On the issues: Placer County Undersheriff Wayne Woo, candidate for sheriff

The following interview was conducted by members of The Sacramento Bee Editorial Board and Undersheriff Wayne Woo, a candidate for Placer County Sheriff. It has been edited for length and clarity.

The Sacramento Bee: Please tell us about yourself and why you’re running to be the next Placer County sheriff.

Woo: I currently live in Newcastle, I’ve raised my children here in this community between Loomis and Newcastle. But I didn’t grow up in this community — I was actually raised in the Orangevale and Fair Oaks area of Sacramento County. My father was an immigrant, he came to this country at 13-years-old from China, not speaking any English. He immersed himself in this culture — an amazing man. He actually graduated from San Juan High School. His senior year he was senior class president which goes to show the kind of man he was — to come here at that age and be able to accomplish that by the time he was a senior.

He joined the United States Army, and when he came home, he and his brothers started a grocery store in Orangevale, so I grew up in a family of small businessmen. The market which used to be called the Capri Market was located on the corner of Hazel and Greenback in Orangevale. That’s where I grew up. I worked for my family. After school, you’d go do your homework at the store until mom and dad went home, and they worked seven days a week at the time. In the ‘80s my family’s grocery store went out of business as more change occurred in the area and my father took his share and got a 7-Eleven franchise out off Mack Road near Valley High by the Kaiser over there. When I was in high school I’d go down and work a modified swing shift. My father was able to get two more franchises after that and I think it was sort of my expectation to follow in the family business and take over but it really wasn’t my calling.

Somebody talked about law enforcement. I didn’t grow up wanting to be a police officer, but the more I thought about it the more it resonated with me. So when I was 20-years-old I went to the police academy and got hired by the Lake County Sheriff’s Office, so I’ve pretty much been doing this my entire adult life.

I went to Lake County from 1990 until 1994 and then in 1994 I came home. I wanted to come back closer to Placer County. I had relatives here, so I moved here in ‘94 and began working for the Sheriff’s Office. I’ve had the most blessed career. I’ve been able to do everything I want — I worked on the SWAT team, worked undercover on narcotics, sergeant over our special operations unit. I was a trainer, use-of-force instructor and then I began my leadership journey at the Sheriff’s Office. That’s one of the things I’m most proud of: I didn’t fast-track through any of the ranks. I made sure that I really learned as much as I could. I spent over five years as sergeant, over five years as a lieutenant, over five years as a captain and I’ve been the undersheriff for over five years, running the day to day operations with Sheriff Devon Bell. Between my education — having a master’s degree in justice management from the University of Nevada, Reno — and I’m in my 32nd year of public service and law enforcement. I think that makes me highly qualified and ready to lead as Placer County’s next sheriff.

Opinion

The Sacramento Bee: What new initiatives would you take as sheriff to seize more of the illegal guns on our streets?

Woo: There’s a couple of things I’m proud of, and one of them is our crime rates here in Placer County. I think we’ve done really well. If you look at our crime rates, not just year-over-year but over the past five years. We recently did a budget presentation and if you look at our crime rates, year-over-year our crime rates are down unlike anywhere else in the state. And it’s not just an anomaly. If you go back to 2017, our crime rates are down.

But we are seeing a dramatic increase in a few things, and one is the number of illegal guns we’re taking off the street. Year over year, we saw a dramatic increase through COVID and through civil unrest, but our officers are starting to pull more and more illegal guns off the streets in Placer County, and we’re starting to see a lot more vehicle pursuits, people resisting arrest, on-foot pursuits, things like that. While our deputy sheriffs are doing a phenomenal job, it is getting more dangerous. We want to ensure that we’re continuing to promote proactive policing and that we have a healthy criminal justice system, that deputy sheriffs are continuing to be proactive out there in our community and removing these guns off the streets, and that our investigation unit is following up on these cases and trying to track down where these illegal guns are coming from — not just stopping at a single arrest when we’re contacting these people. Those are a couple of areas I’d like to focus on because we are seeing a couple of crime spikes in our community, which is concerning for Placer County and the amount of illegal guns is one of them.

The Sacramento Bee: With the Placer County Board of Supervisors having recently passed an anti-camping policy during certain hours and on certain property, how do you see the sheriff’s department’s role in responding to the homelessness crisis?

