BY STEVE KEMME
The Cincinnati Enquirer
Sheriff Harold Don Gabbard stands outside the office Thursday.
(Dick Swaim photo)
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HAMILTON -- Saddled with a badly crowded jail, Butler County Sheriff Harold Don Gabbard has attempted many different stopgap measures.
He has transformed storage closets into jail cells. He has placed inmates on cots and floor mats in the jail garage. He even tried to persuade the state to allow him to house inmates in surplus Army tents.
Now, he has run out of these temporary solutions. On Thursday, he asked for the county commissioners' help.
"We have exhausted all of our options," he told them.
The commissioners responded by announcing they will form a group to study ways Butler County can build a 300-bed jail.
Last November, Butler County voters resoundingly defeated a proposed half-cent sales tax hike to build a $34 million jail. The existing jail, built in 1970 for 80 inmates, had 211 prisoners Thursday.
So exasperated is the sheriff, he jokingly offered an alternative Thursday: "I've suggested we fit more prisoners in the jail by putting locks on their knees and having them sleep standing up." The sheriff often seeks creative ways to grapple with law enforcement issues in Butler County, one of Ohio's fastest-growing.
Inmates wait Thursday in a converted garage area at the Butler County jail.
(Dick Swaim photo)
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Numerous times during his career, he has used his pluck and resourcefulness to solve fiscal crises. In keeping with his upbringing in a Kentucky family of modest means, the 66-year-old has shown a penchant as sheriff for making use of the limited materials at hand.
For example:
When voters rejected the sales tax increase last year, Mr. Gabbard proposed housing overflow prisoners in free Army surplus tents. The proposal didn't make it past state officials. But the idea garnered statewide attention.
In April, he took advantage of a new state law and began requiring county inmates to make co-payments for their health care. The goal: reducing the number of frivolous hospital visits and saving taxpayers' money.
Two years ago, he made Butler County prisoners begin growing their own food on county-owned land in Wayne Township. The garden provides food for the needy as well as inmates. Farms or gardens are common in the Ohio prison system, but not in county sheriff departments. In 1995, he obtained two helicopters at no cost from the federal government. They're used in drug investigations and fugitive searches.
He expanded the inmate work program, using prisoners to wash county-owned cars and to perform clean-up work for the county and various communities. Inmates with carpentry skills renovated the interior of the former county board of elections building in Hamilton, transforming it into the new sheriff's administration headquarters.
"I learned the value of money many years ago," Mr. Gabbard said. "I also learned that there's always a way to do things and save money."
The sheriff's parents, Burton and Lillian Gabbard, grew up in rural central Kentucky.
Gabbard responds to an inmate's question at the Butler County jail.
(Dick Swaim photo)
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When Harold Don -- their first child -- was born, they lived in the Cincinnati neighborhood of Madisonville. They moved to High Point in northeastern Hamilton County and then to Greenhills. They lived for several years in a house in the Winton Woods County Park District, where Burton Gabbard worked as a heavy-machine operator.
On 50 acres, the family farmed and raised cows, chickens and hogs. "That put a lot of food on our table," said Mr. Gabbard, who has four siblings. "We handed down clothes from one to another until they couldn't go any farther."
He acknowledges that these early years influenced his decision to start a garden for the county jail and to buy equipment as cheaply as possible.
"I definitely am not one to waste anything," he said.
When he was 14, his father moved the family to Hamilton and opened a car-repair shop.
Mr. Gabbard dropped out of school after the ninth grade to go to work and help his family. But he continued reading on his own and later passed the test for his high school equivalency diploma on his first try without taking a preparation course.
He has taken many law enforcement courses and seminars and is working toward an associate degree from Wilmington College in management and business administration.
He insists that the deputies he hires have the proper education and training.
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Butler County officials worry about the impact the overcrowded county jail has on public safety.
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"When my deputies arrive at a scene, I want them to know how to handle it," he said.
His late father was a part-time police officer who ran unsuccessfully for sheriff two times in the 1960s.
Mr. Gabbard was 26, working as a tool-and-die machine operator for Mosler Safe Co., when he decided to fulfill his life-long dream.
"I'd get the urge every time I saw a police cruiser," he said. "One day, I was working at Mosler Safe when I looked out the window and saw a police cruiser driving down the street. It was like a firecracker went off inside me. I went home and talked it over with my wife and decided to try to become a policeman."
After 28 years with the Hamilton Police Department, he retired in 1986 as a detective. He was a security officer for Hamilton's parks when he decided to run as a Republican candidate for sheriff in 1992. He defeated incumbent Democratic Sheriff Richard Holzberger and was re-elected two years ago.
He plans to run for his third term two years from now.
One of his biggest boosters is long-time Butler County Prosecutor John Holcomb, a Democrat.
"His innovations and his new programs have been excellent. He's a real solid guy, a straight arrow," Mr. Holcomb said.
Robert Cornwell, executive director of the Buckeye State Sheriffs' Association, said Sheriff Gabbard has a solid reputation among his peers.
"He's always looking for new and creative ideas," he said. "Like all ideas, some work and some don't. He and his staff have done an excellent job in Butler County."
But there are critics. Some accuse Mr. Gabbard of spending too much money and of building a law enforcement empire.
Since he became sheriff in 1993, his department's fund has increased from $6.8 million to $10.4 million in 1998.
"I don't know that I see the results in decreased crime for what the budget is," said Mr. Holzberger, now a Hamilton city councilman.
Mr. Gabbard says he has generated at least $5 million a year in income and savings, although his critics call that estimate high. This income and savings, the sheriff said, stems from his contracts with communities for extra law enforcement services, the police academy, inmate labor, grants and other programs.
That doesn't include the $903,000 in property and cash his department has seized in drug cases, he said.
Mr. Gabbard said he has expanded his staff the past five years because of Butler's increasing law enforcement needs. In the past eight years, the county's population has grown from 291,000 to 326,000.
Since 1993, the number of sheriff's cruisers patrolling for each eight-hour shift has increased from three to 12, Sheriff Gabbard said.
Capt. Alan Laney, Fairfield assistant police chief, is expected to be Mr. Gabbard's Democratic opponent in the next sheriff's race. He called the jail tent idea "completely ludicrous" because of the area's weather. He says the sheriff and other county officials should have put more effort into campaigning for the sales tax increase that would have paid for the construction and operation of a $35 million jail.
Don Daiker, chairman of the Butler County Democratic Party, said voters defeated the jail because the tax was permanent and the jail too costly. "Why did he propose a jail that seemed to be so luxurious and so expensive when a bare-bones jail would have sufficed?"
Capt. Laney accused Mr. Gabbard of trying to persuade Butler County townships that have their own police departments to sign contracts with the sheriff's office for their services.
"I don't see the need for the sheriff to actively pursue putting other police departments out of business just to spread his power base," he said.
Mr. Gabbard strongly denied that.
"Building an empire is as far from my mind as pole-vaulting the moon," he said. "My only goal is to provide the best possible service I can and do it as honestly as I can with the least possible dollars."
The sheriff and his wife, Phyllis, have six children, 12 grandchildren and two great-grandchildren. One granddaughter died of cancer two years ago.
Their son, Joseph, is a Hamilton police officer and wears his father's old badge number.
Sheriff Gabbard has a simple method of keeping his professional responsibilities in perspective.
"I ask myself how what I am about to do or not do will affect my grandchildren and great-grandchild," he said. "That keeps me going in the right direction."
