better themselves, how they can get out of that that position that they’re in. Burning their camps is not something we need to be doing in Greene County. We need to be helping them. And in order to do that, that goes back with building those relationships with the cities, building relationships with Springfield and saying, OK, we know how you guys are dealing with the homeless. How can we help you deal with them? And then also building better relationships with organizations outside of law enforcement that are willing to go in and help them as well. So we need to be better at communicating with everybody and working as a team.
Langley:
In the city of Springfield, gun violence has prompted community advocates to create a gun safety and violence collaborative to teach gun safety and work with individuals considered likely to offend to connect them with opportunities for wholesome living. What do you think the proper role of the Greene County Sheriff should be in terms of addressing violent crime across the county, and is there any specific role the sheriff should have on gun safety and gun crime prevention?
McMains:
Education is number one. One of my campaigns that I'm going – one of my four points that I'm going on – is reconnecting with our youth. And in order to do that, we can also provide them with, you know, the education on gun safety and gun violence and getting back with them so when they're faced with those challenges in life of, hey, I have a I have a weapon. What do I do with it? Hey, you know, maybe they can come to law enforcement because we've built a better relationship with them and say, this is what's going on in my community. Can you help me? And absolutely we can; we should be able to do that.
The gun violence is crazy. I mean, that goes back to, you know, wanting to provide a better environment for my kids to come to town. That's one of the issues that I have, say, in my son; he's an 18 year old kid. Sometimes he says stuff without thinking – a typical teenage boy, right? I don't want to have to worry about him getting shot because he mouthed off when he shouldn't have, when he should have thought first without acting. And so that also goes to, you know, building that squad that can come into Springfield and help Springfield and deter crime.
Langley:
How do you describe the current relationship between the sheriff's office and the community in general? What ways would you continue to foster relationships or improve them?
McMains:
I'm honestly not so sure there is a relationship with the sheriff's department and the community. Our deputies are great guys. They are out there. They're busting their humps and they're helping people, so I commend them, but as for the relationship, it's just not there. I come from a background of I've worked as a county officer; I've worked as a city officer; I worked as a chief of police and a school resource officer. We can take all that knowledge that I have and merge it into one. A lot of the things that city officers do is community-oriented policing. It's a simple concept; you're just going out and you're just talking to people. You're just building relationships. And I don't see that a lot with the county. And we can do that. I mean we can honestly get back to where we're just talking to people. I'm not talking about, like, getting out and mowing their yards or anything like that, but just stopping in when you see them pushing a trash can down to the curb and just saying, hey, how are you doing? You're going to get a lot of information that way, because that information that they're going to give you is information that you don't have normally. They could say, well, two houses down from my house, I think they’re cooking meth, or two houses down, they're yelling and screaming every night, and you can keep an eye on those places. That's information that we wouldn't have if we didn't stop and talk to those people, and we can bring that to the county; we can come in and we can, you know, just be better people at serving our citizens
Langley:
Mr. McMains, that concludes our interview. Thank you so much for taking time to talk to us.
McMains:
Thank you.
Langley: Again, I've been speaking with Ben mcmains who is a candidate for Greene County Sheriff.
If you're just joining us, we're talking to candidates running for Greene County Sheriff. Our next candidate is, Jim Arnott. Thank you very much for joining us.
Arnott:
Thanks for having me.
Langley:
Would you please introduce yourself and tell us why you decided to run for this position? You have one minute.
Arnott:
My name is Jim Arnott. I've been at the Greene County Sheriff's Office. I started in 1988 as a deputy in the patrol division. So, I've been there 36 years – retired after 20, and then ran for sheriff and been in 16, and this will be, my next term will put me at 20 years. I've decided to run because we've come a long way. When I started, we had around 100 employees; today, we have 622 employees, so I've been able to grow the sheriff's office from approximately 200 as sheriff to 622, and we have some more progress, some things that I want to finish up.