Woo: The Sheriff’s Office does have a role. Homelessness is an extremely complex issue. We’re working very hard to try to address it. I think it has to be addressed through a variety of approaches. I’m proud of the job that Placer County has done. We have, I think, the lowest homelessness rate in Northern California, we have the fourth-lowest homeless rates in the whole state — and if you look at unsheltered homeless — we are the lowest in the state. So what we’re doing has been working. Is it a perfect system? Of course it’s not. We can always get better.

Some of the things we have been doing, at least from the Sheriff’s Office perspective, is we’ve really tried to get focused on the (county’s) continuum of care. One of the things I implemented as a jail commander, and now as undersheriff I’ve authorized and we implemented as one of the first in California with our medical provider, is the “one care” program. What was happening is a lot of these homeless individuals struggle with mental illness and drug and alcohol addiction and they would sometimes get stabilized once they were in custody but then they would get released back onto the street without any kind of warm handoff.

So we’ve worked hard at partnering with our community based organizations, our health and human services, we make sure they have at least two or three days of their prescription medications and we don’t just kick them out the back door of the jail and tell them, “Good luck.” We try and line up all the resources we can, whether it’s Medi-Cal and a direct connection to (Health and Human Services) and community-based organizations.

I think that’s going to be critical moving forward to do that and we really need to figure out a way to address those individuals who don’t want help because of their mental health and addiction issues. There’s a lot of talk at the Legislature about changing some of the conservatorship models because back in the day — right, wrong or indifferent — the criminal justice system used to play a bigger role in that. People would get arrested when there was room in the jail facility and narcotics were a felony and these addicts would go in and they’d get forced to clean up and then they would go to drug court and be supervised. Those things aren’t in place now and some of these people aren’t going to seek help on their own. So I think that will be a critical component moving forward.

I think Placer County is doing well, but we need to be smart and take a very methodical approach moving forward to continue to attack the problem from all angles. And the Sheriff’s Office does have a role in that. I wish I had an easy answer to solve it — I think I’d retire and become a consultant and make millions of dollars touring the country helping to solve the problem for other communities. It’s a complex societal problem. Those are some of the things we’ve done at the Sheriff’s Office under my leadership and some of the things we’d continue to do and work collaboratively with all of our stakeholders.

The Sacramento Bee: Is there something you see the Sheriff’s Office currently doing in that arena that you would like to change? That you feel could be done better?

Woo: When I was a field operations captain, I was the one that was responsible for standing up our transient liaison program and at the time — at least six or eight years ago — we were kind of a model in the state. Placer County is super unique in that we’ve always had a super collaborative working approach with all of our stakeholders, whether it’s intergovernmental or community-based organizations and, as we were trying to figure out the best way to stand up that program, we teamed up with probation and Health and Human Services and had social workers embedded in our team. As we looked around the state trying to find models to look at or copy, those models didn’t exist and we were cutting edge at the time.

Since then, a lot of jurisdictions have copied our model. But to change for the better, I’d probably have to go back to my last answer, I think the DeWitt lawn — what I’m sure you’re referring to with the no-camping ordinance — it’s a very difficult problem because you could go out with any of our transient liaison deputies and ask them all if they’d like to go to the shelters because there’s space available and 99% of them will tell you no. I think it would be focusing on some of those issues we were talking about earlier, whether it’s a legislative angle — I spent the last seven years as a member of the state’s Sheriff’s Association Legislative Committee so I do help weigh in on things down at the Capitol to help provide insight on things that impact public safety and quality of life.

I really think that there has to be housing earned and possibly a deeper look at how do we force — whether it’s through conservatorship or whether they meet that greatly disabled level — and get these people into some forced care until they dry out and get stabilized and then I think we can actually move on and really address the problems. But continuing to allow them to camp unsheltered like that, I don’t know that it’s helping the community or those individuals.

The Sacramento Bee: Undersheriff, your opponent is currently involved in an ongoing lawsuit where he’s accused of using sexually charged language against Sheriff Sgt. Megan Yaws. I understand your campaign is distancing itself from this lawsuit, however I did want to offer you the opportunity to give a comment on this lawsuit. At the very least, are you willing and able to strongly condemn any forms of harassment in the sheriff’s department?

