In this episode of The Joe Polish Show, host Joe Polish interviews Yavapai County Sheriff David Rhodes, a 31‑year law‑enforcement veteran. Rhodes explains the unique elected nature of sheriffs, describing his role as a CEO‑like leader of a 500‑employee, $80 million agency that runs a county jail and public‑safety operations. He details the "Reach Out" jail‑reentry program he created a decade ago, which screens every detainee for mental‑health, substance‑use, and social‑determinant factors, then provides a warm handoff to community treatment providers. The program has cut the county’s recidivism rate from about 50 % to 18 % over eight years and has been adopted by six other Arizona counties and dozens of counties in 20 states. Rhodes discusses his philosophy of "accountability with opportunity," emphasizing compassionate, data‑driven interventions rather than punitive measures. He also shares his political stance during the COVID‑19 pandemic, refusing to enforce federal vaccine mandates, mask orders, or state business‑closure directives, citing constitutional conservatism and personal liberty. The conversation touches on the challenges of the sheriff’s job—balancing political pressure, managing a large organization, and dealing with employee complaints—while also highlighting the rewarding aspects of community engagement and public education. Rhodes advises listeners to critically evaluate information, avoid believing every sound bite, and recognize the role of elected officials in shaping public‑safety policy.
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When you have the leverage and you have the opportunity and you can put those two, those two things together in a way that makes sense, how can you be a domino for someone else?
The Joe Polish Show. Any problem in the world can be solved with the right genius network. So today I'm honored to introduce someone who knows Yavapai County inside and out, Sheriff David Rhodes. Sheriff Rhodes is a 31-year veteran of the Yavapai County Sheriff's Office. He started his career as a volunteer, officially joined the department in 1994, and has since worked his way up through the ranks: Sergeant, Detective, Lieutenant, Captain, Chief Deputy, and now Sheriff. He's a graduate of the FBI National Academy, Session Number 244, and throughout his career has served in leadership roles, both, uh, the Law Enforcement and Detention Divisions, as well as overseeing the Northern Arizona Regional Training Academy. He's been President of the Arizona Sheriff's Association and sits on the National Sheriff's Association Board. He also started the jail reentry program that I mentioned yesterday, and he's a big mental health advocate. Plus, he was elected in 2020 as Yavapai County Sheriff and won his reelection in 2024 in a landslide. In short, he's the guy who's been keeping the peace around here for nearly 3 decades. And since I happen to own the town of Cleator, Arizona with Jason back there, which is about as Old West as it gets, I should probably mention, if you ever hear about someone stumbling across a dead body out there, don't worry, Sheriff Rhoades has it under control. So please help me welcome Sheriff Rhoades. So I love the hat, of course.
Thank you very much.
Thanks for coming by, man. Thanks for coming by. So, uh, I really have nothing prepared other than I'd love to have you share with everyone what do you actually do and what's it like to be a sheriff. And me and Cherie and Pardis, who came down on one of your days off and we spent about half the day together. You gave us a tour of the— where you live in Prescott, the jailhouse, showed us the museum, 'cause I mentioned I want to create a museum for like Cleator and the mining operation we have, which happens to be in Yavapai County. And you know, you went and showed me this really cool— the safe was the best. You know, Jason, I should probably show this. I'll find that. Eunice, if you don't have the safe, I'll find it and show it. You gave me a tour there, and then you drove me and Cherie and showed us the jailhouse that you designed, a $70 million facility where you have the building to the side of it to help with lowering recidivism and help with mental health and addiction. So you're genuinely interested in helping people not go to jail, but stay out of jail. And if they go there, help them become better. And I thought that was all really cool. But there's a lot of stuff that you do. You've been doing it for many years. So I guess, what's the most— what's the best thing about being the sheriff, and what's the worst thing about being the sheriff?
Oh gosh. First, I want to thank you for having me up here, Joe, and for just giving me a few minutes of your time. I really appreciate it. And I was laughing sitting back there when Pardeep was talking about education because my high school guidance counselor would have never predicted I'd be standing on a stage of something called Genius Network. So we all can, you know, win in this scenario. Look, being a sheriff here in Arizona, is, uh, one of the most amazing and cool positions that, that I think you can have. And I'm very humble and very blessed to do it. Um, there's 15 counties in Arizona and every county has a sheriff and they're all elected by the people and they report to no one other than the voters. And I think that it's really important to understand that executive level law enforcement elected leaders are very, very rare in this country. You've got the president, you've got the governors, you've got the state attorney generals, you've got the county attorneys, and you've got the sheriffs, and that's it. And those are your elected leaders that are setting public safety policy for you all across this country, and you get to pick them. And so you really need to pay attention to who you're voting for and what's going on and what they stand for. This job is running, and for me It's a 500-employee, $80 million organization that runs 364 days a year, 7 days a week. We have about 400 people incarcerated on any given day, 400 to 450, a number that came down from about 650 after we started jail reentry, which was, you know, and I will brag a little bit because that was my idea, my baby, something that I created 10 years ago. And we've had monstrous success, sustained success in reducing recidivism of people who have co-occurring disorders, mental health issues, addictions, things like that, that find themselves in a criminal justice system, much like the education system, that does not serve the underlying cause of what is landing them there. And so we've done a lot of work on that. Never before in the history of the country that I know of, and certainly now, has public safety been a bigger policy topic for the voters in general, than the last 5 years. You saw the police under, you know, law enforcement under complete attack. And some of it, you know, there was some justifiable issues there. But 2020, 2021, nobody wanted to be in this job. Nobody wanted to be out in the communities. Nobody wanted to be doing this because they were afraid of being second-guessed to death. And it was a monstrous political lift to get public safety back to where it is right now. But if you watch all of the elected leaders, all the candidates, Everybody, they are all Democrat, Republican, doesn't matter, squarely on the side of public safety. And that was because your public safety leaders went out, made peace with the communities, got the communities back on board. And, and that's really a big part of this job.
