After 32 years of working in virtually all phases of the Santa Barbara County Sheriff's Office and over 2,700 hours of specialized California Police Officer Standards and Training I am prepared and knowledgeable to lead our Sheriff's department. My progressive values include supporting, not deporting, our immigrant neighbors, sensible gun laws such as the Gun Violence Restraining Order (GVRO) to protect our communities, bringing the "peace" back into peace officer, training our officers in Crisis Intervention and how to better address people with mental health and substance abuse issues, and implicit bias training.
We need to rebuild the trust in our Sheriff's department, which will assist our deputies with recruitment, and increase retention of our most valuable resource, our deputies. Our Santa Barbara community needs and deserves new energy, experience, skills, and motivation to make the necessary changes. From patrol to teaching academy recruits and new officers, and from crisis intervention training to my current position as Solvang and Buellton's Police Chief, I have learned what's needed to succeed in the job from the ground up, not the top down.
The county has finally found funding for the construction of a North County jail, badly needed to reduce overcrowding and improve security and conditions at our existing jail. Ironically, the challenge now is for our Sheriff's Office to make important changes to avoid filling and overfilling both the new and existing jail.