Woo: 100% I’m willing to go on the record and condemn any forms of harassment in the Sheriff’s Office. Because this is active litigation — we have a trial date set for May 23 — I really can’t comment on it except to say that I was contacted by The Bee previously, I am running a clean campaign on my experience, my education and the fact that I’m the best person for the job and it in no way came from me or my campaign. I will say that. As far as getting into the details, I can’t because I am a witness in this upcoming trial. But 100% I do not condone any kind of sexual harassment in the workplace whatsoever and none of that is tolerated at the Sheriff’s Office now — or would be tolerated under my leadership. It’s 100% unacceptable and quite frankly extremely offensive.

The Sacramento Bee: Have you, as undersheriff or in any part of your career, participated or been a part of any programs designed to halt harassment in its tracks or teach employees or other members of staff what the signs are?

Woo: We provide all Sheriff’s Office personnel with — it’s really all county personnel — with the mandated sexual harassment training and there’s greater hour requirements depending on your level in the agency. The county has a pretty robust platform, they contract with a third-party vendor that provides the training on a regular basis to all county employees, not just members of the Sheriff’s Office.

The Sacramento Bee: What is your opinion on the necessity of bringing diverse genders and races into the sheriff’s department?

Woo: I have no problem with bringing anybody into the Sheriff’s Office. We’re always looking for the most qualified people to serve our community. It’s probably no secret that law enforcement has taken a little bit of a beating over the past few years. We have a lot of repairing to do in our relationships with the community, the trust the community has in us to provide a level of service. I tell all of our staff that we police this community with the consent of this community. I also tell them that we police with the community, not at the community. And I think those are some keys. Because of all the dynamics that have happened in public safety across the country, recruitment is way down. Enrollment in criminal justice programs is way down. Academy enrollment is way down. I’m looking for the best, most qualified people to take that oath and want to serve their community regardless of gender, race, anything like that.

The Sacramento Bee: I believe you’re endorsed by every current member of the Placer County Board of Supervisors, is that correct?

Woo: That is correct.

The Sacramento Bee: You’re also endorsed by former Sacramento Sheriff Scott Jones who’s now running for Congress. As sheriff, Scott Jones approved thousands of concealed carry permits, far more than his predecessors and many other law enforcement leaders around the state. Do you believe that Jones dangerously added to the proliferation of guns in this region? And would you, as sheriff, be stricter in granting gun permits?

Woo: Not knowing directly what Sheriff Jones’ policies are and his thresholds are and what went on in Sacramento County, I can’t really answer that. But I will speak on behalf of the Placer County Sheriff’s Office and myself. I do believe in the Second Amendment. Our concealed weapon policies at the Sheriff’s Office would not change under my administration from what they currently are now. Quite frankly, if you look at the data, we saw a pretty big spike over the last couple of years. We went through COVID and then we went through civil unrest and residents of Placer County didn’t feel safe. We had a lot more applicants for concealed weapons permits than we’d ever seen in the past and we got a pretty big backlog from it. I think it’s important for community members to feel safe, especially if they are law-abiding citizens and have good cause and they want the right to carry concealed. I think that’s important and I would continue to offer that to the citizens of Placer County.

The Sacramento Bee: Last year, Roseville waitress Vita Joga was shot and killed in broad daylight at her place of work by her former fiance. According to the Education Fund to Stop Gun Violence, over half of all intimate partner homicides are committed with guns, and a woman is five times more likely to be murdered when her abuser has access to a gun. How would you, as sheriff, get guns out of the hands of domestic abusers? And what else can be done to curb domestic violence in our community?

Woo: Gun violence is a problem in the United States in general. We are a gun country. It’s been our culture since it was founded. Domestic violence is an issue. We have a lot of issues in Placer County that are very unique that Sacramento and other counties don’t face as far as what’s more dangerous. DUIs put my family in more jeopardy than maybe going to the Galleria Mall and getting robbed, or something like that.

Our domestic violence rates are still low, they don’t make the top five categories in our highest crime rates. Off the top of my head, they might be below 5%. But we do have programs in place where we remove the guns from the home once there’s domestic violence and domestic violence restraining orders. We follow up with those and remove guns from offenders’ homes to try and make sure that there’s no future violence. Domestic violence is a very difficult case to prosecute sometimes as well. We make a lot of arrests and then the victims decide to change their mind, they don’t want to follow through with prosecution.

One of the things I’m kind of excited about is a body-worn camera program initiative that I’ve been pushing for the last six years and the Board of Supervisors finally funded it. I really think that body-worn cameras and getting body-worn camera statements from domestic violence victims when the incidents happen will help us prosecute offenders at a higher rate moving forward. My stance on domestic violence and trying to protect victims is the reason why I’m also endorsed by Crime Victims United of California, one of the largest organizations that represents crime victims and has passed some phenomenal crime victim legislation over the past few decades for victims in California.

