Improvements

I created the first ever Kalamazoo County Sheriff’s Office Victim Services Unit, which offers help for crime victims, including filing for Michigan Crime Victim compensation, help with emergency food and shelter, and information on court proceedings and case status. Victim/Witness Assistance may be contacted at 269-383-8677.

I created the first ever Kalamazoo County Sheriff’s Office Critical Incident Stress Management team, and first ever K-9 Team.

We created an inmate garden in the Kalamazoo County Jail, which provided skills building for inmates and brought fresh produce into their meals.

I’ve focused the KCSO detective team to help fight scams, and together we have stopped millions of dollars of fraud and scams.

I’ve assisted in the creation of an Inmate Classification System, allowing us to review every inmate, their case and needs to place them appropriately in the facility. Few Sheriff’s offices use a system specifically designed or implemented like ours. 

I hired a company to temporarily maintain medical needs when all the nursing staff left for other jobs, and went on to
recreate the nursing model for the jail, creating a new Nurse Supervisor position. We now have our own team and no longer need to contract for the service. 

We worked with the county board to create a Financial Supervisor position to manage the Sheriff’s Office Finances.  I created a team to work with the with this position, and implemented new training in best practices.

I worked with the YWCA to create a more direct route of service for victims of Domestic Assault.

I was able to convince the County Board of Commissioners to spend money saved to build the jail addition and renovation. This was a significant savings in the long run.  The county was spending hundreds of thousands of dollars housing inmates in other jails throughout the state of Michigan.  Since building the new facility (brought in under budget), we no longer pay for sending inmates elsewhere. 

I worked with The City of Galesburg to help them dissolve their police department and replace with a designated Sheriff’s Office Deputy in a money saving venture.

I worked with Gull Lake Schools to add the first ever Kalamazoo County Deputy Liaison for the school district.