As Deputy Mayor, I helped implement reforms in Lakewood, including eliminating our role in Metro swat to increase accountability, reviewing our use of force and de-escalation policies, and ensuring funding for mental health professionals to be available on police calls for those in crisis. These are the kinds of common sense reforms I will continue to push for as your council member.
The Lakewood Police Department does a lot of great work in our City. The calls to defund the police will not solve our community’s problems. Removing officers from the streets will make our families less safe and is not the answer. The City Council must dedicate adequate resources to ensure that the Department can recruit and retain the high-quality officers we need and can provide proper training to ensure both their safety and the safety of all community members, including our communities of color.
As your Council Member, I will work to:
- Implement reforms to rebuild trust in order to keep all members in our community safe
- Provide needed funding to ensure excellent training, including all necessary training to instill a greater sense of community confidence in our Police Department
We must ensure that the mission to protect life, property, and uphold individual rights is achieved for all.
Elected leadership must lead the community to make real and lasting change. The specifics of the “what” and “how” must come through constructive and active dialog with all of our community members.
As I have done throughout my career, I am committed to working with our elected leaders and community members to have the hard conversations necessary to make constructive change happen.
Our police officers can only effectively serve our community if they are trusted to treat all citizens with the dignity and fairness they deserve. Trust is very hard to earn and very easy to lose. As recent events have shown, we have work to do in our communities to ensure the public trust. I am dedicated to working hard so all of our public servants, including our elected leaders, officers, prosecutors, and court, are ALL worthy of that trust.