The Sacramento Bee: As sheriff, you would need to work with the county Board of Supervisors. You would be expected to weigh in on legislation on the state level. Are those things you’re comfortable doing?

Woo: 100%. That’s why I’ve been doing it for the last seven years as a member of the legislative committee for the state Sheriff Association. I’ve been very active in working with the association and the committee on really trying to have a voice at the table.

There’s been a lot of criminal justice reform over the last five to seven years. There’s a lot of legislators that have very good intentions and they don’t understand the unintended consequences. Our role and my role, in my opinion, is not to go yell from the mountain tops and be confrontational. It’s to go have these meetings with these lawmakers and try to explain unintended consequences and impacts and that’s how the state Sheriff’s Office’s legislative team works down at the Capitol. We get amendments and we help work collaboratively with these legislators. To get the meaning and to accomplish the goal they’re trying to address with some of these goals and to try and reduce some of the unintended consequences that come out of rushed legislation that might be a knee-jerk response to a horrific act. It’s having that balancing act.

In my opinion, you have to have relationships and you have to have a voice at the table and you do that through collaboration. And my collaborative nature is the reason why I am endorsed by every Board of Supervisor member and every mayor in Placer County. They understand public safety is not something to be gambled with, and I have the knowledge and skills and, most importantly, the experience. I know how to get the job done, I’ve been doing it for the last five years. But most importantly, the way I work with people in a collaborative way to get the best result for our community.

The Sacramento Bee: Last year, current Sheriff Devon Bell released a statement linking a man’s death to the COVID vaccine, though it was later revealed that the cause of death was not related to that vaccination. Bell’s post was seized upon by anti-vaxx advocates to spread misinformation about the vaccine. Did you agree with the sheriff’s actions to release that statement, despite the Placer County health officer asking him not to?

Woo: Yes, I actually did and this was a very difficult decision and I will try to provide as much context as to the reasoning of the decision with also understanding there are Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) regulations. To lay the foundation of the basis behind the decision, Sheriff Devon Bell and I have always, always tried to err on the side of transparency.

And we are the county coroner. There were a lot of people who said, “Why are you even weighing in on this? This is a public health matter.” But it is our job to investigate the cause and manner of death. Without trying to get into HIPAA information that the family has asked not be revealed, I will say that this was very early on. It wasn’t a decision or information we came up with on our own — there were medical professionals that had treated the victim for many hours at many different levels. If any reasonable person would have talked to these individuals and read their medical notes and diagnosis, they would have come to the same conclusion that we did. So we were faced in this really tough spot of: Could this be a bad lot of vaccines? And we had this information. Are we not being transparent if we don’t release it? And would we have to live with it if it was a bad lot and somebody else died in a few days if they took that lot of the vaccine? Our community was very divided. We were going to make half of them angry and half of them happy regardless of the decision we made. And at the end of the day we fell back on transparency.

We didn’t think it was our place to withhold the information. We did our best to try to — if you go back and look at exactly how it was worded — we didn’t say, even though maybe others were implying that we had a lot more medical experience than we did. We tried to thread the needle as best we could. COVID is a very divisive topic, and we got painted as a bunch of anti-vaxxers. The sheriff and I were both vaccinated, his wife was working at the vaccine clinic trying to get as many citizens of Placer County vaccinated as possible.

I’m not sure there was an easy decision, because had we sat on the information for five or seven days and the autopsy said it was as a result, maybe more people died, and so we just decided we would err on the side of transparency and let the citizens know and they can make their decisions themselves. If they wanted to wait a few more days until we had the autopsy or if they wanted to move ahead. That was a very difficult situation and, honestly, as hard as it was to go through, when I look back on all the information I had at the time and what drove us to that decision, I actually don’t know if I would change the decision if I had to do it again today. It was a lot of heartache and pain for us.

The Sacramento Bee: As a follow-up, there’s a current Assembly bill — 1608, the Angelo Quinto Act — that would separate the duties of coroner from the duties of sheriff. What do you think of that bill?

