Allegheny County sheriff's race pits incumbent Kevin Kraus against challenger Brian Weismantle

Both candidates vying to be Allegheny County sheriff agree: the Nov. 4 election will be a referendum on incumbent Kevin Kraus.

Kraus, a Democrat and retired Pittsburgh police officer, is seeking reelection to a second term.

He touts his management experience in overseeing the $24 million, 177-deputy office as a reason why voters should keep him as sheriff.

Kraus also cites success in expanding programs like gun-license events, food drives and unused medication pick-ups.

“It’s a major priority of mine to bring our services out of Downtown and into the communities,” said Kraus, 56, of Ohio Township. “I’m running this campaign on the platform of my record, experience, my integrity and my leadership.”

GOP challenger Brian Weismantle, also a retired Pittsburgh police officer, claims the sheriff’s office has been running on autopilot since Kraus’s predecessor William P. Mullen Jr. — yet another former Pittsburgh police officer — ended his 16-year tenure running the agency in 2022.

Weismantle criticized Kraus for allowing the office’s Pennsylvania Chiefs of Police Association accreditation to lapse in 2022, which is a move Kraus defended.

The Republican candidate also slammed Kraus for disbanding the force’s Emergency Response Team, a unit that aids local law enforcement in crisis situations.

Kraus maintains the unit still exists but declined to provide specifics on its size or cost.

“Democrat? Republican? It has nothing to do with it. It’s about running a police department, basically,” said Weismantle, 59, of Pittsburgh’s North Side. “It’s running itself now.”

Law enforcement careers

Both Kraus and Weismantle have lengthy resumes in law enforcement.

Kraus, who grew up in Sandusky, Ohio, and graduated in 2005 from La Roche University, joined Pittsburgh’s police force in 1993. He rose up through the ranks, retiring in 2014 as a lieutenant.

He then became Mullen’s second-in-command in the sheriff’s office, where Mullen had settled after retiring as deputy chief from the Pittsburgh Bureau of Police.

Kraus said much of his police career was administrative, including a 12-year stint as the major crimes lieutenant.

There, he oversaw more than 100 detectives, including Weismantle, and about a dozen sergeants in units including homicide, robbery and sex assault.

Weismantle said he never reported directly to Kraus.

Weismantle started a three-decade run with the military in 1983, when he said he enlisted in the U.S. Army at 17. He later served in the Air National Guard and other units.

He joined the Pittsburgh police bureau in 1990 and served as an officer in the city for more than 25 years.

The father of two retired as a homicide detective, a post in which he served for more than 18 years and investigated more than 1,000 death-related cases.

After leaving the city police force in 2015, Weismantle started working as a licensed private investigator, which he continues to do.

As a teenager, Weismantle briefly ended up on the other side of the law. In 1982 at 15, Weismantle was charged with homicide after fatally shooting a man who was breaking into his North Side home.

Charges later were dropped — and Weismantle maintains the incident informed his support for the Second Amendment and an individual’s right to self-defense.

‘Mismanagement’ skills

Weismantle claimed Kraus’ “mismanagement” skills are illustrated by incidents like a six-hour standoff in August 2023 in Pittsburgh’s Garfield neighborhood that ended with a gunman’s death.

Weismantle faulted deputies’ response to the shooting and said Kraus bears ultimate responsibility.

The incident started when sheriff’s deputies tried to evict the man from his Broad Street rowhouse.

So many gunshots were fired by law enforcement — more than 900 rounds, according to some estimates — that authorities had to deliver more ammunition to the site.

“That was total nonsense — that could’ve been resolved in two hours, if that,” said Weismantle, who said deputies needed to do more surveillance and advance covert work before approaching the man’s door that day.

“That’s not leadership. That’s stupidity,” Weismantle said. “The short version? It could have been resolved earlier and maybe without gunfire.”

Kraus pushed back on those allegations.

“As someone who was personally involved in that situation and responsible for the training that saved lives that day, that claim lacks credibility and substance,” Kraus countered.

Making hard decisions

Kraus maintains he has expanded programs that worked under Mullen. But he also said he’s made hard decisions about others after evaluating their pros and cons.

For example, Mullen enrolled the sheriff’s office in 2015 in a Pennsylvania Chiefs of Police Association accreditation program to improve its credibility, according to a letter Kraus sent to the group.

The program, which recommends about 370 best practices, helps set standards for how the sheriff’s office and other agencies should operate, said James Adams, the program’s coordinator.

The program can guide everything from use of force to how a law enforcement agency processes cash collected from parking tickets.

But complying with the program was “immensely rigorous, time-consuming and costly,” Kraus said. So, he decided to not put the sheriff’s office through the re-accreditation process.

Kraus also pushed back against Weismantle’s claim that he has gone lax on emergency response training. The office’s Emergency Response Team assists local law enforcement on an as-needed basis.

Kraus told TribLive the office’s Emergency Response Team “was never officially eliminated.” He did not answer questions about the team’s manpower, mission or its budget.

Kraus said he has been working with Allegheny County Common Pleas President Judge Susan Evashavik-DiLucente to proactively improve security at court facilities, which sheriff’s deputies staff. He did not elaborate.

Kraus is set to make $123,923 this year as sheriff, online records show.