People Helping People

By Steven R. Villegas

Until we can fulfill our deputy sheriff vacancies, the Sheriff's department must reach out to the community for help. The Sheriff's department belongs to the community so the community must get directly involved with the Sheriff's department.

I want to rekindle the spirit of the citizens of Monterey County to take an active part with the Sheriff's department. People helping people.

I want to promote our volunteer programs such as our deputy sheriff reserves program. By promoting this wonderful program, we allow the people to get directly involved with the department and work as deputies so they may give back to their community. They fulfill the temporary vacancies of deputy sheriffs until we can hire full-time deputies. At the present time, the reserve program has brought itself to a level where they are no longer an effective service to the community.

It's no secret in the rural areas, such as in south county, that reponse time to service calls is nearly 20 to 30 minutes, sometimes longer. By recruiting and building up the workforce of the deputy sheriff reserves program, I would propose to keep the reserve patrol deputy in their hometown rural area so this could drastically reduce the reponse time to a service call. Example, if a deputy was dispatched to the community of Bradley, it would take a deputy nearly thirty minutes or longer to respond from the King City station. If a reserve deputy (who resides in Bradley) was working in Bradley only, response time to a service call would be a couple of minutes. Quicker response time and service. Lets' build up our reserve forces in the respective communities with citizens that reside in these communities to allow them to work in their hometown. We can train the reserve deputies to a level where they can work on their own and not have to ride with a full-time deputy. This increases our workforce immediately! The beauty of it all? It doesn't cost the taxpayer a dime! This is volunteer labor that is free to the community. People helping people!

This is a great start in allowing the communities to get involved with the Sheriff's department. I will open the doors of the Sheriff's department to the people so we may finally start working together! People helping people! Uniting communites! I ask for your support. Please vote for Steve Villegas on March 5th, 2002.