No matter who wins the Ramsey County sheriff’s race, there won’t be a new sheriff in town.

Jack Serier was appointed sheriff by the county board 22 months ago. And his opponent, Bob Fletcher, was Ramsey County sheriff for 16 years and is currently Vadnais Heights mayor.

Both candidates talk about the importance of improving mental health services in the county jail, but when it comes to body cameras, for instance, they offer different approaches.

Serier said they’ve been researching and testing body cameras at the sheriff’s office because they want to avoid problems other departments faced with the technology and costs. He says the cameras will be rolled out by 2020.

Fletcher said Ramsey County should already be using body cameras because they’re important for showing that law enforcement is transparent. He says he would implement them immediately.

BOTH HAVE SUPPORTERS, CRITICS

The candidates each highlight their decades of law enforcement experience.

Serier says one of his accomplishments is working with Falcon Heights to create a new model of community policing. The sheriff’s office took over the city’s public safety contract following a St. Anthony officer fatally shooting Philando Castile in 2016. He also helped form a Ramsey County coalition to address and act on the opioid crisis.

Fletcher says he was successful as sheriff by focusing on arresting career criminals, which reduced crime. He also says he anticipated trends that threaten public safety, such as the rise of methamphetamine.

Serier and Fletcher each have strong supporters and also critics.

Serier’s allies point to Fletcher’s role in the scandal-plagued Metro Gang Strike Force and the fact that two of Fletcher’s employees — who were also his friends — went to federal prison for corruption in a separate case.

“The No. 1 thing that I think everybody looks at for law enforcement is trust, and I find Jack Serier to be very trustworthy,” said Grace Kelly, a St. Paul resident who volunteers for Serier’s campaign. “… Bob Fletcher has a horrible record.”

Fletcher takes aim at Serier’s residency when he took the job and how Serier gets along with workers.

Kyle Mestad, who supported Matt Bostrom when he defeated Fletcher in the 2010 sheriff’s race, is now volunteering for Fletcher.

“Bob is significantly more experienced, has a lifetime of community connections and a strong working relationship with the various labor unions, including our correctional officers,” said Mestad, who works for the sheriff’s office as a planning specialist.

MANAGING THE BUDGET

Bostrom campaigned in 2010 on a slogan of “Restoring Trust.” He said then he heard community concerns about Fletcher not staying within his budget.

Fletcher said recently he would accomplish his goals within the current budget by decreasing the number of administrators.

Fletcher wants to merge the Ramsey County jail and the Ramsey County workhouse under one administrative umbrella to better provide mental health and substance abuse services to inmates. He said they would not need a new facility, and he believes the administrative merger will save money.

RELATED: The sheriff candidates in their own words.

Serier said he came in about $1.2 million under budget last year and returned a portion of the funds to the county board and the rest to the seven cities where the sheriff’s office provides police services.

But Fletcher disagrees with how Serier has spent funds. He said money that Serier used to remodel administrative offices could have been spent on getting the process going more quickly to install suicide barriers on upper levels at the Ramsey County jail. In 2017, a 57-year-old man died at the jail after jumping from a second-floor tier.

Serier says the funds for each project come from separate funding streams and they couldn’t be transferred to other projects. The money for the remodel came partially from 2015 and 2016 year-end savings, while the jail project didn’t have funds allocated to it until 2018.

WHAT DOES THE SHERIFF DO?

Mhonpaj Lee, co-chair of Fletcher’s campaign, met Fletcher when she was a teenager.

As sheriff, Fletcher started youth literacy and sports programming in St. Paul’s public housing that she and her siblings participated in. Lee said such juvenile crime prevention programs need to be brought back, which Fletcher has vowed to do.

As she campaigns for Fletcher, Lee says many people ask her, “What does a sheriff do?”

“How Bob describes it to me is, ‘We keep the peace among the community through these programs,’ ” Lee said.

Serier said he has no shortage of proactive policing programs, such as a community circle for race and gender equity, an academy that introduced 30 women to careers in law enforcement, and youth programs including a school safety patrol.

“Many of the things that we do today, No. 1, are within our budget and also done within the scope of how our office is funded,” Serier said.

The sheriff’s office has a budget of just over $57 million and more than 450 employees.

