3 Candidates Vie For OC Sheriff's 'Top Cop' 2018 Primary Election

Tuesday is election day for the 2018 primary, and on the heels of Sandra Hutchens' retirement, three men are vying to lead the fifth-largest sheriff's department in the country.

Undersheriff Don Barnes, Retired OCSD Sgt. and Aliso Viejo current Mayor David Harrington, and L.A. District Attorney's Office Investigator Duke Nguyen all have thrown their hat in the ring for the job, but only Barnes was hand picked by Hutchens to run the department.

Orange County Sheriff's Department is facing controversies and legal challenges after Hutchens' 10 year tenure, and all three candidates recently addressed with the media what they consider the largest issues that will face the next "top cop" of OC.

Barnes, with the OCSD for over 29 years, has only slightly more experience with the department than Harrington, who retired as a sergeant after 28 years in 2013.

Harrington, now mayor of Aliso Viejo, told ABC7 that he is enough of a part of the culture to understand the OCSD, but is not so enmeshed that changes wouldn't be possible.

"I think (OCSD) needs to be nudged back into the direction of law enforcement," Harrington told reporters. As a mayor, he told Inside OC that cities deserve better than they've been getting.

Though Nguyen has --as of late --worked as an investigator for the L.A. District Attorney's office, he is an Orange County resident with 26 years of law enforcement experience.

Nguyen told ABC7 reporters that he plans to bring"reform" and "realignment" to the department, as well as "trust in communities when it comes to policing." His goals are to "modernize" the department, he told Inside OC.

Some of the biggest black eyes on the OCSD include the highly publicized cell-phone recorded jailbreaks of 2016 and the jailhouse informant scandal that allowed the largest mass murderer in OC history to escape the death penalty.

Deputies were admonished by a judge, have taken the 5th on witness stands and more, according to the interview with Rick Reiff. Also, victims and survivors were forced to time and again be returned to the witness stand.

"It's a big problem to re-victimize victims," Harrington said in interview.

According to Barnes, over the past two years, he has researched the "special handling" unit and has created new policy about use of jailhouse informants, the use of which is "not illegal, it just has to be done properly," he told Inside OC. "The environment cannot exist anymore" and the sheriff's department has to be "completely transparent" when informants are used.

Discussing the jailbreak, Nguyen said that the lackadaisical Santa Ana prison conditions that allowed three to escape were the result of "management issues," and that after the jailbreak incident there "wasn't enough accountability."

Don Barnes had just begun his work as undersheriff when the jailbreak occurred.

"People were held accountable," he said, adding that they "flipped the entire management" of the jail.

Harrington countered Barne's statement, saying that there was more a shifting of management following the jailbreak than a true accountability. "Management needs to be held to account as well," he said.

Harrington told reporters that those department failings encouraged him to run for Sheriff of Orange County, saying he felt taxpayers deserved "better."

If named sheriff, Harrington would completely review "every aspect of the department, from the top down, bottom up," he said in the report.

Barnes has stated that he doesn't believe either the jailbreak or the informant scandal is a problem anymore, saying that the Men's Central Jail has been "completely revamped in policy and performance expectations." According to Barnes, areas under OCSD's watch have among the lowest crime rates in the nation.

Nguyen wants to bring "quality policing back to our communities," he said.

After the primary election, two candidates with the highest numbers of votes will move on to the November runoff election, unless one candidate gets over 50% of the vote on June 5. If that is the case, that man will be Orange County's top cop.

See a complete video interview, including discussions on immigration, watch here.

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