Langley:
What is the biggest threat to public safety in the Greene County community right now, and if re-elected, what do you intend to do about it? You have two minutes.
Arnott:
Sure. So probably the biggest threat as we see every day and hear on the news is violent crime. We hear shootings in Springfield; we hear homicides all too frequently. And so one of the big things that that you actually know is violent crime is a huge issue. Another issue is gangs that are operating within the city of Springfield and in the county that we've been working on for about the last year and a half. We've had about 12 indictments of gang members; those are ones that are committing violent crimes with guns. I formed a gang task force within the sheriff's office. We've gone after these individuals, and we've been quite successful. We are now seeing a little bit of a reduction in those gang-related activities, so we know that we're on the right track. Probably the other thing obviously is property crime because just about everyone you know has been a victim of property crime. A lot of that revolves around the drug community. One of the big issues that we see, not only just here in Greene County, but nationally, is the amount of drugs that are coming across the border, and that affects our community. We're at an all-time high of overdose of really strong drugs – of fentanyl, methamphetamine, heroin, cocaine.
What we are seeing now is that from the Mexican cartel, they are lacing a lot of these drugs to make them even stronger and introduce another type of drug, and that affects our community because the drug user, then, instead of just using the amount that they would normally do they, they do that, but then they overdose on it because it's much stronger. And then we see a lot of activity in the ER, and we see a lot of deaths in our community. So those are some of the big concerns that I have moving forward. We're actively pursuing some solutions to that, but we still need – we still have work to do.
Langley:
Greene County taxpayers funded a $150 million new jail facility that officially opened in May of 2022. In your opinion, is that a worthy expense of taxpayer money, and how well is it currently serving the community?
Great question. Actually $155 million, not to add money onto it, but it was a pretty significant project. One of the things that a lot of people realize that I've been in the community, we were in five different locations. We were housed in five different locations for a long time, and we never really had a sheriff's office that was under one roof. Not only did we combine the sheriff's office, but we expanded the jail. We had a 600-bed jail, which was actually designed to hold about 400. We made it into a 600-bed jail but held up to 1,000 inmates at one time in that facility; we also were staffed at two deputies with over 120 inmates, which was not acceptable for safety. So we had a long way to move fairly quick. The facility now is, we've roughly been in there two years. It is an excellent facility. It's state of the art. We have people from all over the United States coming to see how we designed our operation. And it's working really good. We have just under a thousand inmates in today. It was built for 1,224, so we have room for expansion. Unfortunately, we're going to probably see that filled at some point near in the near future. But we have a good court system now; we've expanded our judges, which is also expanding where we can get through cases quicker than we used to. So, all in all, it's actually grown together. As we've seen the jail and the sheriff's office expand, we've also seen a significant increase in the courts, and hopefully, in the future, we will see an increase in prosecutors to also help handle that load. So, yes, it's been significant, but it was a very good investment, and as you can see, we're not too far away from being full again.
Langley:
What is the proper role, if any, of the Greene County Sheriff's Office in helping to address homelessness on the local level in terms of clearing trespassers from encampments on privately owned land. Do you think it is helpful for sheriff's deputies to share information about available resources with unhoused individuals?
Arnott:
Absolutely. How important it is? It's very important, because the people that put me in office, the ones that vote for me and my position, have just as much right to use our resources as anyone else. So, when there is a person within Greene County, no matter if they're in a city or they're out in the suburbs, or they're out in the rural county, if they call in reference to a trespasser on private property, the sheriff's office will respond and deal with that. The bottom line is if somebody is trespassing on your private property, you have every right not to have someone there. It doesn’t matter if you own a 100-acre farm or if you're on a small lot in the city of Springfield, and there's somebody trespassing on your property, that needs to be dealt with, and that's a law violation and that's what we do. As far as providing resources, we are probably one of the biggest places that provide resources. Not only do we upon arrest and booking these people in, we provide written information for them when they bond out – but we also provide them a taxi ride to the center to help them and give them additional resources at no charge. There's no other jail in the state that will provide a taxi ride to somewhere to get resources, and that's what we do. We take them directly into Springfield to where they can get. So we're trying to educate them. We're trying to help them. We've also developed another program that on an exit interview, we hook them up with a substance abuse counselor, which we just started that in the last four months – a great partnership between us and a nonprofit, and they're actually housed at the jail, and if they have substance abuse issues, they help them with the follow-up care when they get out. So just because their stay is over at the jail, there's additional resources; they can help them guide them and make sure they get to their appointments. So, we're really proud of that.
