Ken Runde

Now in his third year as Dubuque County Sheriff, Runde and many peers and colleagues are arguing against state and local laws dealing with sex offenders. They say that present laws make their jobs tougher - if not impossible - and do not provide the public protection they purport to. .

The Telegraph Herald recently interviewed the Dubuque native on sex-offender laws, his interest in law enforcement and other issues. Here are the highlights: .

Did you always aspire to make law enforcement your career? .

No. Actually, I wanted to be a teacher all my life. It just happened, while I was in the Marine Corps, a friend of mine got me interested in some criminal justice classes out of Pepperdine University, so I started to go to night college out there. I enjoyed it. When I received my orders overseas, I ended up going to Iwakuni, Japan. Going through customs out there, they were looking for people to be customs agents. They asked me if I would be interested. I told them I thought that would be great. They said it'll look good on your resume if you want to get into law enforcement. .

After you got out of the service, you came back to Dubuque? .

Right. I could have made the Marine Corps a career. I really enjoyed it. I had always wanted to be a Warrant Officer and the Marine Corps, at one time, was trying to alleviate that position. I would always go to the career planner and say if you want to offer me that, I'd re-enlist. All the way down until the last time, just before I left Japan, then they told me they thought they could do it. I said, well, I've been wanting to do it for a number of years and you wouldn't do it. I'm going to go back to Dubuque, see if I can get a job in law enforcement. .

What line of work were your parents in? .

My dad owns Runde Custom Upholstering on Cedar Cross Court. My mother was an associate with Dubuque Community Schools for about 23 years. She's retired and now assists my dad and my brother Mike with the office and working with customers at the shop. .

That line of work didn't interest you? .

No. I don't know. I always kind of had a bug to get into something else. When I decided to go into the Marine Corps, it was a big change in my life. .

Has your clientele changed over the years? Are criminals still criminals, or have you noticed a difference over the 30 years? .

We talk about the recidivism rate and stuff like that. And people look at it and think it should be just real easy to catch this person or catch that person. But, you know, criminals are - even though some of them may not graduate from high school or may not go to college, they pick up just like the rest of us. They're quick learners, depending on who they run with. They continue to learn day-in and day-out. The more time they spend in institutions, they sometimes become better at what they ever did in the crime world. Technology-wise and everything. We may pick something up where we think we're gaining some ground. Well, they're right behind us, finding something else to try and get away from us. It's a continual cycle. As we change and our technology changes to fight crime, they have the same exact issues and they're doing the same exact thing. I figure when they're in the institutions, they're probably studying the computers and going to the library and stuff like that and they're learning more about what they can do when they get out to further their careers. .

We've read a lot about meth the last several years. What is your assessment of the presence of meth in Dubuque County particularly? .

When Iowa passed the new meth laws involving pseudoephedrine, it made a big difference. Once Wisconsin and Illinois did pass their laws, there was a significant change in Dubuque, also. We have had a significant drop. There's still plenty of meth here. To this day, we have not seen the influx of the Mexican meth that some of the other cities in Iowa have seen so far. We're kind of waiting for that other shoe to drop. .

Meth is a huge issue. It's a very dangerous, it's probably one of the most dangerous drugs around. It continues to be a fight for us. .

Another legislative matter that you're concerned about, as other organizations are, is the sex offender registry, particularly as it relates to residency. .

Right. .

The law right now has a 2,000-foot barrier, or in some communities - Dyersville, for example - a total ban of registered sex offenders living in certain parts of a community. The sheriff's association and other groups have cited problems with that. Are the sheriffs of Iowa just soft on sex offenders? What's the situation? .

No, I think just the opposite. We're not soft at all. I know we've been accused by one legislator who thinks we're crybabies and we don't want to do the extra work. I kind of took offense to her saying that. We have bent over backwards and Chief Deputy Don Vrotsos is the one who handles the specific oversight of sex offenders in Dubuque. He spends countless hours and he arranges for patrol officers and investigators to stop and check on them periodically and do follow-ups or do certain things that he might not have time to do. .

