The deputies who work under Pima County Sheriff Chris Nanos no longer want him running their department. The Pima County Deputy's Organization said this week it had unanimously voted to urge Nanos to step down, a rare and damning rebuke from the rank and file of a sitting sheriff's own agency.
The vote lands in the middle of an unsolved missing-persons case that has drawn national attention: the disappearance of 84-year-old Nancy Guthrie, mother of Today anchor Savannah Guthrie, who has been missing since February 1. And it adds yet another layer of institutional failure to a case already marked by a growing recall effort against Nanos and sharp public criticism from within law enforcement.
The union's call for Nanos to resign is not just about the Guthrie investigation, though that case has become the most visible symbol of the problems inside the department. The U.S. Sun reported that the union also said Nanos failed to fully disclose his history in El Paso to Pima County and to the public, a charge that goes to the sheriff's honesty about his own record.
Records cited by the Sun showed Nanos resigned from his position in El Paso in 1982, not 1984 as his public résumé had previously stated. That two-year discrepancy matters because reports also said Nanos left El Paso in lieu of termination after disciplinary problems, a detail the union says he never fully disclosed to Pima County.
The nature of those disciplinary problems has not been publicly specified. But the gap between what Nanos told the public and what the records apparently show is exactly the kind of credibility problem that corrodes trust inside a department, and between a sheriff and the community he serves.
When the people who carry badges under your authority say, unanimously, that you should quit, the problem is no longer a matter of outside critics or political opponents. It is an internal judgment rendered by the officers closest to the work.
The no-confidence push did not materialize overnight. Former SWAT chief Bob Krygier has publicly accused Nanos of weak leadership and poor communication. Speaking on the Surviving the Survivor podcast, Krygier said Nanos often gets emotional in public and repeats himself, a characterization that paints a picture of a leader struggling to manage the pressure of a high-profile case. That criticism has been building for weeks, with Krygier previously claiming the vast majority of the department had already lost confidence in Nanos.
And the Guthrie case itself has generated its own controversies. Nanos came under fire for routing FBI evidence to a private Florida lab rather than using federal laboratory resources, a decision that raised questions about the chain of custody and the pace of the investigation. Separately, DNA analysis connected to the disappearance could reportedly take as long as a year because of that choice, a timeline that offers cold comfort to a family desperate for answers.
Nancy Guthrie's search has now passed the 50-day mark. The case remains unsolved.
No-confidence votes against sheriffs are not unheard of, but a unanimous one carries particular force. It means not a single deputy in the union's ranks was willing to stand behind the boss. Not one voice dissented. That kind of unanimity is hard to dismiss as a personality clash or a political grudge.
Nanos is an elected official, and the union cannot fire him. But the vote sharpens the political pressure already bearing down on the sheriff. A recall effort is underway in Pima County, and the combination of a public recall campaign and an internal no-confidence declaration leaves Nanos increasingly isolated.
The union's stated reasons, the undisclosed El Paso history, the résumé discrepancy, the broader failures of leadership, go beyond the Guthrie case alone. They describe a pattern: a sheriff who, in the union's telling, was not straight with the people who hired him and has not led effectively under pressure.
Nanos has faced criticism before and deflected it, even as the Guthrie family has publicly pleaded for answers. But deflection gets harder when the criticism is coming from inside the building.
Several questions hang over this story. Which specific records revealed the 1982 resignation date, and who surfaced them? What were the disciplinary problems in El Paso that reportedly led to Nanos's departure in lieu of termination? Has Nanos responded publicly to the union's demand? And most importantly: what progress, if any, has been made in finding Nancy Guthrie?
The 84-year-old woman has been missing for nearly two months. Her daughter is one of the most recognizable television journalists in the country. The case has drawn intense media scrutiny. And the sheriff leading the investigation now faces a unanimous demand from his own deputies to walk away.
None of that brings Nancy Guthrie home. But it does raise a hard question about whether the man in charge of finding her has the credibility, or the confidence of his own people, to keep running the search.
In law enforcement, trust is not optional. A sheriff who cannot hold the confidence of his deputies, who faces questions about the accuracy of his own résumé, and who presides over a stalled investigation into the disappearance of an elderly woman is a sheriff with a serious problem. The Pima County Deputy's Organization has now said so in the clearest terms available to them.
Whether Nanos resigns, faces recall, or simply tries to ride out the storm, the damage is done. His own people have told him, unanimously, that they do not believe he should lead them.
When every deputy in your department says it's time to go, you don't have a PR problem. You have a leadership crisis.
