The State endorsement: Our Richland County sheriff choice

If Democratic Richland County Sheriff Leon Lott wins an eighth term in the Nov. 5 election and serves all of it, he will tie T. Alex Heise’s record of 32 years as sheriff here. If that happens, he will have served in the department for 50 years, including 18 rising in the ranks from 1975-1993.

To reach the milestone, he must defeat Republican former Sgt. Jim Walker, who worked with the Richland County Sheriff’s Department for more than 14 years before retiring in 2015.

Walker is a strong candidate, but the reality is the only thing that can beat Lott at this point is Lott himself. At 71, Lott is still as sharp as a spike strip. The South Carolina Sheriff’s Association named him sheriff of the year in 2004 and in 2021 when the National Sheriff’s Association named him national sheriff of the year.

So this should have been an easy endorsement for The State Editorial Board. Lott is so focused that he told us his “top three priorities are the same: reducing gun violence.” He noted that the department’s patrol deputies and specialized units are fully staffed and that there’s a waiting list of processed applicants waiting for a job. As the sheriff overseeing 750 uniformed officers and 140 other employees for so long, he’s basically synonymous with Richland County as its top cop.

Then The Washington Post published a bombshell story last month about a local school resource officer accused of sexual misconduct with several teenage girls who kept his job for years.

In devastating detail, The Post recounted that Lott had recruited the officer, recognized his service, and defended him in a deposition when Lott said that he thought one girl had made up her allegations and that he did not find repeated accusations of inappropriate behavior with other girls suspicious. Lott finally labeled the predator “a monster” nine years after the first complaint.

South Carolina opinion editor Matthew T. Hall called Lott to ask him about the story before the board made its endorsement. To Lott’s credit, he didn’t dodge any of the questions.

Former deputy Jamel Bradley, 45, could have received 15 years in prison at a hearing last month, but instead, he got a suspended sentence of five years and three years’ probation and was placed on a public sex offenders’ registry. Lott told us the system failed his victims.

“I regret that it happened,” Lott said. “He betrayed the trust that all of us had in him.”

Lott said the system eventually worked but that the case was complicated because some of the victims “didn’t want to cooperate” and that some of the victims “still feel for him.” He said that “just shows how much he was able to manipulate them like he was able to manipulate all of us.”

Asked about the appearance of a cover-up, Lott said, “The last thing that we’d want to have happen is to have any of our people victimize anyone, but particularly kids. I would never ruin my reputation to cover up something like that. To me, that makes no sense why anyone would ever think that. There was never a cover-up. We had to have the evidence to go to court and convict him, but we never had it. There was smoke, but we could never find the fire, and we needed the fire. Believing something and being able to prove it are different, and we had to be able to prove it.”

Lott said Bradley was considered to be one of Richland County’s best school resource officers, and Lott said he defended him in that deposition because that’s what he believed at the time.

“All of us feel as bad as anybody that it happened,” he said. “I have to consider it a failure, yes, because we didn’t see it. But we were not the only ones that didn’t see it. Most people did not see that in him. Again, these people who groom and molest children are some of the best actors in the world, and they fool people… Our job is to catch people like that, and eventually we did.”

In an election when two congressmen, a sitting county council member and four school board incumbents didn’t answer our questions, Lott answered the most difficult questions we asked.

It’s horrible Bradley preyed on young girls. It’s haunting to think another officer may do it. Bradley’s victims and all children deserve to know that the county’s 107 school resource officers will try to keep everyone safe as a sheriff must. Lott knows these crimes are unacceptable and these failures can never happen again. Let’s hold him to that. The State Editorial Board endorses Leon Lott for Richland County Sheriff.

This story was originally published October 21, 2024 at 5:00 AM.