Commentary: Reform Sheriff Dave Edmonds 12-step plan

The Friday, Feb. 11 edition of the I-T caught my attention right away when I spotted the featured Valley Forum article by Will Shonbrun, long-time local political commentator, titled “On sheriff candidates and police reform.” That’s timely, I thought. I had just published a letter to the editor on Jan. 25 endorsing candidate Dave Edmonds for Sheriff in the upcoming June special election.

In the world of professional political punditry, usually, when one candidate in the field is singled out and made the center of an extended attack, it is the incumbent candidate (in this case Eddie Engram, the in-house pick of the Sonoma Deputies Association) sending a surrogate to take out one specific candidate. On closer examination, I can’t ascribe that much strategic focus to Shonbrun’s piece.

For the record, the four candidates in the race also include Healdsburg Police Chief Kevin Burke and Carl Tennenbaum, retired 30-year law enforcement veteran in the San Francisco police department. All the candidates have websites. Google it.

Since Mr. Shonbrun professes to care deeply about the importance of the Sheriff’s Office, he should do more research into all the candidates and share his due diligence as a legitimate source of progressive political analysis and tell us which one of the four candidates he thinks is best equipped to turn around a county sheriff’s office that we both agree has had a troubled relationship with the community for decades.

Better yet, he could join me for a walk on the wild side by purchasing one of the limited tickets to the Sonoma County Republican Party’s sheriff’s debate on Feb. 28 at the Finley Center in Santa Rosa. He can ask his hard questions to all of the candidates in person at the debate. Liberals and progressives can learn a lot from watching up close how important the Sheriff’s Office is to Republicans. They take it very seriously and we should too.

Assuming that his critique was in good faith, here’s a response to Will Shonbrun’s many issues with the Sheriff’s Office and his concerns about Edmonds. This challenge is an opportunity to share Dave Edmonds 12-step plan to re-engineer the Sonoma County Sheriff Office, which he published recently in American Police Beat where he is a contributing editor to the largest police service magazine in the U.S.

The article is titled “Crisis Creates Opportunity”:

“One day, we’ll look back at our present embattled law enforcement era with enlightened eyes. We’ll have a clearer understanding of what happened to our profession and why… At least some of today’s national critique of our profession is caused by our insufficiency. Where there are divides with communities, we haven’t been able to bridge them. Where there is distrust, we haven’t been able to heal it. Right now, what real things could we be doing to at least fix some of it?”

1) Become CALEA certified

The Commission on Accreditation for Law Enforcement Agencies is the gold standard for national policing best practices.

2) Introduce Ethical Policing Is Courageous (EPIC) duty-to-intervene training to sworn staff

3) Commit to staffing that is as diverse as your community

4) Make all ranks that are sergeant and above at-will positions

5) Start an auxiliary funding program

6) Start a walk-your-neighborhood program

7) Increase intensive tactical training for all sworn staff

8) Lead proactive homelessness intervention

9) Institute mandatory and voluntary physical fitness certification

10) Start an on-duty law enforcement fitness program

11) Institute a mental and emotional wellness program

12) Start a master officer/deputy program

This is definitely the mindset I want in our law enforcement leadership.

Ben Boyce is a resident of Sonoma Valley.