LITTLE ROCK — Being a sheriff sometimes can have more to do with negotiating unexpected twists and curves than busting criminals.
I’m thinking about the headache that Washington County Sheriff Tim Helder has enjoyed since learning that his office’s 21-year-old detention officer, Jessie Lunderby was-drum roll suitable here-the June 7 “Cybergirl of the Week” for playboy.com.
Lunderby has been a Washington County deputy since 2007. According to news accounts, the attractive young lady told Playboy that she hopes to become an “undercover officer” or “work for the drug task force” one day.
I don’t know, folks. When I strip that comment down to the bare facts, it sounds just a tad contrived to me, maybe even like some writer for Playboy came up with it.
How would I deal with this situation were I in Helder’s shoes? Well, most folks probably would say, hey, just leave the flap alone and let it fade away in a week or two. Why stir the pot and make an even bigger issue of it?
Unfortunately for Helder, the problem here is considerably larger than that. Every sheriff’s office has policies in place that every deputy is expected to observe, right? So do some deputies get to just ignore them? Nah, probably not.
And what about the even larger issue of a law enforcement agency’s respect and credibility in the community? When rules are broken, there’s a presumption that some kind of internal disciplinary action should-and will-be taken.
Ignoring something as high-profile and wide-ranging as this story has become in the hopes that somehow it might evaporate sends what kind of message to other deputies in Washington County?
Personally, I have no problem with Lunderby’s posing nude for Playboy. I hope she made a bundle and gets a contract. But then, I don’t sign her paycheck or supervise her in a publicly owned political “business” whose chief administrator is employed through the ballot box to manage things honorably and professionally.
Helder’s right hand, Maj. Rick Hoyt, said last week that an internal investigation was under way to determine whether Lunderby had violated any office policies, including whether she had exhibited “conduct unbecoming of an officer or employee of the department” and “failure to get permission to work at an off-duty job.”
Hoyt told the Northwest Arkansas Times that Washington County has “a written process where you describe the kind of job it is and request permission.” The rub here is that thepolicy says that some types of jobs are unacceptable.
According to Hoyt, one of those job categories “has to do with sexual conduct.”
Do you suppose that posing forPlayboy would fall into the broad range of sexual conduct?
“If you work here and you want to apply to be a pole dancer at a gentlemen’s club, that request would be denied,” said Hoyt, who probably had trouble maintaining a straight face with that line. “The same thing goes for jobs at liquor stores, bail bonding companies and any other job that is a conflict of interest.”
Lunderby told KFSM-TV that she gave her employer advance notice of the photo shoot, but according to Hoyt, “she made no request to work an outside job and [she] received compensation from Playboy. “
“We’ve been aware that she’s had a modeling job for some time,” he told the Times. “Everything we’d heard about it had to do with implied nudity, which means she wasn’t completely nude.”
I’m guessing that this means that administrators in the sheriff’s office heard that Lunderby was doing some modeling on the side without having asked for permission to do so.
You can bet your boots and whatever other articles of clothing you might risk losing that the sheriff’s office will get to the bottom of this matter in fairly short order. With pretty much the entire nation ogling my every move, I wouldn’t want to leave even one loose end dangling if I were the sheriff.
Like I suggested up front, being a sheriff can test a person in many ways.
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Mike Masterson is opinion editor of the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette’s Northwest edition.
Editorial, Pages 85 on 06/27/2010