Voters will decide who gets to run the Lake County Sheriff’s Department, an agency which has been plagued by questions over spending and operations at the county jail.
Democrat Jerry Williams, a longtime Indiana State Police major and former interim Gary police chief, faces Republican David Crane Jr., a former Lake County sheriff’s officer, in the Nov. 3 election. They are seeking to succeed term-limited Sheriff Oscar Martinez.
A Williams victory would be historic; he would be the first Black sheriff in Lake County history. Meanwhile, Crane is trying again to become sheriff after losing to Martinez in 2022.
The Lake County sheriff oversees the county jail’s more than 1,000 inmates and nearly 200 sworn police officers.
The candidates are campaigning in the wake of findings from a state audit that identified roughly $300,000 in improper commissary spending on donations, golf outings, and travel between 2022 and 2024.
The jail’s commissary fund receives money from purchases made by individuals who are in custody. Indiana law limits how that money can be spent and is generally reserved for uses such as staff training, equipment, and programs intended for crime prevention. Martinez’s attorney defended the donations as supporting crime prevention and community outreach.
Williams began his law enforcement career as a corrections officer at the Lake County Jail before joining the Indiana State Police, where he has served for more than 30 years.
Williams has emphasized his experience in patrol, investigations, and administration, as well as his work helping Gary’s and other police agencies, as paramount in his preparedness for the position.
He has proposed financial oversight and connected it to his broader assessment of department operations. He says he would seek a review of the department and an independent audit of its commissary fund.
“I want a forensic audit of the entire police department,” Williams told the Post Tribune, “not only the financial component of the agency but all things that make that agency operate and function so that we can start at ground zero to figure out what needs to be adjusted.”
For the jails, he wants to recruit more correctional officers and work with prosecutors to reduce overcrowding.
“They’re somewhere between, conservatively, 40 to maybe as many as 60 correctional officers,” Williams said. “What I’m being told by experts in the jail system itself, that to function properly and safely, they need around 200 officers.”
Crane, on the other hand, is campaigning on his experience inside the department, making changes to jail staff, and a promise to change how it manages money.
He served 17 years with the Lake County Sheriff’s Department, which he now seeks to lead. His campaign lists patrol supervision, crash investigations, and detective work as roles he served within the department. Per his campaign biography, he suffered an on-duty injury in 2015 and was forced into disability retirement under then-Sheriff John Buncich.
In a written response to Capital B Gary, Crane blamed the current administration for jail staffing problems, arguing that Matinez has neglected employees and conditions inside the facility.
“Jail staff only became a problem under this past administration because the sheriff does not take an interest in the personnel or issues within the jail. I will be looking for a warden with the experience to help me bring in talented individuals to work in the jail,” Crane said.
He pledges to work with the Lake County Council to raise corrections officers’ pay and “continue to help them fight for a fair union contract.”
Crane has also said that he would request a State Board of Accounts audit of the department and proposed a citizen oversight committee to review complaints against department officers, along with increasing outreach to organizations that serve children.
“The Sheriff’s Department has the largest budget in county government, and it requires disciplined management,” Crane said. “In my view, Democratic sheriffs have not demonstrated sufficient care in how public funds are spent. I believe reports from the State Board of Accounts support this concern.”