Langley:
In the city of Springfield, gun violence has prompted community advocates to create a gun safety and violence collaborative to teach gun safety and work with individuals considered likely to offend to connect them with opportunities for wholesome living. What do you think the proper role of the Greene County Sheriff should be in terms of addressing violent crime across the county, and is there any specific role the sheriff should have on gun safety and gun crime prevention?
Arnott:
Yes. I was part of that collaborative from the very beginning. I was at the initial meetings and then also gave input on the direction we should go, so very active in that role. Gun safety is a huge thing, and we've talked about gun safety for years; we've provided free gun locks; we've gone and talked to community very groups about gun violence and safety, so we'll continue to do that, but the role of the sheriff not only is to educate but also enforcement. So, we handle those situations. As I stated earlier, with the cases that we’ve worked up, the gang members that we indicted, they were gang members with drugs and guns committing gun violence. They were doing drive-by shootings. Two groups were involved in a murder in Springfield. So that is important for us to do the enforcement role along with the education role. And as we move forward, we will all work together to try to come up with whatever solution we have, whether it's proactive enforcement, combination of that, education and community involvement, because it takes the community to come together to deal with those situations, and gun violence is not just in one specific area; it's all throughout the entire county, but a large portion of it is within the city limits of Springfield. But it's not just gun violence; it's violence. It's the person behind the gun that is the issue that we deal with. Because not only do they use guns, but they also use physical force when there's no gun available, and I can show you that in our statistics and the arrests that we make. So it's really violence is what we want to go after – the individuals that think it's OK to attack someone, OK to shoot someone. Those are the people that we’re after and and we want to create a safer community.
Langley:
How would you describe the current relationship between the sheriff's office and the community in general? What ways would you continue to foster relationships and improve them?
Arnott:
Absolutely, I think we have a great connection with the community. We do a lot of proactive things. We go to a lot of community events. We're on social media. We get a lot of crime tips from social media, and I get a lot of crime tips directly to my Facebook account of, hey sheriff – can you help us with this deal? Can you help us with that? We're having problems, you know, in this area, whether it's in Springfield or Walnut Grove; it really doesn't matter. We get the engagement from the communities, and it’s been great. So we try to keep in touch; we try to do as much as we can. We try to be as transparent as possible by putting Information out as soon as it happens, so if we're involved in some kind of critical situation or we have a theft ring, we put that out on social media right away, and that's usually how the news media picks up on what we have going is our proactive way of putting things out on social media. So, I think we're engaged. We can always work on better ways to engage, so we're always constantly looking at how we can improve. We offer tours of the jail to anyone that wants to come in and tour the jail. I bring Rotary groups in; I bring teachers in; I bring community leaders in to see exactly what goes on and talk about the issues that these people are in jail for that is a problem in our community, and what we have in jail or who we have in jail, I should say, is a direct reflection of the problems we have in our community. And what you see is violent crimes, crimes against children and substance abuse is the biggest thing. We don't have anyone in there on misdemeanors anymore; that doesn't happen. It's violent felonies and serious crimes. And so that's the reflection of what we need to fix or enforce in our community. And that's what we're doing with our proactive units.
Langley:
Sheriff Arnott, that concludes our interview. Thank you so much for taking the time to talk to us.
Arnott:
Thank you for having me.