Yeah. And so, uh, one of the things you had told me is that no one is in charge of the sheriff. Like, explain that.
Well, essentially, you know, you're elected, you're the head law enforcement officer of the county. The governor can't remove you. The president can't remove you. The attorney general can't remove you. Only the voters can remove you. There's a process to be removed from office if you've been convicted of felony. But other than that, no one can take you out of office. Only the voters through recall or normal election. And so that relationship with the voters means I don't stand in front of a room of city council members or, you know, county boards of supervisors or whatever pleading for their support. I stand in front of rooms of people like you pleading for your support.
Yeah. So let's talk about the jail that you designed and your thoughts on if other sheriffs in other communities would adopt what you have learned How do you think it would impact incarceration, crime, addiction, mental illness? What are some things that you have learned over the last 10 years that you think would, are transferable to other communities? Which, I mean, I think they're all transferable. What are some of the things you'd like to see happen?
Well, a lot of it is happening. You know, we, there's now 6 counties in Arizona that have modeled the Yavapai County model, which is Reach Out. Maricopa is now coming on board, which is the biggest one. And that is because, You know, there's a new sheriff here. Um, 20 different states have some counties that are using that exact model. And it's as simple as this, and they, they can all do it. You, every single person that gets booked into your facility is being asked a ton of questions about their health status, uh, their income level, their housing situation, all of these things. And so we built our own screening tool. For mental health issues, substance use issues, and social determinants of health, adverse childhood experiences, because we know trauma is what fuels the criminal justice system. Early childhood trauma is a major indicator, and human trafficking. Now you take that money, or that money, that information, and you tease it out, you extrapolate it out, and then you make connections to community treatment providers, community resources, at the time that that person is getting out of jail, you create that warm handoff. And that wasn't happening before, and it wasn't happening at the county jail level because it's very difficult. A lot of these people are only there for, you know, 8, 10, 12 hours, but they're presenting with the chronic or acute factors that indicate recidivism, and you have to identify those at that moment, even if it's in the middle of the night, and not let that person get away from you. And get them connected to treatment. And you know, it's really, it's a game of percentages and statistics. Like you are trying to provide as much connection to service to at-risk people as possible, hoping or believing that your recidivism rate, the rate of people that are breaking the law again, is going to drop. And it has. In Yavapai County, it dropped from 50% to 18% sustained for the last 8 years.
Wow.
Wow.
I mean, that's a very big deal. So this, I don't know how many sheriffs or people in law enforcement would actually have the awareness, 'cause you know, I have this line I've been saying for a while is you cannot punish pain out of people. And I think addiction is a response to pain. It is a solution to loneliness and sadness and some sort of, you know, it's a response to trauma. It's also biochemical. And so you are taking a very compassionate approach. And I've said in the past that, We need a different industry to treat addicts and those with mental illness because punitively, that doesn't make things better for people, it actually makes it worse. And you're in a position where if someone is committing a crime, you actually have to stop that, you have to do something to, and there's obviously different levels. So the stats that I know, and I don't know if these are exactly current, but there's 2.2 million people incarcerated in the US, 40% of people approximately committed a violent crime. So 60% have not. So there's 60% of people, many of which are struggling with addiction. And I think it's somewhere between 80 to 90% of everyone that is arrested or thrown in jail, they were either under the influence of some sort of drug or alcohol. So a lot of those people are addicts. And I think it's like 50% of alcohol is consumed by, you know, like 10% of problem drinkers or so. It's like a huge, huge number. So what in In Arizona, uh, is it, is it like that across the US?
Yeah, it's like, it's like that across the US. But what I would say is go back to the 60% that are incarcerated that didn't commit a violent crime. They're in prison because of recidivism, right? They, whatever punishment that the criminal justice system was giving them, probation or whatever it was, wasn't working, right? And so they kept breaking the law again. Now they've got 5, 6, 7 charges. The prosecutors, the judges, everybody throws up their hands. Their families throw up their hands. Please just lock this person up because they're not getting it and they're continuing to cause all this pain, right? So what if you could prevent the recidivism of those people? That's what this is all about, is you recognize that addiction or mental health or whatever other social determinants of health, at the very first arrest, the very first opportunity, and you're like, well, this is likely is leading here, so let's put them on a different path. Now, it's compassionate, but we call it, I call it accountability with opportunity. If you just hand stuff to people, they will not just take it at the level that they do if they are compelled through the criminal justice system. So when you have the leverage and you have the opportunity and you can put those to those two things together in a way that makes sense. That's how we're having the result.
