“Presumed innocent” is a cornerstone of the American legal system, and we do not presume otherwise in the case of Windsor County Sheriff Ryan Palmer, who has pleaded not guilty to multiple charges of sexual misconduct involving three victims.

That presumption, however, attaches to the criminal charges against him, not to the performance of his role as county sheriff. He ought to resign, as Gov. Phil Scott has urged; failing that, the Legislature should open an impeachment inquiry.

Following his arraignment in Rutland Superior Court at the end of January, Palmer told reporters that the conduct in question had nothing to do with the sheriff’s department. “This is my personal life; things I’ve done in my personal life,” he said. “And I just ask people out there not to have that reflect their views of the Windsor County Sheriff’s Department.”

That’s too big an ask. Palmer faces two felony counts of obstruction of justice, two felony counts of aggravated stalking with a deadly weapon, a felony count of lewd and lascivious conduct and two misdemeanor counts of soliciting prostitution.

The line between the personal and the professional is not as bright as Palmer characterized it. Our colleague Alex Ebrahimi has reported that in each instance Palmer is alleged to have used his law enforcement connection to identify the eventual victim.

One of them, for example, told Vermont State Police investigators that she met Palmer in the fall of 2024 when he brought a patient who was in custody to the hospital where she worked. When she eventually broke off relations with him, Palmer is alleged to have shown up in uniform at the hospital to ask why she had stopped communicating with him. Whatever lines there were were blurred beyond distinction.

Palmer says that he has turned over supervision of day-to-day operations to Capt. Claude Weyant, but has no intention of resigning. If he does not, these allegations are bound to cast a dark cloud over the department until they are resolved and compromise the public trust that is essential to effective law enforcement.

It’s also the case that organizations of all sorts tend to take on and mirror the characteristics of the people leading them, including ethical ones. Enterprising reporting by Ebrahimi identified a pattern of problematic conduct on Palmer’s part throughout his law enforcement career before he was elected sheriff in 2022.

The most charitable interpretation of these incidents is that he repeatedly displayed remarkably bad judgment, as when he shot into a fleeing vehicle and wounded a suspect during a botched drug sting while a member of the Windsor Police Department in 2014. He was acquitted in 2017 of aggravated assault with a deadly weapon and reckless endangerment in connection with that incident.

Palmer’s situation points up a systemic weakness in Vermont government. Under the Vermont Constitution, sheriffs are elected officials who can be removed only through impeachment by the Legislature (or by the will of the voters as expressed in the next election).

Their duties are vague and somewhat opaque; accountability and transparency limited. Moreover, the constitution is silent as to qualifications for the office of sheriff; for instance, there’s no requirement that sheriffs even be certified law enforcement officers.

A series of scandals involving sheriff’s departments a few years ago led to talk of a constitutional amendment setting qualifications for sheriffs and other elected officials, and establishing processes for their removal, but nothing came of it.

Apparently, the last time an elected official was impeached in Vermont was in 1976. But there’s good reason for the Legislature to move forward in this matter if Palmer does not leave office voluntarily. The badge and the gun are both the tools and the symbols of the immense powers of law enforcement, the most critical of which is to deprive individuals of their liberty. As such, officers must be held to the highest standard of professional and personal conduct in order to promote respect for the law among the people they are sworn to serve and protect.