In November 2019, Yavapai County Sheriff Scott Mascher informed his staff that he would be retiring after working for the Yavapai County Sheriff’s Office since 1983, and being elected sheriff in 2011.
As he left, Mascher endorsed his chief deputy, David Rhodes, as his possible replacement.
Rhodes ran unopposed in both the August primary for the Republican nomination and in November for the general election.
On Friday, Jan. 1, he took over as sheriff.
“One of the most important things for any leader, not just me, is to have someone there to take over as you leave, and I have that,” Mascher said at the time. “Dave Rhodes has come up through the ranks like me. His whole adult life has been there. He’s a local, from the Verde Valley.
“He’s who I support. He’s the one who knows all the ins and outs of the complex jail issues, patrol, criminal investigation, animal control, search and rescue, all of that. He’s worked in all those areas just like I did.”
Rhodes has a decades-long career with the YCSO, extending all the way back to him applying for a job with it when he was 20 years old in 1994, too young to even get his own gun when he entered the academy. As a Cornville native with a grandfather who had been chief deputy for Cochise County, Rhodes grew up idolizing law enforcement. He recalls having been in a serious car accident at age 6, and being helped by YCSO deputies.
“I had some really vivid memories of sitting in the deputy’s car,” Rhodes said. “That made an impact. These people were trying to do good. I really admired the agency.”
Rhodes moved up the ranks to become Commander of Law Enforcement for YCSO in 2010. But to his surprise, Mascher moved him away from handling deputies in the field to put him in charge of the Yavapai County Detention Center in Camp Verde in 2013.
“At the time, I wasn’t sure. I thought maybe I’d done something wrong. Now I understand why,” Rhodes said. “It ended up being the best thing for me personally, and it ended up being the best thing for my career.”
The county had been facing problems of jail overcrowding for years —
resulting in a consent decree from the U.S. Department of Justice — and Rhodes saw his mission as finding ways to deal with it.
In 2015, the jail began its Reach Out program, aimed at reducing recidivism by screening inmates for mental health and drug issues when they enter the jail, partnering with local mental health nonprofits and ensuring that inmates released from the jail had resources when they left.
Reach Out showed positive results based on a 2019 study by researchers at Northern Arizona University, which found that inmates who participated in Reach Out in 2018 showed a 16% recidivism rate, a drop from the 28% average in the Arizona Department of Corrections.
Rhodes sees his experience at the jail, and in seeing the alternatives to incarceration and reflexive tough-on-crime policies, as vital now that he will be in charge of YCSO.
“The tools that law enforcement has have been limited. The training has been limited, the resources has been limited.” Rhodes said. “Incarceration for some of these low level crimes is just not solving any problems. Really what needs to happen is treatment.”
Rhodes stresses that he will continue to take YCSO’s aggressive law-enforcement duties seriously, but that he does not think that arrests or incarceration should be the only tool the office has in fighting crime.
“People who commit crimes, particularly victim crimes, violent crimes are going to be pursued aggressively and brought to justice,” Rhodes said. “[But] are we trying to jam the square peg in the round hole, by using incarceration more than other resources that are available?”
As a Verde Valley native before he moved to the other side of Mingus Mountain, Rhodes expressed a desire to ensure that the eastern side of Yavapai County gets the right level of attention and resources without being overshadowed by Prescott. He argues that the way to do this right is to stay plugged in to the local law enforcement agencies in the area, and what is happening on the ground.
“Each agency, even the sheriff’s office doesn’t have enough to do what they need to do,” Rhodes said. “They all share resources, and when we do that, you get better collaboration, you get a better product, and you get it for less money, because everyone is sharing.”