The current law is, in some areas, is unenforceable, and that's the issue we have with it. The 2,000-foot rule causes issues when we were looking at where they could live in the city of Dubuque and where they could live in Dubuque County. It has affected a lot of the families of sex offenders. It has broken families up. They've lost good jobs. Where a responsible citizen in some ways, it took those things away. We lost our ability to track some of them down because when they could not find a place to live and they had to leave their families, then we didn't know where to find them at anymore. .

And that was because they didn't continue to live here? .

Right. They wouldn't continue to come in and register with us. A lot of people want to make this a fight strictly about the 2,000-foot rule. But it's not just the 2,000-foot residency rule. It also involves the fact that the current law says that they will continue to abide by that 2,000-foot residency law for the rest of their life and they're only on the registry for 10 years. After 10 years, how in the world is the sheriff supposed to be able to track those people down if they have no responsibility to register with anybody? It completely is unenforceable at that point. .

The other issue is we do not have any categories for our sex offenders. We have people who, maybe the parent of a young lady at the time because she was underage was having sex with her boyfriend who was of age and now they're currently married but because her family at the time pursued criminal charges against that person and now they have a family. This is what I was talking about before where we're breaking some of these families up, where they currently have a family and they have a good job, they're raising their family just like you and I are, they probably shouldn't even be on that sex-offender list any longer. It was a situation where they should be able to go back to the courts and ask that to be removed at that point. We don't have any of those categories made up in Iowa. It causes us a lot of grief that way. .

You have, say an offender who is hard-core, predatory, kid-on-the-playground type of situation, lumped in with maybe a young man who's a college student who has an underage girlfriend and that may have been five or 10 years in the past? .

Right. .

They're all lumped in together? .

Exactly. I think the sex offenders that are considered predators, I'm very supportive of putting monitors on them and continuing to monitor them. And they can monitor them for the rest of their life. I'm not here to let any sex offender loose and out there to continue their spree or to carry on their offenses. Neither are any of the other sheriffs. The way the law is also now, just because they can't have a residence there does not mean that they can't go onto the school grounds. They can't be sitting on the playgrounds when the kids are out having recess. There's nothing that says they can't do any of that. They can be sitting at the bus stops. They can do all those things. .

And that's where I think Dyersville is overlooking some of those things. They think they're so safe because they have the residence law, but you have people who are going to be traveling through Dyersville and they don't know that Dyersville doesn't have a residency law. They'll wander through Dyersville and if they're standing on the playground and nobody knows who they are, there's not going to be any way they're going to be able to regulate that, any more than what I can. So they have kind of a false security is what I believe. We definitely need to have some changes in the law. We need to make it where it's more enforceable for law enforcement. .

Again, this is residency. This is where they get their mail. It's not where they frequent. It's not where they might have a job. It's just where they list as an address. .

Right. Where they supposedly sleep at night. Another issue is they talk about the strangers that are sex offenders. Around 70 percent aren't strangers; they're friends and families of the victims. The perpetrators are usually known to the victim. .

Right. They are known to the victims and I think the percentage is actually higher than that. But they're using 70 percent and that's fine. I think it's low. Most of the time it's higher than that. .

We've had our new jail open for three years now. That was your baby, that whole construction. If you would, reflect back on that whole process and project. .

Well, it was probably one of the most challenging projects I've ever worked on. When Leo Kennedy was sheriff, he gave me the opportunity to head up a number of different projects that he had, but the jail definitely was one of the most challenging. I don't think anybody thought it was going to be that way. We looked at it that it was going to run us around 15 months to build that jail. It ended up taking about three years. It doubled the amount of time it took to build it, plus. But we're pretty happy with the jail. It's a good building. It's a great building. They did a nice job. We had a lot of issues during the time we were constructing it, but everybody worked through the issues and overall, it's a building we can all be proud of. .

Is the supply of facility space keeping up with demand? .

Oh, yeah. Actually, our jail numbers are staying anywhere, they fluctuate anywhere from 80 to 125. I really felt that we would see more of an influx here, but the courts aren't locking the people up as much as I thought they may once there was more space available. Our numbers continue to fluctuate there. We have started renting out some of that space to other counties. .

