Captain announces run for sheriff after boss confirms he's retiring
Jan. 11—MANKATO — Capt. Paul Barta announced he is running for Blue Earth County sheriff this year as the current sheriff plans to retire.
Sheriff Brad Peterson just entered his 28th year in the role, but he confirmed in a Tuesday email that his tenure will end in 2022. He has served a total of nearly 45 years in law enforcement, he added, with 43 of them at the sheriff's office.
Barta, 46, said his choice to run came only once he knew Peterson would not seek reelection.
Currently a patrol captain and media liaison, Barta joined the Sheriff's Office in 2002 and has worked in law enforcement since 1999. While working for Blue Earth County, he has served as a SWAT operator and instructor, a detective, an assistant emergency management director and a shift lieutenant.
He said the Sheriff's Office faces challenges in the form of staffing shortages, eroding trust in law enforcement and choosing which new technologies to adopt.
The county jail recently had to outsource inmates to other facilities because of minimum staffing requirements set by the Minnesota Department of Corrections, Barta said.
A competitive job market has empowered workers to seek more flexibility, he noted, something not easily attained when serving as a custody officer at a 24/7 facility. Dispatch centers also have experienced strains on staffing.
The department also needs to ensure it has sufficient staff to maintain a longstanding policy which says that, whenever possible, officers should try to assist community members in person. Barta said the practice helps to build trust and makes officers more accessible.
"Trust in general is something that we really need to work on," Barta said. "It wasn't like that back when I got in law enforcement."
Although countywide support seems relatively strong to him, he attributes the overall shift to enhanced scrutiny of the police. Videotaped killings of Black Americans has forced a reexamination of the way in which law enforcement engages with people of color as well as impoverished communities.
Barta said his first role regarding the issue of trust is to be accessible. In the same way he lists his cellphone number on his business card, he plans to put it on his campaign's Facebook page, "Barta 4 Sheriff."
"If you're not having the conversations, nothing's gonna change. I want to be accessible. Talk to me about it," he said, adding that conversations shouldn't cease just because people don't like his explanations or he doesn't like theirs.
"Anybody can learn what they should say, ..." he added, "but it's what you do when you think no one is watching that's of paramount importance."
Barta is an alum of Mankato West and Minnesota State University. He is a married father of three children and lives in rural Eagle Lake.
