in king county my whole life i've been married for thirty seven years i have two daughters i went to the university of washington and graduated from the school of business after i graduated from the you started a business and i ran a business i had  about four locations in fifty or sixty employees i did that for about ten or twelve years then i sold that business then we had our two daughters although one is adopted she's from korea so we have our two daughters and then i went to work for the king county sheriff's office as a police officer full time wonderful and how long were you a police officer as to how long it will actually pull full time and part time i've been a police officer for thirty six years the last twenty four years full time with the sheriff's office and then i retired in january of this year and i understand that you worked with both david riker and their research that's exactly right i've had kind of a varied career in the sheriff's office i started out as a patrol officer i was a master police officer i was a field training officer training new police officers i was an undercover narcotics detective and undercover vice detective and i was a sergeant of investigate everything from shoplift to homicides but about to ten years ago i went downtown to work directly for dave reichert who was the sheriff at the time i became his senior policy adviser and then when he went to congress i worked for sewer r and she was this year off until just this year yeah and i was a policy sheriff's office i now understand how the sheriff's office runs i worked with the with the county council on budget issues on policy issues i worked with a king county executive on budget issues and policy issues i've been right in the heart of the sheriff's office for a long time so it's kind of a natural progression for me to run for sheriff great and while i lot of people most of my are familiar with the term sheriff a lot of us don't really know what it means could you please explain to us what the term it what the term really entails like the duties and the will of the sheriff as well as the difference between the police department the sheriff's department actually now nowadays there is no difference between the police and the sheriff's office historically sheriff's offices have been the only police agency outside of cities and the police department are were inside the city now that's changed a lot so that we police both in areas outside of cities out to in very rural areas and suburban areas unincorporated areas areas that aren't cities but we also patrol inside cities inside very urban cities specifically we have twelve cities that contract with us for police services in other words rather than forming their own police department such as the seattle police for example they've decided we can do a better job and a less expensive job if we just hire the sheriff's office to be our police department so cities like burey and  tac and shoreline and wouldn't bill and north bend for example are all contracts with us they may say burey and for example yeah we're sea tac on their uniform but they're bad says king county sheriff's office and all the employees come from the king county sheriff's office in addition with the police department for the muckleshoot indian reservation they hire us and we are the police department for metro transit and sound trance and so we police the bus shelter in downtown seattle for example of the bus shelters in doubt all across king county the bus shelters all of the bus routes and we are the police department for sound transit both light rail and heavy rail so really the sheriff's office is everywhere in king county if you pick up your telephone and dial nine one one there's a good chance a uniformed king county sheriff's office will respond in fact we have five hundred thousand people in king county where we are the primary police agency that will respond wow thank you what do you think is the most pressing law enforcement issue is in king county right now i think the one that that affects an awful lot of people right now is gun violence the city study of seattle for example has had twenty three gun homicides in two thousand and twelve and it's only september there will be more  out in our jurisdiction we've had a number as well and we have to figure out a way to reduce that homicide rate and that's probably the most pressing immediate issue there's other issues as well that affect more people such burglaries and car prowls and that sort of thing the main job of any police department is to answer nine one one calls to reduce crime and reduce the fear of crime even if you haven't been a victim of a crime but you are afraid you're going to be a victim because your neighborhood isn't safe or you think your neighborhood isn't safe then we're not doing a good enough job and we have to do more that is so true thank you given our bu they condom even in our times right now what are some of the ways you would like to stretch the tax dollar payers in terms of crime prevention we don't have enough money in king county to properly fund the sheriff's office so we have to look very very closely at what we do fund and we need to look to other cities other police agencies and see what services could be combined so that we can form a partnership with some cities you know how many swat teams doing need in king perhaps there's ways that we can join with another agency and reduce those costs we have to reduce our overtime costs as best we can there's always going to be overtime in a police agency just the way it works but if we look at that in really what it takes it takes somebody that has i think a business background that could being to bring their experience as a business person in the private sector into government and really look for ways to save money and that's what i want to do and su as you already know the majority of our audience are somali americans and a lot of the somali community is facing cultural and language barriers that