Where I stand
De-escalation First, Real Limits on Crowd-Control Weapons
On April 18th, our Sheriff’s office answered roughly a thousand nonviolent, de-escalation-trained demonstrators with tear gas, pepper spray, and less-lethal rounds, much of it fired from behind fences and barriers. The first thing I saw when I arrived was an elderly woman on her hands and knees, unable to stand, after being gassed. I watched a person get knocked unconscious by a police ATV. I was tear gassed myself, more than once, while never raising a hand to anyone.
Here is the fact that should end the argument: there is no evidence a single officer was harmed that day. Not a scratch. Some deputies fired chemical weapons into the crowd from cover while other deputies walked through that same crowd completely at ease. You cannot call a crowd violent and then send your own people strolling through it unprotected. Both things cannot be true.
A department that opens with chemical weapons against people who pose no threat is not keeping anyone safe. It is creating the very danger it claims to be managing, for the public and for its own deputies.
And let me be clear about who is responsible. The deputies on that line were following orders they did not write. The failure on April 18th was a failure of command, the leadership that called a peaceful crowd dangerous and then sent its own people in to prove it. I am running against that leadership, not against the men and women who carried out its orders.
As Sheriff, I will:
- Make de-escalation the default, with force as a last resort, never an opening move.
- Set strict, written limits on crowd-control munitions. No chemical agents or less-lethal rounds used indiscriminately against a peaceful crowd: any force must be tied to a specific, articulable threat, authorized by a supervisor, and preceded by clear, lawful dispersal warnings, never an opening move.
- Publish the use-of-force policy and the data, so the public can hold the department to its own rules.
- Train and staff for de-escalation, so deputies have real options other than the gas canister.
What happened on April 18th should never happen in this county again.