A drawing of John Wayne in sheriff's regalia is placed on one wall. A translation of Sun Tzu's Art of War is on another. Sword and baseball bats lean in one corner (behind neatly cased cigars), with an autographed photograph of President Bush opposite.
In the middle sits the office's lone occupant,
And the sheriff looks like he's enjoying himself.
He welcomed visitors to what he called "the inner sanctum" last week with a smile and a handshake, motioning them to leather chairs arrayed before his desk.
When Jones took his own seat, he immediately shifted to "drive," talking of everything from blasting the Bush administration for failing to enforce immigration laws, to crossing verbal swords with a corporate executive. He doesn't mind admitting that in the nearly two years he has served as sheriff, he has picked some fights.
"Believe me," Jones said, "I'm picking quite a few."
Arguably, Jones has become one of county government's two larger-than-life
figures since taking his oath of office on
Of those two — with Commissioner Mike Fox the other — "Jonesy," as his friends call him, is by far more famous. Or infamous, depending on your point of view.
Google "Richard K. Jones," and you get 1.9 million hits, he said. Google "Sheriff Jones," and only (!) 600,000 hits result. The sheriff talks of a friend showing him a French newspaper quoting him, or a Spanish television station interviewing him and, yes, of calls from "The Daily Show" and "60 Minutes" booking him.
The 53-year-old
Love him or hate him, Jones seems to have a thumb firmly on the pulse of
county residents. Using campaign funds, he bought an
newspaper advertisement last month asking AK Steel Corp. to end the lockout of
its
He heard that day from AK Steel spokesman Alan McCoy. Their phone conversation was brief.
When Jones said McCoy suggested that his company might have to rethink its support of the Buckeye Sheriff's Association, Jones, as he put it, "got a little angry."
"I told him, 'Don't you threaten me.' "
Added Jones, "He (McCoy) was still talking when I got off the phone."
Area residents are still talking, and they haven't stopped. When Jones called McCoy a "corporate lackey" in a newspaper story the next day, local Internet boards and blogs lit up.
Jones isn't apologizing for the run-in with a spokesman for one of the county's largest employers. "I've had CEOs come up to me in restaurants and say, 'Thank you.' "
And the sheriff isn't apologizing for reviving chain gangs, taking cable TV from inmates, noting the rot in Hamilton's 4th Ward and introducing "warden burgers" to those among his jail "guests" who have trouble behaving themselves.
In case anyone asks, warden burgers don't taste like meat loaf. Ketchup might help, but inmates forced to eat the delicacy — those whose behavior put them in lockdown — don't get ketchup. They get warden burgers and all the water they can drink. For 30 days.
Jones says the result is fewer inmates in lockdown.
That's not unimportant, particularly when your well-appointed office — cigars and all — is right next to 1,200 prisoners on any given day.
Not that Jones complains.
"I'm having an awful lot of fun being the sheriff," he said. "In a legislative group, how well would I do?"
Thomas Gnau is deputy editorial page editor of The Journal. He can be reached at (513) 705-2833 or tgnau@coxohio.com.