VOTE411 Voter Guide

1. Continue to increase our inmate educational opportunities and add a Social Worker to the team. Today we have the IGNITE and Change of Status programs to help raise reading levels, help critical thinking skills, and challenge inmates to set goals for their future. 2. Expand the Medical and Mental Health Services provided in the jail by exploring the best programs to help with our Medically Assisted Treatment and Substance Use Disorder partnerships. 3. Broaden our community involvement through outreach. I have set a goal to increase our BIPOC and female MCOLES and MSCTC certified personnel levels to better match our community demographics.

Partnerships and collaboration built on trust and respect lead to effective and efficient management of not only the every day business but also when a crisis arises. I have a career of leading these partnerships within the county; with other municipalities; and with other law enforcement and elected officials. Examples of collaboration include response to the 2010 Enbridge Oil Spill into the Kalamazoo River; the Uber Shooting case; to the recent tornado. As an experienced collaborator, I have the skills to listen to all parties at the table, assess, negotiate, prioritize and delegate during the calm or the crisis.

Law Enforcement across Kalamazoo County educates the community on ways we can work together toward ending gun violence. As a group we explore successful programs in other communities. We partnered with state legislators to develop effective laws, including penalties for not locking firearms; extreme risk protection orders; and new guidelines for registering the purchase of firearms. We reached out as a team to partner with the US Attorney Mark Totten to utilize federal laws when appropriate and work with our local Prosecutor Jeff Getting when a state law is a better fit. Gun Violence Intervention programs have helped our community.

My top three priorities as your Sheriff will be Positive Leadership, Positive Policing, and Positive Community. Within these three tenants of law enforcement, we will begin to make a difference within our community. Positive Leadership is knowing that your Sheriff will lead with integrity and support our law enforcement partners and hold a high degree of professionalism for his office. Positive Policing is making sure all police contacts in the community have been made with respect and courtesy. The byproduct of this will result in Positive Community which reflects a mutual respect between our community and its law enforcement.

The Sheriff should have a positive relationship with every law enforcement partner in Kalamazoo County. The Sheriff should work with Federal, State, and local partners together to accomplish a better, safer more positive community. I have shown a track record of working collaboratively with all agencies to accomplish a common goal, regardless of personal, political or social views. I have shown the tenacity to hold law enforcement accountable within my agency and others as I supervised the execution of a search warrant on a police agency for the distribution of drugs by its police chief.

Kalamazoo has begun a collaborative approach in reducing gun violence, I feel it is a step in the right direction but there is still an unacceptable amount of gun violence within our community. As Sheriff I will steer our community away from gun violence in several ways. I will encourage our partners to focus on getting illegal guns off the streets and will positively support our hardworking police officers. I will support programs that encourage safe storage, educating our youth and keeping children involved so we stop losing so many to the fringes of society. I will work tirelessly to end generational incarceration and violence.