Interview With a Vampire

"If you're not on the bus, you're under the bus" Sheriff Francis said in an exclusive interview with Lampoon foreign affairs correspondent Muabladar Hurfrodornot at the Sheriff's office recently.

The Sheriff had been privately critical of the Lampoon and it was like pulling teeth getting an interview but we finally got him to concede to meeting with us to discuss how it is that since he's been Sheriff the staff has been unable to prevent grandiose blunders from happening and getting into the press while Francis himself has not made a single wrong decision. Not one, according to Francis.

We caught up with the Sheriff hiding in his office where everybody said we could find him and it only took about forty five minutes of soothing nursery rhymes, who knew Muabladar could sing, before the door swung open and there stood Francis.

News accounts of blunders in the department have raised questions among voters, law enforcement officials, legal professionals and even my cat as to why Francis' department comes off like the gang that couldn't shoot straight. "You can put protocol ahead of action but that's just not my style" was a quote attributed to Francis but he now says that his command staff put him up to saying that as a prank.

Francis works hard to let the public and the prisoners at the jail know that he's on their side and that he's the victim of a massive conspiracy designed to make him look good but it just isn't working. To convince the public he drives his kid to school in a cruiser and radios it in as a security check.

During one such "security check" Francis helped a small child retrieve a soda from a vending machine by using his service revolver for leverage. Unfortunately "the weapon discharged and blew a door jamb to smithereens" Francis chuckled. "Good thing I didn't hit that kid or the soda machine or there would have been hell to pay and I'd have to file an IA on somebody in the department to find out what happened."

Francis says he's working hard to reform the department and is addressing problems at the jail to make the inmates feel less like they are in jail and more like they are innocent victims of overzealous, unarmed jailers who are responsible for the crimes that landed the inmates there. "If we didn't have jailers we'd have no reason for jails, he said."

According to sources close to the Sheriff posting on dirtyriverocampaign.blogspot.com Francis may suffer from a missed opportunity in Florida when he was arrested several times on drug and theft charges. The bloggers explain that though Francis was arrested and booked he may not have spent enough time in jail to know what its like and he's trying to get close to the prisoners to vicariously experience the joys only the incarcerated can understand.

To reach his goal Francis spends time chatting with the prisoners shouting at jailers to win them over. Some people find his methods unconventional but that doesn't phase the reformer turned Sheriff "they should really just get educated."