Woo: I understand why they’re trying to do that. There’s the thought that there’s a conflict of interest. If we get an officer-involved shooting, there’s a conflict of interest for the Sheriff’s Office to then oversee the autopsy. And we have protocols in place where we will farm those out to Sacramento County or other forensic pathologists in those cases. We have done some of them ourselves, but when we’ve made those decisions they were clear cut investigations and everything was caught on video. Like the gentleman we had shot down on Highway 65 and (Interstate) 80 after he went on a shooting spree in Placer County and murdered a woman on her front door in Newcastle and it was all caught on video — there was going to be no question.

That’s some of the catalysts behind this bill. This isn’t the first time they’ve tried to run a bill like that. And I think it would be better off, as I talked about earlier, sitting down at the table and coming up with amendments and trying to address the problem without making it more difficult. Maybe there’s protocols in place out of this bill that says, “If your agency has the officer-involved shooting, you’re mandated to contract out with someone else.” That might be a better fix. And this is opposed not just by sheriffs, it’s opposed by the California State Association of Counties as well because the majority of counties are sheriff coroners and they do that because of costs. This state mandate — with a lot of Northern California counties who aren’t maybe as fiscally in good a shape as Placer County — could not afford to stand up a completely different division of medical examiners and staff and do that. It’s very cost-prohibitive and there’s many counties in the state that wouldn’t be able to do it. That’s why the Association of Counties is opposed to it and state sheriffs are opposed to it. I think there are easy legislative fixes and amendments that could be made to address the concern without blowing up the whole program and causing a lot of these counties to go into financial crisis over a legislative mandate.

The Sacramento Bee: What are your thoughts on Gov. Gavin Newsom’s decision to release certain California inmates during the height of the COVID pandemic?

Woo: I understand why they did it. We were having to release inmates as well. Our jail is still not functioning at full capacity, I am proud to say. I don’t know if I should jinx myself, but we didn’t have a single inmate death during the whole COVID pandemic. There were many agencies smaller than ours that did. We had strict protocols we put on place early on, and we had to clear our population as well. To this day, every new inmate that stays in our jail goes on a 14-day isolation tank and is separated from all inmates even though they’ve had a test and we offer a vaccine right at intake if they want it, they still occupy cells for 14 days. It dramatically decreased our overall population and we needed the room.

I know the state was faced with some of those issues I can’t necessarily totally criticize, and I don’t know the thought process on who was released. We tried to release hopefully non-violent people that weren’t going to go out and victimize others. Obviously, as a 30-year peace officer, I don’t think inmates should constantly be getting let out of prison early when they haven’t paid their dues to society. But COVID was a very unique situation that we had to address.

The one thing that frustrated us as state sheriffs was not only did they let inmates out early, they closed down intake. And so there were sheriff’s jails bursting at the seams and we didn’t get to close down intake. When people were arrested and a threat to the community, they still had to come in the jail. In Placer County we were routinely holding well over 100 inmates that belonged in state prison and state prison wouldn’t let us bring them down. That was more a policy that I had a little bit of a problem with in that it was impacting public safety in our community. When you face something like COVID, you’re doing the best you can at the time. We had to make similar adjustments at the wheel, too. Hopefully we’re all starting to move on from that.

The Sacramento Bee: I know one of your policy platforms is crime prevention. What does that look like in Placer County?

Woo: It’s a multi-faceted approach. I do think early intervention is important, it’s always been a passion of mine. As captain I was the driving force behind standing up our sheriff’s activity league which targets at-risk youth in the North Auburn area. I also served for six years on the Kids First and Child Abuse Prevention Council of Placer County and Child Resource Center. That is a part of it.

The other part of it is proactive policing. There’s a metric in crime rates you can’t measure and that is how much crime was prevented. You’ll never know. But I do think solid, proactive policing — having adequate staffing levels, having staff that are motivated to go out and prevent crime before it occurs and be proactive — is an important component. We police with this community, not to this community, so it is a partnership. Building those community relationships and following through with our community policing plans is extremely important.

For me, one of my primary platforms I’d like to implement at least in this first term should I be victorious, is we’re in the process of hopefully, next month, getting through a couple of projects from Senate Bill 863 and 844. These were state grants 10% matched by the county to build a 45-bed mental health facility in our South Placer Jail and build a 120-bed, job skill medium security training center. That is what I think is the most important when you talk about impacting crime rates and crime prevention.

