City Sheriff Is Named (You Read That Right)

New York City can be a tough town. Everybody knows that. But tough enough to need a sheriff? As it turns out, the answer is yes.

Edgar A. Domenech will be New York’s 117th sheriff.

And now there is a new sheriff in town — although he will be living with his parents in Queens temporarily.

On Tuesday, Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg announced that he was appointing Edgar A. Domenech, 48, a longtime law enforcement official who is the special agent in charge of the Washington office of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, to be New York City’s next sheriff.

Most New Yorkers could be excused their ignorance of the position, since it has a relatively low profile in city government.

“I had no idea,” said Dejan Stanjevic, 40, a media salesman. His reaction was typical among those told of Mr. Bloomberg’s announcement.

“Wait! Are they in charge of towing cars?” Mr. Stanjevic said as he stood on a platform inside the 42nd Street subway station in Manhattan. The answer would be yes — on Staten Island.

Mr. Bloomberg took this lack of awareness into account and explained a few of Mr. Domenech’s new duties at a news conference and in a statement. The sheriff, whose office is part of the Department of Finance, finds parents who owe child support, arrests them and takes them to court. He investigates the sale of illegal cigarettes, enforces domestic protection orders and ensures that people with mental illness who are under court order to receive treatment are taken to the appropriate places for care.

But Mr. Bloomberg left out a few of the lesser-known duties that fall to the city’s sheriff, a position that dates back to 1626. The sheriff is, for example, the man to call in the event of a shipwreck. And if a resistance were to rise up against the government, he could deputize and arm citizens to help him quash the rebellion.

The sheriff is not, however, entitled to a horse.

“I do get a badge,” Mr. Domenech said with a smile. And a gun. Mr. Domenech will become the city’s 117th sheriff and will oversee a staff of 174 employees, including 118 deputy sheriffs, and an annual budget of $16 million.

The man he is replacing, Lindsay Eason, who held the job for eight years, recalled that on the day he was appointed, he was greeted at home by several messages sung into his answering machine by friends.

“I shot the sheriiiiff!” they cooed, the lines from a Bob Marley song. “But I did not shoot the deputy.”

Mr. Domenech had spent 25 years at the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, and in 2008 he garnered some attention as a whistleblower. That year, he filed a complaint saying he had reported mismanagement at the bureau to the Justice Department and then had been demoted and denied a bonus.

Mr. Domenech is relocating from Virginia for the job, and will be staying at his parents’ home in Richmond Hill while he and his wife look for an apartment. And yes, he confirmed, they will be staying in his childhood bedroom.