Qualifications, Experience, & Accomplishments
Mike has worked for nearly 30 years at the Steuben County Sheriff’s Office. He has held nearly every position from Jail Officer to his current position of Chief Deputy. He was a patrol deputy for 12 years, a Special Response Tactical Team member for 9 years, and a detective for 8 years. He has been in a leadership role for over 12 years. Mike is the only candidate with actual real world experience dealing with the various Sheriff’s administration issues including the budgets, personnel, and the vehicle fleet.
Mike also has experience obtaining and administering state and federal grants for equipment as well as for additional personnel. Mike is the only candidate with experience in preparing and making presentations to the Steuben County Board of Commissioners and the Steuben County Council. Serving as the Chief Deputy has given Mike unique experiences and insights into the office of Sheriff that no other candidate has.
During Mike’s career at the Sheriff’s Office, he has been preparing to serve as your Sheriff by taking every opportunity possible to gain knowledge and qualifications through training along with his experience. Over the years, Mike has attended several leadership courses including most notably, the FBI National Academy and the Institute for Credible Leadership Development provided through the Indiana Sheriffs’ Association (ISA).
Mike also has the distinction of being the only candidate that has attended the ISA’s New Sheriffs School. This training gives Mike another unique insight like no other, into what it takes to serve as the elected Sheriff of Steuben County. Mike also spends time studying the Constitution and the history of our country’s founding documents, which greatly influenced how The United States Constitution came to be.
Mike has been able to achieve some great accomplishments during his time with the Sheriff’s Office. Mike was able to achieve and maintain a nearly 100% compliance rate during the time he administered the Sex & Violent Offender Registry which continues today . That accomplishment came in handy when one non-compliant offender fled the area and Mike was able to quickly get an arrest warrant issued and locate the offender, who had already befriended another child. This was thanks to the great working relationships Mike has with the Prosecutor’s Office and the US Marshals Service.
Another accomplishment worth mentioning was the task of transitioning the county’s E-911 center from the control of the Steuben County Board of Commissioners back to the control of the Sheriff in 2022. By the time the Sheriff was contacted, of the 14 employees the center was budgeted for, only 3 dispatchers and the Assistant Communications Director were left to provide 24/7 emergency dispatch service. Mike was put in charge of bringing the 911 center back under the Sheriff and getting everything back up to par.
With the help of a great team and Mike’s decisive leadership, Mike was able to remedy the immediate pressing issues and get the center back to full staff with a combination of re-hires and new hires in just over 2 months' time. Mike was also instrumental in developing and implementing a new policy manual for the Sheriff’s Office as well as designing and developing the current Steuben County Sheriff’s smartphone application.
In 2024, Mike coordinated a project to transition the 3 rural Township Volunteer Fire Departments (Salem Twp/Steuben Twp / Metz) and the 4 Municipal Fire Departments (Fremont/ Orland/Hamilton/Ashley-Hudson) in the county all to an 800 MHz paging system. Mike collaborated with all of the Fire Chiefs involved in the project as well as the Communications/E911 Director, and representatives from the Steuben County Council. Because of the efforts of all involved, funding was able to be secured by the Sheriff and enough new pagers were able to be purchased so every fire department could switch over form the old outdated VHF paging system to the current 800 MHz system at the same time.
This also made paging the fire departments from Communications more effective and efficient, which is a benefit to every citizen in the county. The new paging system allows for multiple departments to be paged at once and also allows responding fire personnel to be able to hear the 800 MHz radio traffic on the pager in order to get time sensitive updated information.