Supporting Our Law Enforcement

I believe in racial equality and that we should all stand tall with the black community. I also believe in supporting and respecting Law Enforcement. Both of these things need to be true. The riotous actions of the past few weeks has really got to stop! The ‘defund the police’ movement has hit our county and we all need to take action to help prevent our local law enforcement agencies from getting hit with the media’s latest rhetoric and this socialist movement trying to create a lawless society in Santa Cruz County. Our local agencies have a hard enough time keeping good officers (mostly due to the attraction of much higher salaries over the hill), and they are good people who want to help our communities; they definitely do not deserve this attack.

Did you know that not one officer in the City of Santa Cruz Police Department has had one day off since the middle of March? Read that again. That is over 100 days in a row, and now they are being hit with this ridiculous notion of defunding them. I don’t get it. It absolutely makes me sick. It is unacceptable and unfathomable.

We can’t sit back and watch and wait for something else to happen any longer. Every single one of us must act and here is how…. attached is a link to the email addresses of our local City Council members and County Board of Supervisors. The other side is extremely active in this movement – and our local agencies are getting emails from around the country to defund OUR law enforcement. Keeping them funded and even increasing their budget if people deem necessary extra trainings would be even better instead of taking away, they need MORE support, MORE community involvement and we must help them. Here is another idea – one of the biggest issues our police deal with is homelessness. Our County has a Health and Human Service budget of over $250 million that is supposed to help address this issue. NOT ONE PERSON is employed to assist the police department with that money leaving our police officers to handle all homeless issues that could potentially be solved by a social worker. We all need to request that our County Board of Supervisors revise THEIR budget to help assist the officers so that they can put their energy and efforts elsewhere, and actual trained social workers can do the job of assisting homeless issues instead of sending a 25-year-old police officer to the scene.

I am a firm believer that good things always come out of bad. Maybe this is one of those circumstances – a little help to our overworked police and lessen their burden, as well as get some of our homeless people actual help.

Please act now. Our silence will not fix a thing. Your letters need not say much more than we support our law enforcement, please keep them funded and help them get the training they may need.

Thank you very much.

In unity,

Kristen Collishaw

Scotts Valley City Council:

Jim Reed: jimreedsv@gmail.com

Donna Lind: dlindslind@earthlink.net

Jack Dilles: Jdilles@scottsvalley.org

Vice Mayor Derek Timm (Vice Mayor): dtimm@scottsvalley.org

Mayor Randy Johnson (Mayor): rlj12@comcast.net

Santa Cruz County Board of Supervisors:

Bruce McPherson: bruce.mcpherson@santacruzcounty.us

John Leopold: john.leopold@santacruzcounty.us