Rebuilding Community Trust

It’s time to re-engage in a real and meaningful way with underserved communities and communities of color to identify their concerns with the Sheriff’s Department, such as implicit bias, under-policing, or over-policing in certain neighborhoods.

Youth Engagement

As a Commander, I initiated the first youth advisory group at the San Diego Sheriff’s Department, and was appointed by Congressman Juan Vargas to the City of San Diego Youth Advisory Board. These youth advisory boards were created to engage and hear about issues of concern from our youth.

It is extremely important to engage with our youth before, but especially when they become involved with the justice system. We need to place the restorative justice process at the front of that involvement to break the school-to-prison pipeline. Currently, in our schools, law enforcement is only used to enforce the rules, which only furthers the school-to-prison pipeline.

Restorative Justice

Under my leadership, I will implement a restorative justice process, where we listen to and understand our youth. The restorative justice process promotes collaborating with the community to prevent an individual from going to jail, by assisting them with resources that prevent issues of homelessness, drug addiction, or the commission of petty crimes, such as stealing food, as a result of extreme cases of poverty. We can hold our youth accountable without setting them up to end up in prison later.