Deputies provide policing services to seven cities: Arden Hills, Falcon Heights, Little Canada, North Oaks, Shoreview, Vadnais Heights and White Bear Township.

The office’s other duties include running the jail, maintaining courthouse security, apprehending people with warrants, serving legal documents on people and patrolling the county’s waterways.

CHANGES AT THE JAIL

For Ramsey County Commissioner Victoria Reinhardt, one of Serier’s campaign co-chairs, some of Serier’s most important policy work involves the jail, including:

Eliminating jail booking fees, which Serier said put an undue burden on the people who were most likely to be unable to afford them.

Informing U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement that the jail will no longer house immigration detainees.

Making the case to the county board for more funding to hire jail employees to resolve longtime staffing problems.

Fletcher says a large percentage of people booked into jail have some form of mental health or chemical dependency issues.

“Let’s design a system that isn’t designed just to punish a person,” Fletcher said. “It ought to be designed around creating a system where they come out healthier than when they went in.”

FLETCHER’S PAST AS ELECTED OFFICIAL

State Sen. Scott Dibble, DFL-Minneapolis, doesn’t know Serier, but he wants Ramsey County voters to take a close look at Fletcher’s record.

Fletcher was a St. Paul City Council member in the 1980s and a candidate for St. Paul mayor in 1989. In the early 1990s, when Dibble was rallying people to support St. Paul’s gay rights ordinance, he first heard of Fletcher as the chief spokesman for groups opposing the ordinance.

Fletcher says that all happened “half a lifetime ago and, of course, my thinking on that matter has evolved.” He also points out he authored St. Paul’s first affirmative action program when he was a city council member.

In 2009, Dibble says Fletcher was again on his radar when the Legislative Auditor released a report critical of the Metro Gang Strike Force, which was shut down. Dibble said he thinks the task force’s “phenomenal abuse of police power … alone disqualifies Bob Fletcher from being sheriff.”

Fletcher says he was no more responsible for the problems at the Metro Gang Strike Force than the other 12 people on the supervisory board and says he was the only one on the oversight council who disciplined anyone in their agency.

Kelly, the Serier supporter, said lawsuits that were filed when Fletcher was sheriff also should raise alarm bells.

In 2008, for example, the county board approved $750,000 to settle a lawsuit against Fletcher by two deputies — one ran against Fletcher in 2002 and lost — who claimed Fletcher retaliated against them for opposing his re-election bid.

SOME WORKERS UPSET WITH SERIER; HE HAS DFL SUPPORT

After Bostrom retired midway through his second term, the county board appointed Serier as sheriff.

Earlier this year, Fletcher asked for a criminal investigation into whether Serier was a Ramsey County resident when appointed. Prosecutors concluded that residency requirements don’t appear to apply in the case of an appointed sheriff, though Serier says he was a St. Paul resident when he was appointed and continues to be.

Fletcher also raises concerns about Serier’s time as sheriff, saying he’s seen some workers put on leave for reasons he views as retaliatory. But Serier says that’s “pure nonsense” and the community expects him to hold employees accountable when appropriate.

Ramsey County sheriff’s office correctional officer Amber Gray, whose boss is Serier, said she believes “you can judge a leader by how he treats his people.”

Her 38-year-old husband Jason Flahave, who was also a correctional officer and was awaiting the results of an internal affairs investigation, died while off-duty in January of an accidental prescription overdose. Gray, who is now supporting Fletcher, said she regards Fletcher as genuine when it comes to finding solutions to the opioid epidemic, particularly because his own 26-year-old son died of an overdose in 2015.

Serier said recently that Flahave’s death “was a terrible tragedy.” He said he talked to a relative of Flahave’s, who asked Serier “to be a good steward of his memory,” and, as a result, Serier said he would not comment about Flahave.

Fletcher also points to a vote of no-confidence in Serier that the sheriff’s office correctional officers’ union took last year. The petition was approved, though the union didn’t move forward with it after they reached an agreement over their schedule, said Chad Lydon, a correctional officer and union steward.

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Serier has the DFL endorsement. The convention was held before Fletcher threw his hat in the ring, but Fletcher says he hasn’t sought the endorsement in the past since it’s a nonpartisan race.