prevent understanding of the law or prevent involvement within the law enforcement or in ways that like reporting a crime or me like being able to speak to police officers to be comfortable enough to speak openly officers and even being just knowing about the crime statistics in their sin their counties or in their cities how would you let your office try to sort of bridge that gap well i think i think there's two ways to do that one of those is to have more languages available on our website we really need to do that and we have a way where we're citizens can report crimes on the web site when there's no suspect around when it's safe certain crimes can be reported on the web site but if you're not comfortable with a glacier if you want your own language we can need to make sure that that's available and that's one of the one of things i want to do but the other bigger issue i think is how we the police interact with communities of color and just like anything else if you're not used to doing that a lot of people will be fearful and some of it's cultural some of it's language driven but it's our responsibility to get out into those communities and interact not when there when that's an emergency not just when it's an emergency not just when somebody is called nine one one because they want to police there but all those other times when we can go out and talk to people and get out of our patrol car it's absolutely critical that my deputies get out of their patrol car and talk to people and that's not just in communities of color that's everywhere but it's most important in communities of color because of the language barrier and at times because the culture but times because of the cultural barrier between citizens and the police thank you what do you think what role do you think social media plays in the sheriff's so it's a huge role not with people my age necessarily but certainly with young people and we need to take advantage of that tool that means of communicating with younger people and social media is huge i don't care what your language is i don't care what where you're from if you're of a certain age i believe social media plays a huge role in your life and that's one of the ways we can break down the barriers between the police and the community and the community and do you think there is a need for a camorra community media where there's radio or newspapers and how would you make use of the local me said that a little bit about how you make use of the local media we have to be there we have to be there this is a prime example of you know when was the last time you had a sheriff on somali t v first time first time that's exactly right but i promise you it's not going to be the last time and it's not just somali v there's latino t v and latino newspapers and asian newspapers and asian t v there's all of those opportunities for the sheriff to interact with these communities i can do it by walking around which is good of people that work for me can do it by walking around but we can reach a much bigger audience by using the media and t v is a prime example and i am going to do that i promise you that we will hold you for that again hold on to that and what what do you think is one of the issues facing like inside the sheriff's office what changes would you bring to the sheriff's office what are some of the think you would we have a very big issue right now with use of force by deputies and more importantly how we as the management responds to use of force we have policies in place to deal with force but we have not been following those policies that's not the fault of the line officer the person is driving around in the patrol car that's management's fault and that's the main thing that i want to fix there is a culture in the sheriff's office that doesn't take discipline seriously and i want to take discipline seriously i want to take use of force issues seriously so we can reassure the community especially communities of color so we can assure the community that we are going to investigate deputies thoroughly they have to have that assurance and unless we follow certain policies and our own policies and new policies that i want to institute then the communities will not be confident if they're not confident in what we do after the fact they're not going to call us when we need them to talk a little bit about the d o j so the suggestion is the seattle police department what are your thoughts on their decision their agreement to change procedures and to sort of fix the problems first you have to look at why the department of justice d o j is coming into the seattle police department is investigating a seattle police department and mandating telling them what they have to do and the reason is because thirty four community organizations plus the a c l u plus community leaders like john mckay and mike mckay went to the department of justice and said hey there's something wrong in the seattle police department we don't trust them to police theirselves and so the department justice came in and now they are mandating what the seattle police department is going to do and it doesn't matter what i think about whether that's good or that's bad what matters is what the community thinks they lost the confidence in the leadership of the seattle police department rightly or wrongly that's what happened and that's what i'm trying to prevent in the king county sheriff's office and i've been told that the department of justice is close to doing the same thing with the sheriff's office they're watching the sheriff's office very closely they won't do anything before the election because they don't want to go to unduly affect the election but when the department of justice comes into your police organization it's a black eye on the on the organization it's  morale killer within the within the people that work there and it can be very very expensive if it can be via be avoided by reassuring the community that we are doing the right things that's