When Dee Anderson took over as Tarrant County sheriff a year ago, he filled his department's top management positions with longtime cronies from the Arlington Police Department. A few resentful county employees dubbed them the Arlington Mafia, never mind that the "mafia" members were law enforcement officers with plenty of awards and sheepskins to justify their hiring.

As it turns out, however, the hire that may have the biggest impact on the county -- and on Anderson's legacy as sheriff -- is likely to be a Dallas man whom Anderson barely knew before he took office. One of the key players on his team, Anderson said, "just kind of fell into my lap like a godsend."

No one expected Anderson to leave the sheriff's department the way he found it when he was sworn in last January. Far from it. He had spent much of his time on the 2000 campaign trail vowing to return the department's focus to prisoner confinement, rather than the "fast cars and helicopters" that had helped get his unlamented predecessor, David Williams, into trouble. So, before the election, Anderson visited Dallas County's Lew Sterrett Justice Center to study jail operations and develop an administrative plan. He enlisted the help of Bob Knowles, Dallas County's top jailer and a nationally known jail administrator, both in teaching him the finer points of prisoner handling and in finding somebody to run Tarrant County's lockups.

Anderson spent three days learning and admiring the operation of Sterrett. Dallas County's jail housed 7,000 prisoners, twice the number of Tarrant County's inmates. He asked Knowles to keep watch for a talented jail administrator candidate. Anderson didn't figure he could convince Knowles himself to move to a smaller county, a jail beset by morale problems, and a department that had become a laughingstock under Williams.

On Anderson's final day at the jail, Knowles pulled him aside and asked if he were still seeking a jail administrator. "Did you find someone?" Anderson said. "I sure did -- it's me," Knowles replied.

Anderson couldn't believe his coup. "You could have knocked me over with a feather," he said. He named Knowles, 54, as executive chief deputy of confinement -- one of the highest-ranking positions in the department -- and put him in charge of a jail that had been draining the department's budget for years and had become a dumping ground for employees. NEXT »

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