In a race with 16 candidates, the cream typically rises to the top and voters are able to quickly boil down the choices. In just three weeks, however, if the polls are to be believed, voters will have been duped hook, line and chopper into advancing the candidacy of a shady businessman whose closest brush with real police work is the cop he played in the movies.

When you meet Jerry Airola at the offices of his Silver State Helicopters empire, it's easy to see why so many people are instantly drawn to him. He's glib, obviously successful and offers answers (however impractical) to solving the crime rate, boosting police morale, and making the community safer.

I couldn't help but be reminded of former City Councilman Michael McDonald. Here's a fresh-faced young man full of confidence, surrounded by expensive toys and talking big.

"If you're going to own helicopters, it's go big or go home," Airola says. He's got 200.

The only difference is that McDonald was a real cop. Airola hasn't been one for a decade, screwed up the time he did spend on the force in Los Banos, Calif., and now does "air support" missions for police departments that contract with his company.

He's better suited to pull the SAG card out of his wallet and pretend to be a police officer, the way he did in 2004's "The Hollywood Division."

If you can get past the lack of law enforcement bona fides, you could view Airola as the perfect outsider candidate -- a businessman suited to turn around the massive department with its $500 million budget.

The rising crime rate, the fact that I became a crime victim myself this year, and my own interaction with the department have led me to look for new leadership.

But I can't support Airola's business style. At best he's just adept at separating people from their money. At worst, he's a schemer.

There is a class-action lawsuit against Silver State pending in San Diego that alleges Airola made false promises to would-be helicopter pilots to get them to enroll in his school. Airola had obtained federal loans and offered them to the students.

After they were signed up, it is alleged, Airola asked for up to $27,000 more to certify them quickly. Twenty-one plaintiffs all said Airola reneged on that offer, for various reasons, leaving them to repay up to $75,000 apiece.

That's Airola's current business. There's also his past water purification business, in which it appears he was loaned millions on the promise to purchase contracts. He'd use only a fraction to buy the contracts and pay only the interest on the loans.

Anyway, that's what's alleged in a bankruptcy filing in Utah, involving Airola's Hague Quality Water of Nevada. It is alleged he owes $3.5 million, but that Airola transferred his debts into another company which declared bankruptcy.

Easy come. Easy go.

I believe Metro needs to be shaken up. The department just got a 1/4 cent slice of your sales tax money but still can't improve on that dismal officers-per-thousand-resident ranking because so many veteran cops are retiring.

I believe Metro has to undergo wholesale change. Away from Jerry Keller, Bill Young and Undersheriff Doug Gillespie.

If you like things the way they are, Gillespie's your man. He is the sheriff for all purposes, and little would change under his administration.

Veteran cop Bill Conger has a similar background. But when I asked him what his plan was for dealing with the rising crime rate and sinking morale, Conger replied: "Erin, I don't have a plan."

I don't want the status quo and I can't support 12 of the candidates for a variety of reasons.

Laurie Pink Bisch deserves a closer look and more time to debate her view of Metro with Gillespie. She's been a patrol officer for 16 years. Says she didn't want to be promoted to a position in which she was a greater part of the problem.

How, she asks, could she support telling officers in a briefing that there are nine of them to cover the entire Southeast command for the night, including the Strip and some of the most dangerous gang territory in Metro's jurisdiction?

"It's OK to take people out of patrol and put them in saturation units," Bisch said. "But you don't sacrifice patrol officers to do it."

Bisch is a native Nevadan who worked in her family's realty business and auto dealership. She built her own business -- General Outdoor Clean-Up -- and has contracts with Henderson, North Las Vegas and the Union Pacific Railroad. (That's why you see her signs on the railroad overpasses).

Bisch said she is a good facilitator who would get the community involved in helping Metro put more boots on the street.

I don't think she's a perfect candidate. But I can't stay with the good-old-boy network we've got, and I can't trust the brash, wealthy outsider.

Erin Neff's column runs Sunday, Tuesday and Thursday. She can be reached at 387-2906, or by e-mail at eneff@reviewjournal.com.