Sheriffs Send a Message To DOC Commissioner Paul Schnell: No Confidence
This wasn’t a handful of disgruntled officials. The Minnesota Sheriffs’ Association represents all 87 county sheriffs
When Minnesota’s sheriffs take the extraordinary step of issuing a vote of no confidence in the head of the Department of Corrections, it should set off alarms at the Capitol. Instead, Governor Tim Walz and his administration are brushing it off like an inconvenient footnote. That elitist arrogance is exactly the problem.
This wasn’t a handful of disgruntled officials. The Minnesota Sheriffs’ Association represents all 87 county sheriffs—elected by their communities, accountable to voters, and responsible for keeping dangerous criminals off the streets. Their message was blunt: the Department of Corrections, under Commissioner Paul Schnell, has lost touch with reality. Schnell must resign.
Sheriffs say DOC bureaucrats are enforcing jail regulations in arbitrary and heavy-handed ways, ordering capacity reductions and facility changes that counties can’t afford and communities can’t absorb. The result? Fewer jail beds, more inmate transfers, higher costs for taxpayers, and weaker public safety. While violent crime and staffing shortages plague local law enforcement, DFL state officials are busy playing clipboard politics.
This is the modern Democrat approach to public safety: centralize power, ignore local expertise, and pretend regulations matter more than reality. From Minneapolis to Greater Minnesota, law enforcement leaders are being told to “figure it out” while the state piles on mandates with no funding and no flexibility.
The Walz administration insists it’s all about safety and liability. That’s a bald face lie. Nothing endangers public safety more than sidelining the very sheriffs who run our jails and know their communities best. When every sheriff in Minnesota says the system is broken, the problem isn’t local officials—it’s the leadership at the top.
The vote of no confidence may be symbolic, but the consequences are not. It exposes a growing divide between state Democrats who lecture about safety and the law enforcement professionals who actually deliver it.
If Governor Walz won’t demand accountability from his own appointees, voters should remember who ignored the warning signs when public safety was on the line. The election is less than a year away.