The Journal invited the five candidates for sheriff to tell you, in 400 words or less, what you need to know about what they will do as our top cop. Here are their guest columns.
Felix Menjivar: ‘I want to fully utilize current, new technology’
Throughout my life, I have always been compelled to serve. Starting with my service in the United States Marine Corps and continuing with my current service as a deputy sheriff and a Town of Friday Harbor Council member.
The Marine Corps taught me invaluable leadership skills, it taught me not only to follow direction, but to give direction as well, but most of all, it taught me to lead by example. A true leader knows and cares for his troops but also holds them accountable.
As your sheriff, I continue to lead by example and I will hold my self and my employees to the highest ethical and moral standards, anything less is unacceptable to our community.
I will have an open door policy; this is the only way to know the needs of the community and to let the community know what the Sheriff’s Office is doing.
I want to train our employees to fully utilize our current technology and to bring new technology. These areas include our records management system, radio communications, mobile data computers, crime scene investigation, evidence management and prisoner holding facilities.
Due to our geographical restrictions, our Sheriff’s Office has to be self sufficient for the most part. We do not have the ability to use other agencies expertise at a moment’s notice. Our deputies must possess various specialized skills. I will provide continuous consistent training, including the highly technical training needed in the fields of drug recognition expert and collision reconstruction.
Having worked as a detective with a Narcotics Task Force and being specifically assigned to investigate the manufacture and distribution of methamphetamines, I am uniquely qualified to educate our citizen to recognize the signs of methamphetamine manufacture. I will focus our attention to investigating narcotics trafficking crimes and will provide the assets and training to make our detectives as effective as possible.
I am the only bilingual sheriff candidate, fully fluent in Spanish and one of two deputies in the department that can communicate with our ever-growing Spanish-speaking community. I will encourage our current deputies to become proficient in Spanish and will also recruit deputies that are fluent in Spanish. We get visitors that speak languages other than English or Spanish but our largest other language in this county is Spanish. We as a Sheriff’s Office can not be effective if we can not communicate with our witnesses, victims or suspects that speak mostly Spanish.
ONLINE
— www.felixforsheriff.com
ONLINE
n www.felixforsheriff.com
n “The race for San Juan County sheriff: Links to information about the candidates, SanJuanJournal.com