Any day now, we should be getting a federal contract where we will be renting space out to the federal government. That way, we'll bring some income in. That'll help pay off the jail. It also helps bring money into Dubuque County. The jobs that we provide I think are good, solid jobs. They're good career jobs and they're jobs that are going to stay right here in Dubuque. By the time we built the jail, we were spending about a half-million dollars a year transporting people all over the state of Iowa. So those people are all back, so that's a half-million dollars a year that we actually are spending right here in Dubuque County now. I think that's a plus for the community all the way around. .

There was a period where the jail was still fairly new and some inmates were going down to Elm Street for I think it was Batterer's Education. Some didn't come back and there was some criticism, including on our editorial page, about the community danger of having these guys walking away. I know since then, there's been some change in procedures and training. What's the current situation? .

The current situation is we teach the Batterer's Education program here in the jail. We have a few officers that are trained as instructors and they actually work with the inmates. Some of the inmates are here until they complete the program. Other inmates are here for portions of it; then when they get out, they go down to the Correctional Facility and complete the program. So it was a plus for us. .

We didn't like having them get out anymore than the public liked having them get out to go to these programs because when they left, unless we actually took them to the Elm Street facility, which we weren't required to do by the courts, they may wander through one of the bars on the way down to the facility or they met their girlfriends on the way down or they met their wives or whatever. I mean, we had no idea what they were doing. When they came back in, of course, we did our regular check them back in and strip search them and stuff like that. Some would come back intoxicated. Some we might have to get urine specimens from to see if they were doing anything else on the way. When they get released from our facility, we have a real issue with that because we don't have any final say in what's going on. So it's worked out well that the BEP program is here. Now we also have the ability to do the Alcoholics Anonymous and Narcotics Anonymous and Gambling Anonymous. .

Sometimes we get accused of not ever wanting to, that we just want to lock people up and we don't want to do anything to help them, and I think that that's not a fair assessment of what we try to do. Any way we can try and help them so that they can get on with their life when they leave here, that's great. We look at different opportunities to do that. .

Well, there are some in the community who'd just as soon you did nothing with them; lock them up, throw away the key. .

Right. But you've got to remember that a lot of the people who are incarcerated in the county jail are local citizens. Some of them are here for theft charges. Some of them are here for OWIs and public intox. Sometimes people are quick to paint all of them with the same brush and you can't do that. I like to be tough on crime as much as anybody. I'm probably as hard-core as anybody is, but the longer you're in the business you can't just take and throw away the key every time somebody makes a mistake. Hopefully, you can salvage some of these people and they become prosperous citizens. .

You mention gambling. Have you seen an increase in gambling related crimes over the last several years? .

Well, the gambling, we work good with the people down at the dog track and at the riverboat. We have different people who are reviewing tapes on different times that they're down there spending a lot of money that are people involved in drugs. Those are probably some of the people we see most frequent. I can't say that ... I think it has an effect on our community in different ways other than just crime. I think we see people who are spending their retirement checks; maybe they spent their whole retirement check and now they can't fulfill the rest of their needs from month-to-month. That becomes a burden on other services we have in our community. I think that probably is a pretty huge effect. The criminal aspect, it has an effect on it, but we try to keep a handle or have a good relationship with both the establishments that I think we keep a pretty good eye on what's going on there. .

What do you find the most challenging part of your job, from a personal or professional standpoint? .

The personnel issues are probably the toughest part of the whole job. .

The management. .

Right. We've grown significantly over the years with the new jail. The jail is our largest division. Of course, we have deputy sheriffs that work the jail. Then we have a part-time contingency also to help us. But probably the personnel issues are the toughest things I have to deal with. .

What do you worry about? You mentioned the personnel piece, but, you know, what keeps you up at night? .

Nothing anymore. I'm not really surprised at anything that happens. I think over the 30 years, I was surprised over different things that would go on and happen. Anymore, I figure, you know what? When I wake up in the morning, I'm going to have to deal with whatever happened. I think I surrounded myself with a good enough staff that most of the time we can deal with whatever comes up. .

The one thing that we've never had happen and I hope I never have to deal with is having an officer that is ever killed in the line of duty. I think that would be something that would just be gut wrenching for the whole agency. I know there are sheriffs and police chiefs that have gone through that. It's got to be a terrible situation to go through. So I hope it never happens here in the sheriff's office and hopefully not during my career for sure. .

