This isn’t exactly the Deep South, where stereotypes from fiction prompt in our imaginations a caricature of a county sheriff who’s morbidly obese, incompetent and bumbling, corrupt and insistent on getting his way, even if he’s wrong (think Boss Hogg on “The Dukes of Hazzard”).

Still, the controversy surrounding Dallas County Sheriff Brian Gilbert has all the twists and turns of a story of southern-style justice. He’s accused of skimming about $120,000 from $900,000 of suspected drug money seized in a traffic stop on Interstate 80 last March and has been charged with first-degree theft. Some in Dallas County are sure the sheriff has given in to the lure of corruption, while others are convinced he’s being set up by someone on his staff who covets his job. The thing many agree on is that county sheriff’s offices are political rats’ nests.

Having to campaign every four years to keep their jobs and in many cases being placed in the awkward position of having to supervise their political opponents is a circumstance those of us working in the private sector can’t relate to. In Dallas County at least and probably elsewhere in Iowa as well, anecdotal evidence that the system doesn’t work well can be found in the minutes of hearings of the Civil Service Commission, which has been called on over the years to determine if deputies were unfairly fired, demoted or disciplined. In many of the Dallas County cases, the appellants had campaigned unsuccessfully for their bosses’ jobs and the appeal proceedings distracted officers from their primary investigative duties.

That’s just one of many real and potential examples of how politicking can get in the way of law enforcement. There are 3,000 or so sheriffs in the country, and all but about a dozen of them were elected to their positions. We’re so accustomed to the system – archaic though it may be, dating back to Medieval times and the reign of King Alfred the Great of England – that few people bother to ask if it still makes sense to elect county sheriffs.

Why not hire them, just as cities hire police chiefs? Traditional wisdom suggests that an elected sheriff is accountable to the people, who can throw sheriffs out of office as easily as they can vote them in. There’s another side to the accountability coin. What kind of accountability – call it loyalty – does a sheriff have to the political boss who brought him to the party? If the chief donor is caught committing a misdeed, is there an element of self-preservation that causes the sheriff to look the other way? It’s naïve to think that law enforcement officers who depend on their popularity to keep their jobs aren’t vulnerable to political influence and patronage. It’s also naïve to think that they’re not spending a lot of their time keeping their jobs when they should be keeping the peace.

It has been persuasively argued that most of the county row offices should be positions filled by appointment based on qualifications rather than by popular vote in a partisan vote, as if Democrats and Republicans enforce the law differently. Indeed, allowing them to remain elected positions does seem only to serve the interests of party machinery, which uses interest in local elections to build party support for state and national races, where party affiliation is important.

Iowans do know from experience that turning an elected position into an appointed one doesn’t hinder democracy. The transition was seamless when county clerks of court no longer had to campaign for their jobs when the state took over the court system.

Being sheriff today requires a political rather than a professional background, a backward system that seems to give Boss Hogg a leg up. Just because we’ve always done it this way doesn’t mean it’s the best way.