vote to defeat Cronvich. He immediately gave deputies raises and poured money into the Sheriff's Office, computerizing it for the first time. He also began to build a political machine that would become one of the largest in southern Louisiana, although his record of getting others elected was spotty. Controversies By the late 1980s, as fear of crime became Jeffersonians' No. 1 concern, Lee sensed his continued political fortunes would have less to do with reforming the Sheriff's Office than in making his suburban constituents feel safe from the big city ills. Their fears were often expressed in stark racial terms, and they found vent for a time in the divisive rhetoric of an aspiring politician named David Duke, whom Metairie residents sent as one of their representatives to the state legislature. Once Lee was accused of trying to separate the races by issuing an order erecting a barricade on a street at the line dividing majority-black New Orleans and majority-white East Jefferson. Mr. Lee turned the story—although false—into political capital. "Depending on who I'm talking to", he said, "I either take credit for the barricade or I don't." On another occasion, he defended his decision to yank deputies out of an all-black neighborhood in Avondale after residents complained about police brutality. When an 8-year-old girl was raped in March 1998, the police initially described two black males as the culprits. Lee was criticized for declaring every black man in the subdivision a suspect. He apologized for any offense but insisted the practice was not racist. In fact, friends said the sheriff was so personally shaken by the vicious attack on the girl, who was also black, that he pulled out all the stops to solve the case. "I'm going to catch that bastard, and when I catch him, he is going to be black," he said. "I just don't give a damn what people think of me anymore. If that was their daughter and we weren't doing that, they would be on our ass." Several days later, he personally placed the girl's stepfather under arrest for the rape. In 2003, a jury sentenced the stepfather to death. Despite the apparent missteps, his popularity grew from the time he took office, particularly among whites. In 1994, a survey for The Times-Picayune showed that 84% of Jefferson Parish residents had a favorable impression of the sheriff, including 91% of whites. The