to become the sheriff after a former sheriff was nameless who are retired too big to go run the law enforcement academy the trains all the new law enforcement officers in the state of washington and before i came to the sheriff's office i was the chief of police  county and that's also where i live and i was the chief there for five years and i've been in law enforcement for twenty five years total started when i was twenty one years old and love my job i love going to work every day and i and i'm really really honored to be sure so can y and that's a great question i get that a lot and it's and it's a i'm a a lot of people really this or say why do we have a police department and the sheriff's office why do we wear these uniforms and of course seattle wears blue uniforms and most police departments to bellevue in canton federal way and the difference is that the sheriff first of all is elected rather than appointed so i have to run for election actually this fall and secondly we are responsible for everything that is not a city in king county so king county is about two thousand square miles it's a huge county and only about a quarter of it is within a city like the city of seattle so of course seattle has its own police department the seattle police department and they are responsible for law enforcement of city of seattle but everything that is not a city like the cascades in all those areas in between cities where there is no actual city that's our jurisdiction so for example white center and skyway are not actually in the city at all they're just unincorporated considered like a rural area as well as areas up by bellevue and up at redmond that are not in the city and so that's our jurisdiction and then beyond that we have a lot of police departments in cities throughout king county heavy they use the sheriff's office as their police department so they hire us in a factor they pay for us to be their police departments cities like beery and in sea tac and in shoreline and some hamish so we have about seven hundred deputies at the king county sheriff's office about a thousand employees total and our budget is about one hundred sixty million dollars because of that we have so much dirt jurisdiction that we cover that's a great question basically we're all of the jurisdiction for everything that is not actually a city and then finally we also are the law enforcement for all  transit agencies so metro transit and some transit are part of the sheriff's office very question that what is your role here well as i mentioned it's an elected office which is sort of unusual in law enforcement you know we don't elect the chief of seattle or we know they're appointed he's appointed by the mayor so first of all we're popularly elected by the people and when they vote every four years secondly by law the sheriff is the chief law enforcement officer of the county so it's a really old law going back to the hundreds but back in the old west days the sheriff was the person who was elected to keep the peace throughout the county and then all of the municipal law enforcement agencies since that time and so it's a very old office that goes way back to the eighteen hundreds but the main role that i have as the sheriff is to sort of be a spokes person and the leader of the department and to sort of set the tone make sure that all of our deputies noter expectations are make sure that we're doing good training providing good supervision so that we can build the best love my job i was doing just fine and a really good department and the former sheriffs who are came and she asked me to come and join the sheriff's office and it wasn't really something that i necessarily was thinking about doing but she she asked me to sort of take this on his becoming  sort of a leader in law enforcement and helping right now you know that law enforcement is getting a lot of attention and not all of it good i mean we have some some issues with relationships with the community a lot of cases and incidents that are being scrutinized by the public and a lot of people in the public are sort of asking a lot of questions about one foresman right now and that's ok and so to take a position as the sheriff so that we can start to work on those things and hopefully you know improve that and do better is something i look forward to doing so that's one of the reasons i took this job people assume we do is to do drunk driving unfortunately to pull over drunk drivers and of course i spent many years as a patrol officer working the street or going to road and that was something i really focused on was on drunk drivers my my best night was i rested for drunk drivers and one night not every night was like that but i was pretty aggressive about looking for drunk drivers because i could see the damage that they did when they ran into a family or they hurt or killed somebody and drunk driving is so dangerous it's one of the most dangerous things we deal with them on fortunate because cost people their lives and so i was very aggressive about that as a patrol officer and then i had the opportunity about ten years ago now to be a state legislator i ran for the state house in the midwest and i and i won and so i was a state representative and i was the legislator that carried the bill that reduced the alcohol limit that people could drink legally for point one zero two point zero eight so it's a pretty significant change to limit drunk driving and so mothers against drunk driving for both of those things that i helped with gave me an award as a legislator of the year and officer of the year and i have to say it's one of the problems things i've ever done because hopefully that's really save some lives over the years and it was important message thank you thank you for asking and the other every in fact every state now united states and it's hard you know you can't really say for sure how many lives have been saved their home and how many fewer people have been hurt but the numbers of people being hurt and involved in drunk driving crashes has been going down almost every year for the past ten years nationwide and that's not due to me but that's due to what a lot of people are doing on force not legislators and people just being so much smarter about not drinking and driving the only group that drinking and driving continues to be a really a real problem for it's actually increasing a little bit in some states is teenagers unfortunately