TARNISHED SHERIFF STARTS THE YEAR WITH A CLEAN SLATE

The only thing missing was a broom.

Sheriff Ken Jenne played janitor on Friday, trying to clean up the
mess left by years of dubious crime clearance and reporting methods in
the Broward Sheriff's Office.

He swept away 24 detectives, five sergeants and a good chunk of his
command staff. He even swept away his pet POWERTRAC accountability
system, speaking of a replacement that would scrap the high-pressure,
number-obsessed theatrics.

The lower-level employees, from 11 districts and divisions, were
busted back to inglorious duties such as road patrol. The four command
guys got golden parachutes, with Jenne polite enough to call the
departures "retirement requests" that he "decided to grant" after
"painful deliberation."

But we all know a good housecleaning when we see it.

Over the past year, ever since this crime-statistics scandal broke,
Jenne has tried several approaches.

First he played ostrich, sticking his head in the sand last February
when he said it was just "a few isolated incidents."

Then last summer he went into double-talking candidate mode, hiring
outsiders with lofty credentials to get to the bottom of everything,
even as he kept a straight face and said: "I don't think it's systemic."

On Friday, a day after he was sworn in for another term and a week
after the Broward County State Attorney's Office brought the first
charges against Sheriff's Office personnel, Jenne finally acknowledged
the scope of his agency's troubles.

"The problem was institutional and systemic," Jenne said. "The system
that was broken is now fixed."

If only it were that easy.

Unknown is how long the state attorney's investigation will last, how
many will be implicated and how far up the chain of command the
wrongdoing went. Also unknown is the impact on past criminal
convictions and current cases involving detectives whose damaged
credibility will be challenged by defense attorneys.

Jenne was in mea culpa mode on Friday, which was refreshing.

"I should have been more inquisitive and I initially underestimated
the scope and complexity of the problem," he said. "I made mistakes.
. As sheriff, I am fully responsible for what happens in my
department on my watch."

But Jenne, who has been sheriff since 1998, also couldn't help but
point out that high crime-clearing numbers have been a Sheriff's
Office tradition since at least 1983. "In any given year, we were two
to three times the national average," he said.

In other words, the buck might stop with him, but he doesn't want
anyone to think it started with him.

There are nagging questions about how many people around him knew what
was going on. If bogus use of exceptional clearance -- cases
considered solved without arrests -- and downgrading crimes were
techniques passed from generation to generation, then logic says the
brass who came through the ranks over 30 years would know about it.

Did they simply turn a blind eye, or actively encourage
it?

Meantime, it's the grunts who might pay the steepest price.
Prosecutors can bring criminal charges against the detectives and
deputies who signed demonstrably false reports, but the higher-ups
might have left no paper trail, giving them plausible
deniability.

In that way, the end result might be similar to the Abu Ghraib prison
scandal. The MPs in the photos get sent to the stockade, the officers
and Pentagon officials who encouraged it all skate.

As for Jenne, the analogy that's most apt is President Ronald Reagan
during the Iran-Contra scandal. There are two possibilities. Either he
didn't know what was going on, which is bad. Or he did, which is worse.

Jenne says he didn't know. Considering his non-cop background, it's
possible.

But the prosecutor, lawyer and politician in Jenne should have smelled
something foul much sooner, especially since he actively used those
numbers as a sales tool when he conquered new territory.

Now janitor Jenne has finally gotten the broom from his closet.
Unfortunately, the dirt from this episode will tarnish the reputation
of this sheriff and his agency for some time to come.