Steven Jones the judge is a respected veteran of Family Court, a black-robed professional who receives high marks in surveys from the attorneys who stand before him.

Steven Jones the man is a divorced father who was jailed for 12 hours recently at the Henderson Detention Center after police answered a domestic dispute call at his home and found his live-in girlfriend outside the front door, holding her face. The girlfriend, part-time court employee Amy McNair, told police that Jones had thrown her out of the bedroom and she had landed badly.

I suspect that whether she fell or was shoved by Jones will be argued should the details of the misdemeanor domestic battery case reach a full hearing in a courtroom. It's not the first time Jones has been in an argument with a partner that resulted in a police visit. In fact, it's not even the weirdest time. But I digress.

When television news cameras and print reporters caught up with Jones as he exited the local lockup, he wore a T-shirt that read, "Who's your big daddy?" In an instant, his credibility plummeted from reasonably respected jurist to an extra from an episode of "Judge Judy."

Perhaps some political mechanic somewhere can re-craft that badly scorched image, but I wouldn't bet on it. From here, his judicial tenure appears charred beyond recognition.

But then Jones' story went from bad to worse. Jones the man was rapidly eclipsing Jones the judge. The police had been at his door before -- enough in recent years to justify renting a bedroom for use as a substation.

There was that mightily embarrassing incident in 1996, which resulted in the jailing of his pregnant wife, Deborah. The couple had argued, and the police were called, and, following the law, they were compelled to remove one spouse from the house.

The pregnant wife got cuffed and stuffed. The size of a football lineman, Steve Jones stayed behind. For the record, she's now his ex-wife.

In 2002, Jones had his 14-year-old daughter jailed for a couple hours in a vacant area of an adult lockup to teach her a lesson in responsibility. He called it a serious "time out."

This week the Review-Journal reported that in recent years police have responded four times to calls at Jones' house. He wasn't always a central figure. Sometimes it was his teenage daughter, who, police said, had admitted getting hammered at the races prior to a dust-up with the girlfriend. Other times it was a girlfriend who got fitted for the shiny bracelets.

Arguments, rowdy teen-agers, aggressive girlfriends and a couple calls of murky origin: You'd think a guy in his line of work would get enough family dysfunction at the office.

After each incident, he returned to work and with a straight face sat in judgment of other people whose lives had been changed forever by domestic violence. He should know plenty about that from a professional standpoint. Prior to winning a judgeship, Jones was a domestic relations referee.

Who knows, maybe all his firsthand and eyewitness experience gave him a sympathetic ear.

Jones has his fans. In a Review-Journal judicial survey, 85 percent of responding lawyers said Jones should be retained. I'm guessing that 85 percent of his next-door neighbors and almost 100 percent of representatives of domestic violence shelters would differ with the survey's results.

On Monday, a bruised McNair was in court seeking to extend the emergency temporary protective order in the case against her boyfriend the judge. For his part, Jones was unavailable. He was fishing in Alaska.

Maybe if he really looks, he'll find a T-shirt that reads, "The worst day fishing is better than the best day making a fool of myself in Family Court."

For now, Jones has been taken off all Family Court cases involving domestic violence. But the obvious question is whether, given all those police visits, he should be sitting on the bench in Family Court at all.

It makes me wonder whether Jones the judge would be understanding of Jones the man, but the truth is the two are inseparable.

Here's a man who needs to seek another line of work -- quickly.

I read this week that Jones' term of office expires in 2010.

Sooner, if we demand it.

John L. Smith's column appears Sunday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Friday. E-mail him at Smith@reviewjournal.com or call 383-0295.