In His Own Words: Paul Arteta, Republican Candidate for Orange County Sheriff, New York

Paul Arteta stands in downtown Montgomery, New York, on Sept. 27, 2022. Cara Ding/The Epoch Times

MONTGOMERY, N.Y.—The Epoch Times sat down with Paul Arteta, the Republican candidate for Orange County Sheriff, at a coffee shop on Sept. 26.

Arteta won the Republican primary, besting Orange County Undersheriff Kenneth Jones by about 15 points. He will face Democratic candidate Bernie Rivers in the general election.

Carmen DeStefano, a retired investigator, is also running as a write-in candidate.

The incumbent, Sheriff Carl Dubois, will retire after 20 years in office.

This interview has been edited for brevity and clarity.

The Epoch Times: You’ve worked in various roles at the Orange County Sheriff’s Office for most of your career. How did you get into law enforcement?

Paul Arteta: I was born in Newburgh and raised in Ulster County. I was a union worker when my high school friends working in the jail suggested that I take the test. I did. I scored well, and I started working in jails in the early 90s. I had never been in trouble with the law before, and boom, I was with the bad people.

There was a really cool guy who would come into my little office and talk to me all the time. He said he was falsely accused, that he was just at the wrong place at the wrong time, and looked like the black guy that actually did it. Then one day I got off work and found him waiting outside the jail for me. He told me he was cleared. I was like, ‘Wow, there are innocent people in here.’ That changed me.

Pictures showcase the memories Paul Arteta has gathered during his career in law enforcement. Cara Ding/The Epoch Times

The Epoch Times: You climbed through the ranks at the sheriff’s office, from a deputy to investigator, to sergeant-in-charge of daytime patrols, and to sergeant-in-charge of investigations. Then you had an opportunity to work on the FBI Safe Streets Gang Task Force. Can you share more about that experience?

Arteta: When the opportunity came along in 2009, several people being asked at the sheriff’s office declined to go. I saw it as an opportunity to go work with other agencies and so I went. We had a very energetic FBI agent leading the task force and focused on rival gangs in the city of Newburgh. In 2010, we had a substantial takedown, arresting about 78 gang members and sending them away to federal prisons for a very long time.

The Epoch Times: Why did you decide to run for sheriff?

Arteta: After the former Sheriff Frank Bigger got elected, he asked me at dinner, “What do you see coming out of this job at the sheriff’s office?” I said, “I want your job.” Pretty much throughout my 30 years at the sheriff’s office, I’d wanted to be sheriff.  I don’t just get a job because I need to make money. I come to a job to make it better or to do good things. I just want to continue and make the office the best I can.

I think my experience at the sheriff’s office makes me the best candidate. My experience also goes beyond Orange County—having worked on [the] FBI gang task force and gone to the FBI national academy. I did a master’s degree online with San Diego University, which revolved around 21st-century policing. I like to find out what’s going on in other agencies and even countries. We might have the same problems, and maybe some trick that someone else is doing works.

Paul Arteta in his office at the Montgomery Police Department in New York on Sept. 27, 2022. Cara Ding/The Epoch Times

The Epoch Times: What’s your action plan if you are elected sheriff?

Arteta: I’m going to address the understaffing at the county jail. For correctional officers who have family and young children, mandatory overtime has been hard on them. We are going to take a deep dive, identify correctional officers who are assigned to jobs other than watching prisoners and bring some of them back to correctional work. I’m also going to expand support and reentry services at the jail—such as mental health, job training, and helping inmates earn back their driver’s licenses.

I’m going to enhance patrol, so we are more present throughout the county. There are a lot of communities in our county that don’t have a police force, and I’d like to make sure deputies go through those towns. I’d like to have boat patrol all summer long, seven days a week, with help of grant money. We need to bring that back to protect against terrorism—the power lines that go from here all the way down to New York City. I am going to have bike patrol on the Orange County heritage trail and in the county parks. To do that, we are going to take a deep dive into different units at the office and perhaps reassign some deputies back to patrol. A lot of our job is not chasing after bad guys and arresting them; it is about deterrence and being out there for the community to see us and talk to us.

A lawn sign shows support for Paul Arteta in downtown Montgomery, N.Y., on Sept. 27, 2022. Cara Ding/The Epoch Times

I’m going to provide more support to local police agencies. We are going to work with them, get out there, and help them accomplish their goals. I’m going to send deputies to assist with training at police academies in the county. We are losing a lot of old folks through attrition. If we can get them into police academies to train young cops in Orange County, that would be a benefit.

I want to enhance our drug task force and work more closely with the District Attorney’s Office. I think the drug epidemic is probably the biggest problem in this county right now. Overdoses are rising, and a lot of property crimes are driven by drug addiction. By working with other agencies, we can get more things accomplished. We will focus on taking as many drugs as we can off the street.

The Epoch Times: In July, right after the state’s concealed carry law was ruled unconstitutional by the U.S. Supreme Court, New York passed a set of new gun laws within hours of introduction. What’s your take on the laws?

Arteta: I think it is a shame. It looks like it’s all for political reasons. We already have laws on the books that can be used to target criminals, yet they keep coming up with these laws that make it harder for law-abiding citizens.

We will take it on a case-by-case basis. Just like a district attorney has the latitude to prosecute or not, we have the latitude to arrest or not to arrest. There is an old saying that ignorance of laws is no excuse. But you cannot keep coming up with new laws and expect people to be in the know all the time. People are caught up with their lives, taking kids to schools, and doing family obligations, and many of them might not even know what the new laws say. I happen to be in the know just because of what I do.

Paul Arteta stands at the entrance of the Montgomery Police Department in New York, on Sept. 27, 2022. Cara Ding/The Epoch Times

The Epoch Times: New York passed a major criminal justice reform bill in 2019 that eliminated cash bail for most low-level crimes. What’s your take on those laws?

Arteta: Why do we elect judges? We elect them to make these hard decisions such as bail. For the most part, I think judges are making the right decisions, taking into consideration your housing, your financial security, your job, your family, etc. But the bail reform took that discretion away from the judges in a lot of cases. I don’t agree with everything in that reform. Nobody says we don’t need reform, but I think one of the biggest problems in government today is [that] instead of making a law, they make this huge draft document and slip in all these different things so that you can’t really concentrate on one item.

The Epoch Times: It is reported that you were internally investigated in the coverup of a use-of-force report and shortly afterward you left the sheriff’s office in 2020. Can you tell us what happened?

Arteta: That had to do with deputies who grabbed an uncooperative inmate at a court in Middletown, New York. I didn’t know of the incident at the time. There was no coverup. After that internal investigation, I retired from the sheriff’s office as a captain in good standing. I just found it hard for me and Undersheriff Jones to work at the same agency when both of us were running for sheriff. I now work as deputy chief at the Montgomery Police Department.