Wild about Harry ...

From "All Things Considered:"

There's nobody quite like Harry Lee.

The Chinese-American lawman, now in his seventh term in office, has a penchant for putting his foot in his mouth, but it only seems to increase his popularity.

The 74-year-old, 300-pound sheriff -- down from 400 pounds, he proudly points out -- sits at his desk surrounded by his large gun collection.

"I'm still as full of piss and vinegar as I was 20 years ago," he says.

For 26 years, Lee has been the top cop and chief taxing authority of the booming jurisdiction of nearly half a million people, and because of peculiar state law, there's little oversight.

"The sheriff of [Jefferson Parish] is the closest thing there is to being a king in the U.S. I have no unions, I don't have civil service, I hire and fire at will. I don't have to go to council and propose a budget. I approve the budget. I'm the head of the law-enforcement district, and the law-enforcement district only has one vote, which is me," he says.

Since Hurricane Katrina, murders in Jefferson Parish have doubled, the majority of them black-on-black killings. The sheriff tried, in vain, to explain his intended get-tough tactics at a press conference inside his gray, fortress-like headquarters.

"We know where the problem areas are. If we see some black guys on the corner milling around, we would confront them," he said.

The president of the regional NAACP, Donatus King, wasn't buying it.

"Confronting a group of black people on the street corner merely because they're black and milling around is a form of racial profiling. The NAACP opposes that tactic," King said.

Under pressure, the sheriff said his deputies would not be indiscriminately frisking African-American males.

A few days later, the Times-Picayune ran an unscientific poll. The phone calls ran 22 for the NAACP, 789 for Harry Lee.

jbv's Competitive Edge