Archive: News

Tompkins County Sheriff Ken Lansing and former Undersheriff Dereck Osborne both announced they will run for Sheriff this year. Osbourne served as Undersheriff under Lansing until a bitter split over the handling of a shooting incident on Hornbrook Road in 2015, when he was replaced as Undersheriff with Brian Robison.

"The last eight years have been filled with lots of hard work, determination, and progress by the Tompkins County Sheriff's Office team that we've put together," Lansing said in his video announcement. "We have been able to put many programs and plans into motion. I would like to see those committments follow through to the end."

After the shooting Osborne wrote a nine page letter to the Tompkins County Legislature in which he condemned Lansing's management of the incident and the Sheriff's Department in general. The letter was leaked, contesting Lansing's characterization of the incident. This year he is running on a platform of honor, pride, and integrity, and fiscal responsibility.

"I'm dismayed over the current leadership of the Tompkins County Sheriff’s Office... an agency I have loved for so long," Osborne says in a brochure he released last Friday. "News article after news article, I have read in dismay of major budget overruns, threats of 'secret files' on members of the public, outlandish conspiracy-theory claims, personnel issues, and the concealment of criminal activity."

v14i21