TOMS RIVER — Democrat George “Bob” Armstrong said Ocean County needs a new sheriff in town.
Armstrong, retired Air Force lieutenant colonel and a former federal law enforcement agent, Armstrong, 68, of Toms River wants to be that new sheriff. He is expected to challenge Republican incumbent William L. Polhemus for sheriff in the November election.
Polhemus, 83, of Seaside Heights has been sheriff since 1985. However, mounting health problems have forced him to scale back his public appearances and some of his duties in recent years.
“Once elected, my mission is to restore the pride, the visibility and the reputation of the Ocean County Sheriff’s Department,” Armstrong said at a news conference Monday in front of the Ocean County Courthouse.
Armstrong criticized $4 million spent in overtime in the sheriff’s office and corrections department in 2011.
Armstrong said given the exceptional salaries in the sheriff’s office — almost half the employees are paid more than $100,000 — its well-trained officers are underutilized in such roles as guarding the courthouse complex and serving paperwork for the Superior Court. Sheriff’s officers are the only uniformed law enforcement in the county with full police powers in all of the county’s 33 municipalities. Therefore, the officers should be used to assist individual municipal departments as needed.
“People, I am running against an incumbent who has been in office for 27 years, a man whose only admitted goal in this 2012 campaign is, that for posterity sake, he be remembered as a sheriff who served for 30 years, and I’m not kidding — you can’t make this stuff up, this is his goal, his only issue for the 2012 campaign,” Armstrong said.
Polhemus has said he would like another term as sheriff because he would not know what to do with himself if he could not serve.