SHERIFF'S FIRST DUTY WAS TO COMMUNITY

A fellow who called the other day mentioned growing up in Pampa, and so
pretty soon we were talking about Rufe Jordan.

It happens every time I talk with someone who has lived in that town. I
worked at the newspaper there for a while in the early '70s and came to know
and appreciate Sheriff Jordan and his special role in the community.

He wore the badge for 38 years, which was the state record for a county
sheriff. He left the job on the last day of 1988, a surprising victim of the
war on drugs. He died in 1991. I miss him and wish he had lived long enough
to see what happened in Tulia.

The caller, who was born about the time Rufe became Gray County sheriff,
said that after graduating high school and going away to college he was on a
visit home and went with an old pal to a party in Borger, about a
half-hour's drive away.

Made impression on audience They drank too much and wound up at the police
station. They did not want to call their dads to come get them. Any
alternative seemed preferable to facing their parents' anger and
disappointment. So they called Sheriff Jordan.

Rufe drove over, picked them up and drove them home. He used the opportunity
to talk to the young men about making choices and growing up and
responsibilities and life. How Rufe could talk. He was an orator, even when
the audience was only one or two. He used words and phrases as an artist
uses paints and the result was something to be appreciated and remembered,
something that made an impression.

There are so many stories about Rufe and how people trusted and depended on
him. His last year in office a woman in her 90s and on her death bed asked
to see him. When he came, she told him she was worried about her dog and
wanted Rufe to promise he would find a good home for it after she was gone.
And so he did.

Rufe lost a few teeth and got his nose broken two or three times in his
early years as sheriff, when there were a few rough characters in town who
wanted to test him. He got things under control with a combination of logic
and whatever form of persuasion best suited the situation.

Taking care of his county and community and the people who lived there was
more than a simple matter of enforcing laws. One of the last times I talked
with him, he explained to me why local beer joints closed on Sundays:

"I definitely made up my mind that the best thing I could do for the sake of
this community would be to close those nightclubs on the Sabbath. And, I
did. I sat down with the owners of those nightclubs and I said, `Boys, I
want to tell you something: It seems to me that we're out here anywhere from
one to seven times, in various clubs, on Sunday, regulating those who are
having walleyed fits under the influence of forty-rod or whatever you sell.
And I'm tired of it. So we're going to shut it off now.' It's been that way
now for 37 years."

Not a fan of undercover agents A few weeks after telling me that story, Rufe
was voted out of office. A write-in candidate campaigned door-to-door,
criticizing Jordan for not joining the Panhandle Regional Narcotics
Trafficking Task Force.

Rufe told people he was concerned about the program's costs and safeguards.
He didn't like the idea of an outside undercover agent coming into a
community and gathering information the way they gather it. He preferred
working in the open, making phone calls to get information from people he
knew and trusted.

Tulia proved Rufe's concerns were on target when that town conducted a sting
operation in 1999 and became the nation's foremost example of how a drug
task force can go wrong and damage a town.

There were questions about the undercover cop and his background and his
methods and his results. Questions about the trials and plea bargains and
harsh sentences handed the defendants. National publications and network TV
reported on the controversy. Lawsuits and investigations spawned by the
operation are ongoing.

So many people, like that fellow who called, have personal anecdotes about
how Rufe helped them get past bad choices and avoid trouble with the
criminal justice system to go on and become happy and successful.

The work of undercover drug-war cops isn't likely to result in any such
tributes.