Former St. Joseph County Sheriff Joe Speybroeck is crossing party lines to endorse Republican Rod Laureys, saying he faults Democratic nominee Scott Ruszkowski for the closure of the county’s Metro Homicide unit.
Speybroeck, a Democrat, was elected sheriff in 1994 and served from 1995-1998. Ruszkowski has led the South Bend Police Department since 2015.
“He took the drug task force, he took special crimes and took them all back to his place,” Speybroeck said. “That was breaking it down like, ‘I’m better than your team.'”
Laureys is a St. Joseph County police officer and a Marine Corps veteran. The election is in November.
The St. Joseph County Metro Homicide unit drew detectives from South Bend, Mishawaka, the county, and the prosecutor’s office. It investigated 365 homicides and solved 78 percent of them, according to St. Joseph County.
South Bend withdrew its officers in 2022 and the unit closed. Ruszkowski was chief. The city attributed the decision to “staffing.”
Ruszkowski said in the city’s announcement that most of the unit’s detectives were already South Bend officers and that “all cases will now be ‘in-house.'”
Speybroeck said the South Bend Police Department should not have been the one to walk away from the county’s Metro Homicide unit.
“That’s public safety that you’re messing with,” he said.
The Metro Homicide unit worked, Speybroeck said, because a prosecutor sat in the building with the detectives. Most of the county’s drug crimes happened in South Bend.
“If he’s doing that to South Bend, what is he going to do to the sheriff’s department?”
Asked whether his objection was personal, Speybroeck said it was not.
“I don’t have any problems with the Ruszkowskis. I know all the Ruszkowski boys and all that,” he said. “If there was a picnic and we were sharing food, I wouldn’t have a problem sitting there with him.”
Asked again, directly, he gave the same answer and said it could be published.
“It’s professional. If there was a luncheon and they said, ‘Joe, you’re gonna sit next to Ruszkowski,’ I’d have no problem with that.”
The Sheriff’s Role
Speybroeck joined the sheriff’s department in August of 1969, one of about nine hired to help open a new jail. He was elected sheriff in 1994, took office in 1995, and lost his bid for reelection in 1998.
He said he lost because of the jail.
“No one likes building jails and spending forty-eight million,” he said.
Asked what a sheriff does that a city police chief has never had to do, Speybroeck said most people who run for the office do not understand it.
“Your main job as a sheriff is the jail and the courts. That is the number one job of a sheriff. And then comes the detective bureau and the warrant division and the road patrol.”
“They think it’s just like any other police department. You go out, and you make your arrests and the traffic stops. But they don’t know that the real part is the county jail.”
The office also serves civil process, including evictions, repossessions, divorce papers, and small claims, and collects money for the state.
“You’re also the tax collector too. You gotta collect taxes for the State of Indiana on warrants. And you gotta do that carefully also. You can go seize bank accounts and all that kind of stuff.”
When I asked what he would tell whoever wins, Speybroeck said to begin with the jail: set the contracts, work the budget with the commissioners, fill the vacancies, and meet with the warden daily.
“There’s always fights in there. There’s always a problem, but you gotta be on top of those things.”
A sheriff who treats the office as a police department, he said, will be behind from the first week.
Why Laureys
I asked whether someone already inside the sheriff’s department would be better equipped on the first day. Speybroeck said yes.
“He’s already got the knowledge of how the sheriff’s department runs. He’s worked in different parts of the department.”
I asked whether that meant a city officer would be at a disadvantage. Speybroeck said the difference was familiarity, not training.
“They’re all capable, everyone. Everyone’s the same. They all go to the same academy.”
Laureys told reporters in August that he spent ten years working with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives on the federal side, and that his first priority as sheriff would be rebuilding a county drug unit. You can find our coverage of that event here.
St. Joseph County was designated a High Intensity Drug Trafficking Area by the White House in September 2025. Sheriff Bill Redman said in a news release announcing the designation that it would bring federal funding, technology, and training, and strengthen coordination between local, state, and federal law enforcement. Ruszkowski and the City of South Bend pulled out of the county’s Metro Homicide unit in January 2022, leading or contributing to its closure.
“You gotta have a team,” Speybroeck said, “and that was a good team back then.”
Logan Foster
Logan Foster is the founder and editor of Redress South Bend, an independent news outlet covering local government, courts, and public institutions in South Bend and St. Joseph County, Indiana. He reports from primary documents: public records requests, court filings, state audit reports, and campaign finance disclosures. His reporting has examined city and school district payments made without competitive bidding, school board spending, and the records of candidates in county races. Redress South Bend obtained the South Bend Police Department's ShotSpotter coverage map after the department initially denied public access. The outlet is a member of the Society of Professional Journalists and the Online News Association. Reach him at info@redresssouthbend.com
