Mumford announces candidacy for sheriff

Deputy Thomas Mumford stands next to his car on Sunday afternoon in Gallup. Mumford, a 32-year law enforcement veteran, is running for McKinley County sheriff. [Photo by Matt Hinshaw/Independent]

By Bill Donovan
Staff writer

GALLUP — For 32 years, first in the military and then in private life, Tom Mumford has handled just about every kind of police work there is.

Now he's going after the top spot, announcing Sunday that he is planning to run for McKinley County sheriff in the Democratic primary in June.

A former police officer with the Gallup Police Department, Mumford has been working for the Sheriff's Office for the past year in a three-year program to determine if having two police officers solely assigned to dealing with drunk drivers will make a difference in an area that is known for its DWI arrests.

While the jury is still out on the overall effectiveness of the program, Mumford feels that he and his partner, James Maiorano, have made a difference.

"I know I have not gone to as many DWI crashes," he said.

After spending 20 years in the military police and three years in Las Vegas, N.M., Mumford has devoted much of his nine-year career in this area to working traffic and dealing with drunk drivers. But his military police career, he said, dealt with other aspects of law enforcement, including criminal investigation.

He said Sunday he thinks it is time that he look at running for election.

No one else has officially announced for the position yet, although the current sheriff, Felix Begay, can and is expected to run again. There have also been reports that former sheriff Frank Gonzales, who is now a city councilman, is also looking at running again, although he indicated a few weeks ago that he would not be a candidate.

Mumford said that although Begay and others in the sheriff's department knew he was planning to run, he hadn't planned on announcing this early.

That changed, he said, when he saw an article in Saturday's Independent dealing with problems in the Gallup police office which inferred that when he left the department about a year ago, he was under "scrutiny" when he left because he was an officer in the police union.

"I wasn't under scrutiny," he said, adding that he has an untarnished record in every police department he has served.

He decided to leave the Gallup force for one simple reason new supervisors were being put in place and new policies were being implemented and he didn't agree with them.

It wasn't that the new policies were bad, he said; he just thought he would be happier going somewhere else and somewhere else turned out to be the sheriff's office where his services and expertise were being sought to help run a DWI program the department was setting up.

"I'm not going to say anything bad about the Gallup Police Department or the Sheriff's Office," Mumford said, adding that he respects the work Begay has been doing.

If he was elected, he said, he would just do some things differently.

For example, he would work harder to get a cross deputation program between the Navajo Nation and the county up and running.

That agreement has been stalled for years in Gov. Bill Richardson's office over attempts by the Navajo Nation to include language in the agreement that would allow the tribe jurisdiction of non-Indians, something it has never had.

But Mumford said the agreement needs to be implemented and he would put the weight of his office behind getting it approved because it would help provide better protection for those areas of the county that are part of the Checkerboard area.

By having the agreement, the county and the tribe could work together, he said, to create patrols in areas that currently don't have patrols, thus making those areas of the county safer for its residents.

He also wants to do something about providing better law enforcement protection for the southern part of the county, which has been without a deputy living there for the past several months.

The county also needs to create a SWAT or emergency response team, which it does not have. Instead, the county relies on agreements with other area law enforcement departments to provide those kinds of services when the need arises.

He agreed that it's an expensive operation, because of the need to purchase special equipment and provide training, but there are times that a county needs its own SWAT team, again to provide better safety for county residents.

Mumford said he has already decided who his undersheriff will be if he is elected and that is Daniel Henio, a Navajo who is ex-Army and now works in the court protection department within the sheriff's office.

Since he wasn't raised in the Gallup area he lived in Albuquerque before joining the military he said he wanted someone who had a good understanding of some of the unique problems the county sheriff's department faced because of jurisdiction issues and the need to work with the local Native American cultures.

He said he and Henio will be working as a team, now only in the election, but if he is elected as sheriff.

He plans to continue working for the department, campaigning on his off-duty hours, up until about a month before the primary, at which time he will take a leave of absence.

As for facing possible competition from Begay and Gonzales, he admits that he doesn't have the name recognition of either of the other two.

"I do think the voters will vote for the best person, the most experienced and the one who can get the job done ... and that person is me," he said.