What would you say is the biggest misperception about law enforcement, particularly local law enforcement? .

Well, I think the people have the perception that they think we can solve the crimes like they're solved on TV and it's just not that easy. People call us about people that they think are dealing drugs in the neighborhood or whatever. They don't understand why we aren't there cleaning them up and arresting them right now. .

Based on the phone call. .

Based on that phone call. People have to remember that we need to have probable cause and we need to build our cases. It all takes time. We'd love to go out there, I'm telling you. There isn't an officer in this agency that wouldn't love to go out there and kick in one of those doors and settle a crime right now. We know where a lot of stuff goes on, but to build those cases and to get our job done that way is a whole different, it's so much different than what you see on TV. They solve a crime in an hour. .

How important is that phone call? .

Well, I tell you, that phone call is very important because that's intelligence we can take and we can add to other stuff that we have gathered over a period of time. .

If somebody calls in, do they have to give their name? .

No. Some people think that because we have Caller ID with the 911 system now, that we give that information out. But we do not do that; we don't give out people's information. If they want to call in anonymously, we'll take that information. .

What's ahead for the Dubuque County Sheriff's Department? .

Well, I'm definitely not going to add onto the jail. That's not going to happen during the rest of my career, anyway. .

There's a number of things. I want to try and provide more education up in the jail. I'd like to do more with our juvenile detention. We are currently, we just have an agreement with AEA and they've provided a teacher for us to help with the kids that are locked up down there, so that's been a big step for us. I'd like to eventually see if we could make another classroom. If we can help some of the inmates get their GEDs or whatever, hopefully that will be one more step to helping them get out and do something positive with their lives. .

Management wise, I hope that until I retire I can hand this office over to the next individual and hopefully they'll be thinking that, you know, I handed them the jewel that I got handed. .

I think that there's some additional things we could do at the sheriff's office that can improve revenue sources for the county. We have our room-and-board collection that we started doing with the income tax program. That's been working pretty well with us. But there's another whole faction out there - that we have about $1.5 million now on the books. I've talked to the (county) board about giving somebody who would strictly work on trying to bring that money in. .

These would be inmates who racked up the room-and-board charges. .

Right. Racked up the room-and-board charges and never paid us. I think that if they go out there and they're working and they've got a job, they ought to be paying back society for the time they served. I know there are some people we're never going to get a penny out of, but there's people out there who are able to pay and I think it's our duty to collect that money and take that part of the burden off the rest of the taxpayers. .

We've got all these presidential candidates declaring for '08. Do I hear that we should anticipate seeing your name on the ballot for '08? .

I'll be here in '08. I'm looking forward to it. .

You read it here first. .

Right.

Kenneth J. Runde. Age: 53. Occupation: Dubuque County sheriff since January 2005. Employed in the sheriff's department since 1976. . Hometown: Dubuque. Family: Husband of Cindy. Father of Luke (daughter-in-law Sara) Runde, of Dubuque; Andrea Runde, of Madison, Wis.; and Nathan Runde, at Washburn University, Topeka, Kan. Son of Bill and Jean Runde, of Dubuque. . Education: FBI National Academy Graduate, 1992. Certificate of teaching, secondary education, University of Dubuque, 1985. Bachelor of Science in criminal justice, University of Wisconsin-Platteville, 1982. Associate of Arts, administration of justice, Pepperdine University, Santa Ana, Calif., 1975. . Military service: U.S. Marine Corps, 1972-76. . Community leadership: United Way Audit Committee; Y Advisory Board for Domestic Violence; Boy Scouts of America, Northeast Iowa Council executive board (2003-February 2007); Dubuque Senior High School Booster Club board member. Professional leadership: Iowa State Sheriffs and Deputies Association; Mid-States Organized Crime Information Center Review Committee. . Awards and recognition: Iowa Coalition Against Domestic Violence Gold Seal Award, 1997. Dubuque Area Labor-Management Council Partnership Award, 1995. Dubuque Area Chamber of Commerce Convention and Visitors Bureau Hometown Hero Award. . Hobbies: Hunting, fishing, construction, running.