You’re going to do your best on the front end, but once crime occurs, how are we going to try to be smart and impact recidivism rates? We have all kinds of inmates programming. Through COVID, just this past year, we started ServSafe and a culinary program, we trained 180 inmates with their ServSafe certifications before they got released because there was a shortage in our region of food service industry workers. I put it in our strategic plan that not only do I want to focus on inmate training at this job skills center but I don’t want to be as stagnant as government can be. I want to reevaluate: What does our job market in the region look like every two years? And let’s pivot and be nimble. We can talk about programming and things all you want, but I really think the key is giving people meaningful work where they can make a living wage. That is a big key to keeping people from going back to a life of crime.

As you look at our region and specifically Placer County, we’re getting ready to face unprecedented growth. Maybe 30% over the next 10 years. That’s 125,000-130,000 more people in Placer County. The construction industry is booming, and there’s a shortage of construction workers. Do we focus on the trades? Do we have a plumbing certification? Framing? Construction industry of all types? Start to use that job skill training center to give our inmates those skills to where, when they get released, and work with some of these companies for second chance job opportunities, they can get that meaningful work. Not only fulfill the job demand in Placer County and for our region, but give these people second chance jobs, meaningful work and wages so they won’t return to a life of crime. I think attacking it from all of those different angles is the key.

The Sacramento Bee: Your opponent has been endorsed by former Arizona Sheriff Richard Mack, a longtime board member of the far-right militia group the Oath Keepers. Extremist ideologies have been on the rise for several years now and we’ve seen several instances of this in Placer County. Are you willing to condemn these far-right white supremacist ideologies? And what are your thoughts on the rise of this and what you can do as sheriff to keep the community safe from violence that might erupt?

Woo: Of course I condemn any neo-Nazi ideologies. I condemn any discrimination at any level — not just neo-Nazis, especially as someone who grew up with my father as an immigrant here. Specifically in regards to some of the far-right ideology you’ve seen, and especially in Placer County, COVID has had a weird impact on our society on many levels, and one of them is this loss of trust in the government and some of our governmental systems which I think has allowed them to recruit more. I do think the constitutional sheriff ideology is dangerous and I don’t agree with it.

My perspective is this: Our country was founded with three prongs of government for a reason. There is separation of powers for a reason. We have the judicial branch, the legislative branch and the executive branch and my job is the executive branch. I don’t get to decide what is legal and what is not legal as the sheriff. Now, there’s a fine line in that, as an elected sheriff, you are listed in the constitution of California. So when people ask, “Are you a constitutional sheriff?” I say, “Well, every sheriff is constitutional.” But I’m sworn to uphold the constitution of the state of California and of the United States. It doesn’t give me the authority to enforce federal laws. I don’t get to be an immigration officer. But on the flip side, I go back to that separation of powers. It doesn’t give me the right as sheriff to decide what is constitutionally legal and what is not. That’s for the courts to decide.

I think it’s a very, very dangerous ideology to think that one person, whether that be the sheriff or whoever, and in this case you’re talking about the office of the sheriff, to think that I can combine two branches of our government and have that much authority. That’s dangerous and goes against everything our country was founded on. I do get asked a lot about it and that’s what I tell them. They can’t tell me how to deploy my resources, but I don’t get to decide what’s legal and what’s not either. That’s for the courts to decide.

The Sacramento Bee: Undersheriff, we want to give you time to express any closing thoughts.

Woo: I would like to just finish with saying that if you look at my career and you look at my record, I’m in my 32nd year of law enforcement. I’m seriously doing this. My pension is maxed out, there’s no financial incentive for me to stay. I’m staying because COVID had a weird impact on my life. My older two children had gone to college and moved away and started their careers and they moved back home to Placer County. I have a granddaughter being raised here now and I have a grandson who is going to be raised any day. I will have two grandchildren being raised in this community, I raised my family in this community.

We’re in a critical time in Placer County. Our quality of life that we want to preserve and this rapid growth and how do we balance all of that. I know that my 32 years of experience, my over five years of running the day-to-day operations of the agency as the undersheriff is the experience needed to lead Placer County right now. With my leadership style and my collaborative approach, I think that 100% why I have the endorsement of Sheriff Devon Bell, our previous Sheriff Ed Bonner, every Board of Supervisors (member), every mayor, crime victims, our district attorney. There’s a reason why they endorsed me and it’s because they know that we have a complex agency. Our budget this year is over $171 million dollars. We have over 600 employees. Public safety is not something to be risked on an unknown. I have the experience and the passion to still serve and the drive to continue to keep Placer County one of the best places to live in our entire region and state. That’s why I’m doing this.