Lexington County sheriff has first challenger in former officer, deputy coroner

A former law enforcement officer and deputy coroner has announced plans to run for Lexington County sheriff in next year’s election.

David Arnold, 49, will officially announce his campaign for the Republican nomination at 11:30 a.m. Thursday at Flight Deck Restaurant in Lexington, according to a Wednesday release. He will challenge incumbent Sheriff Jay Koon, a Republican, who has held the office since a 2015 special election to fill the office after former Sheriff James Metts was indicted on federal charges for illegal use of labor.

Koon won re-election and his first four-year term in 2016.

“I live here, my children go to school here,” Arnold told The State. “I have a vested interest in what goes on in Lexington County.”

Arnold grew up in Columbia, the son of Gerry Sue and Norman J. Arnold, after whom the University of South Carolina’s Arnold School of Public Health is named. Growing up seeing how his parents and grandparents gave back to their communities, Arnold said he also had that same desire, which led him first to the Richland County Coroner’s Office in 1989, where he worked in an administrative role before becoming a deputy coroner in 1991.

Then-Richland County Sheriff Allen Sloan hired Arnold as a deputy in 1992, and he stayed with the sheriff’s department until 1995, when he went to the Bishopville Police Department, he said. It was at a law enforcement event that Arnold met Metts, who soon hired him as a deputy in 1999.

At the sheriff’s department, Arnold said he was soon promoted to resident deputy of the Irmo area.

“You basically serve as an ambassador to the sheriff,” he said.

He later was promoted to sergeant of the resident deputies, at one point having 20 officers under his direction, he said. In March 2010, he resigned from the sheriff’s department and returned to the coroner’s office in Richland County. After two years there, he was hired to the command staff at the Columbia Police Department and worked there as an inspector until his retirement about two years later.

“I was at a point in my life that ... I was at the top of my game at the Lexington County Sheriff’s Department, and I wanted to explore my interest in homeland security,” he said. Since retiring, Arnold has done some contract work with the Department of Homeland Security. After getting his bachelor’s degree and a master’s in criminal justice administration, he got a master’s in homeland security and a PhD in criminology.

Arnold said he’s spoken with hundreds of citizens who have contacted him and said they are upset by “all the things left undone” by the sheriff’s department. Many said they have said they contacted Koon with concerns but never heard back.

“I want to restore the sheriff’s department back to being an honest and integral agency that regains the respect that it had for so many years,” he said. “All that has just gone. The morale at the sheriff’s department is about out.”

Topping Arnold’s platform is rebuilding the agency’s recruitment and retention.

“You have deputies who are assigned to the road and are trained to work the road. When their day is off, they’re either on call for the road in the event of any shortages — which happens all the time — or they’re sent to work the jail for 12 hours,” he said. “They have not had the proper training for that. But they’re being stuck back in the jail, and a lot of them are quitting over it.”

Filling vacancies will help rebuild the morale and decrease the average response time of deputies, Arnold said.

He also wants to have mandates in place that direct deputies to seek counseling after a critical incident.

“I want to make sure that they’re required to see somebody independent and outside of the sheriff’s department, and they have all the support in the world from their chain of command,” he said. “Before I let them go back on the road or back to their job, if they’re involved in a critical incident, then they’re going to go talk to somebody.”

More aggressive approaches to street crime and narcotics, and more community-related initiatives, round out Arnold’s platform. He said he will donate his first year’s salary to foundations that provide aid to law enforcement.

“I’m not taking a salary in this job, because I’m not in it for any kind of money,” he said. “I don’t need the money.”

Filing for the race opens next March. Additional information can be found on the campaign’s website, www.arnoldforsheriff.com, or on the “David Arnold for Sheriff” Facebook page.