There's so many people that bitch and complain about how things are, but they don't do anything about it except bitch and complain. And a lot of times they feel like they just, it doesn't make a difference. And what are things that, I mean, you obviously have been in office and you have worked really hard to be part of a community. It is your career, but it's also public service, right? So what are some things that if you could wave a magic wand and wished people would step up and do that would make things better or have an understanding of something, what would that be?
Oh my gosh. There's the simplest thing, which is the most difficult thing, is just don't believe everything that you're told. Martha's laughing and I love Martha McSally. Anybody who's crazy enough Like, we're on the same— put your name on a ballot, that's nuts in this country. And so she's— thank you for doing that, Martha. Um, we— people need to— it's so funny because I'm listening to you talk about marketing and all this stuff and subliminal messaging, and the masses are manipulated by subliminal messaging in politics, right? The dog whistle is blown, you hear it, you go this direction. Even though it's not true. And I would just tell people, just be reserved in the things that you hear. Don't believe the conspiracy theories. Don't believe the 30-second sound bites. Don't— look into it if you care enough about it to look into it, because you— I spend a tremendous amount of time in the community untangling things that people believe have happened or are happening but never did or are not. Yeah.
And during the pandemic, what did you not go along with that other communities or other people in, you know, government went along with?
Oh geez, Joe, you're getting me in trouble here. I— so, um, you know, I was given an executive order by the president to force vaccinations. I refused, um, sent him a letter back, said we're not— well, good, I'm in, I'm in the right crowd. I get booed some places. I refuse to do that. Your body, your choice. We don't force anybody to put anything in their bodies. The government should not do that. That is not what we're going to do. We're not going to use law enforcement to do that. We were given mask mandates. I refused to enforce those. I was ordered by the Republican governor of the state to close businesses. I told him no. We're not doing that. Essentially, you know, you still live in a free country. You know, this whole emergency order situation that was created and used as a hostage—
You couldn't have picked better timing, huh? For a flash flood warning during the storm, right? I mean, God, you couldn't have timed that better, right?
I, you know, but there were certain things like I had to deal with, with, you know, the community. They wanted to go into certain businesses. They thought that they had a constitutional right to go into Whole Foods without a mask on, and they didn't because it's a private business. And so, you know, we spent a lot of times doing that, but I just have been a very strict constitutional conservative my whole life. That's how I run that agency. That's how I set policy at the state. And as you live in a free country, it doesn't mean you're gonna make a good decision, But you have the freedom to do it.
So I asked you in the beginning what's the best thing and the worst thing about being a— so I'll come back to that. What's the hardest part of your job and what are you most proud of, I guess would be the second.
Well, the hardest part of the job is, you know, it's all the weeping, gnashing of teeth, complaining, and that's just the employees, Joe Polish. The hardest part of the job is that you're essentially a CEO of, you know, that level of 500-employee, $80 million organization, and the face and the politics and the everything that goes into it. And so the day-to-day grind, you know, you have to come from the 30,000-foot view down into the weeds, back up here, consistently making these kind of decisions. And That's the most difficult part of it. And, you know, the political landscape is really hard too. You know, I have a lot of people that, because the sheriff has so much autonomy, people try to recruit you into things that you should not be a part of, or you don't want to be a part of, or are wrong. And so, you know, I have major disagreements with, you know, members of my own party, the federal administration, things that they're doing. They want me to do this or that with whatever their policies are now. And I have to tell them, look, I don't enforce Joe Biden's executive orders and I don't enforce yours either. And that's just how it is.
And what's the best thing? What are you most proud of?
It's cool that I get to come to places like this and meet people like you. I mean, this is, I would never be in this position where I would get to do this and be out in the community. And you know, you get to have an impact for better or worse. You can wave the magic wand and things are gonna happen.
Yeah, which is awesome. And by the way, so when we bought the ghost town of Cleator, Arizona, which you really are the sheriff, I guess, of— So me and Jason, when we first announced it, like, you know, in February of what year is that? 2022? We get up and Jason's like the sheriff of Cleator and I'm like the mayor, even though no one elected us, right? And we have the hats and everything like that. Sorry, dude, but he's right. So, uh, and you've been to Cleator?
Yeah.
Yeah. And so, you know, anyway, I, I— you live in Prescott?
I do.
Uh, are people invited to come and visit the museum at the, uh, the jail? Is that open to the public, or do you have to have a special invite in order to do that?
Uh, we gotta let you in.
Okay.
We only show certain people.
Okay. Okay. Very cool. Did you find this fascinating and interesting?
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