what we need to do and that's what i plan to the the street level we have a deputies and it's an detectives deputies are in uniform detectives are not in uniform but they do the follow up investigations after a case has been taken and there are about six hundred deputies and detectives and then the first level supervisors or sergeants they have three stripes on their sleeve and above them our captain there's about one hundred two sergeants there's a twenty one captains there's three four five majors five majors two chiefs and undersheriff and then hopefully after november there will be me sheriff but the entire sheriff's office is about six hundred and sixty people to six hundred sisk sixty p officers about almost four hundred civilians that help us out so that's almost eleven hundred employees the budget is one hundred sixty million dollars it's a big organization we are the second largest local police agency in the state of washington and we're about the twelfth or thirteenth largest sheriff's office in the country we are a very big organization thank you and when you say detective does that work with the f b i detectives or are they separate different from well they're different but ok but we will work together the f b i only investigates federal crimes yes but if a bank is robbed that's not only a federal crime it's a state crime as well so enforcement agencies and what are like plan what plans do you have to create good relations in the future to work with the all of the king county law enforcement agencies it's absolutely critical that we work with other police agencies where we're we stop policing and seattle starts we know where that is but a criminal doesn't and he will go from our jurisdiction to seattle to bellevue perhaps or to kent and they don't pay any attention to that so for us all of us to be effective in fighting crime and arresting suspects we have to work very closely together and i think we do want to make sure that that continues good crime fighting and remember crime the fear of crime is our number one to our own people but primarily to the public but transparency also means not shading the truth not telling part of the truth not spinning the truth to your own advantage it's absolutely critical mobilization and me in particular tells it like it is and we let the chips fall where they may because i'm not always going to have good news about things that happen inside the sheriff's office sometimes bad things happen with a thousand employees sometimes employees make mistakes and or i will make a mistake and i can't cover that up i can't shade that so it's beneficial to me or the organization we just were the government we exist because of tax dollars and it's absolutely critical that we tell the truth the whole truth and nothing but the truth all the time that's what transparency is definitely so as we were talking about we want people to vote we want people to come out and not just focus on the presidential elections but also focus on local elections i'm so what would you say to the people can just tell them what message you want to convey to them to come out of well the first message is is you're an american citizen now we want you to vote you have that right in this country and you need to exercise that right but i would tell that to anybody not just the somali community i tell that to my daughters you have to vote that's absolutely critical then i would tell them to vote for me clearly i think i'm the best person to be the next sheriff otherwise i wouldn't be running so i would hope that they'd look at the issues they listen to what i have to say and then to then they would vote for me thank you and for everyone at home here's the flyer and here's the website the website is john for sheriff dot com so as we've been saying please folks go out and vote don't just think of elections as surprise it'll show elections but vote for local candidates as well and focus on the local politics this is what affects you most directly and what we want to convey to our gar audience right now is that it's extremely important for you to go out on november and make sure that you vote for the candidate of your preference and especially for people who you think are going to make a difference in your community and make a difference in your life personally also we'd like for individuals like the younger people who have just become eighteen or who are newly citizen to make sure that you're participating when you're exercising your right as a united states citizen also encourage your parents who may not see that the importance of voting and some of these we know that it's sometimes seems ridiculous to parents it doesn't mean like they don't they don't feel like their vote makes a difference as an individual but truly it does and we want you to understand we want them to know that any vote all votes count and if you don't then you're just taking away from a policy or person that you would like to endorse so please vote and make sure that you go out and get informed and also visit john urquhart for sheriff on facebook place as well as john for sheriff dot com thank you and when you get to facebook please like the page i would love that thank you very much say anything else you'd like to conclude with this ok thank you the only way a police department could be successful because if we are a mirror of the community the people that are police officers have to look exactly the same as the people in the community it's absolutely critical that we go out and we recruit from communities of color whether it's asian or somali or whatever it is so if you think you might like being a police officer please let us know we would love to happy to have you apply and we'd love to have you on our sheriff's office right now we have one deputy who is somali somali american and we'd sure like to have more thank you thank you for being here with us who we're really glad to have you thank you for coming on my hot senate vote for me let everybody know thank