so really that's the one area we really need to focus on is making sure that teenagers are certain to make better decisions about drinking and driving so tha this is my opinion are first of all i guess i would call it crimes between teenagers so the violence assaults bullying is a big deal you know bowling is not a minor thing it can result in very serious assaults results in suicide unfortunately it's a very very important issue and then the second is violence related to gangs and and and for when a lot of the victims of violence related to gangs are teenagers whether they're involved in gangs or not but that is something that when a violent act occurs or sometimes it's a shooting a killing it gets a lot of attention but what we sometimes we don't talk enough about is the fact that these are sometimes teenagers both the victim and the suspect and it's amazing to think that people are losing their lives or again when people are involved in it they're going to prison sometimes for the rest of their lives over decision they made sometimes at the age of sixteen seventeen eighteen years old hugely impactful and it changes the whole community when those things occur so those are the two of those things happening a couple things we're doing and i and i certainly don't suggest that it's going to it's going to solve the problem but a couple things that we're doing is we're really trying to focus on things like school resource officers i had the opportunity to be a school resource officer earlier in my career i worked in high school and what do you do and the this school resource officer is really focused not so much on prosecution and catching people doing something wrong but helping to get people through school safely helping them to graduate sometimes focusing on ok got into trouble with something how do we get this result and you can stay in school and succeed to graduate and it's a whole different way to do on foresman but it has been really successful and it's something that we try to do as much as we can and we have a lot of school resource officers at the sheriff's office the second thing we're doing is we have a gang unit to try to work with people involved in gangs and our gang detectives would be the first people to say that  you know enforcement in putting people in jail is only a part of dealing with gang membership but also asked it also has to involve intervention and prevention and helping people get out of the lifestyle because once people get in they  hard get out hard to get a job i'm all of those things come into play and so we try to do all of those things not just arresting and enforcing and putting people in jail what is the favorite  actually well as the sheriff because i eat as you mentioned i'm the boss i don't read don't get to rest i should say get to arrest the rest thing is just part of our of this is relatively small part of our job obviously most of my job has to do with going to meetings and making speeches and doing things like this and sort of helping to set the tone for the sheriff's office but you know my favorite part of my job really is working with we have a lot of really good deputies i mean you hear sometimes on the news about police officers making bad decisions or doing something wrong and they do i mean we're human beings we make mistakes and sometimes it's really bad stuff and you know we have to deal with that but i mean we all know that most deputy sheriff's most police officers are great people doing the right thing every day and we have a lot of really great employees that love working with the public and with the community and you don't hear about it as much because it's not as newsworthy but that's the that's my favorite part of my job is the people i work with both inside that apartment and in the community this we are in a very strange place in our society right now and i have said this many times as the sheriff publicly so i'm happy to say it again i think the the fact is right now in the state of washington the state through state law has indicated that they will allow medical marijuana dispensaries and that of course the purpose and i'm sure you know this but the purpose is it's compassionate it's for people with medical needs parkinson's certain you know certain medical conditions that it helps them and i think it does i think that there are medical uses for marijuana so the state of washington said this is ok to have to spend sarees and gardens collective gardens in order to provide people with medical marijuana at the same time the federal government has basically said we're not going to allow that it's illegal period end of story but president obama has also said but we're not really going to enforce this because it's not a big concern for the federal government in terms of the medical marijuana dispensaries so you can see what's happening is very confusing messages over the program and saying one thing state government saying another thing and then cities are placed in a position like the city of seattle is being placed in a position of having to somehow figure this out but really what we're doing honestly is we're sending very mixed messages to everybody and we're saying well it's illegal but it sort of isn't will enforce it but we sort of want the king county sheriff's office small amounts of marijuana are not a high priority for us and so the message is we're sending and not just to young people but to everybody are confusing and as the sheriff i have said many times and i'll say it again i think that we need clarity we need to have people need to know what is legal and what is illegal there's a vote this november where the people you know voters can decide whether to remove some of the criminal elements of marijuana so that it becomes clear the federal government may not want to allow that it might result in more litigation but i think that any law that creates greater clarity in other words people need to know what is legal what is not legal so if the initiative passes this fall and the voters of washington state of washington say that we think that marijuana should be legalized that's ok as the sheriff and as the sheriff's department we just want to have a clear understood supported law so that it's things like roman whiskey and scotch to me when you're certainly a person who who is younger i mean i know when i was seventeen years old i didn't feel anybody listen to anything and say well you know he cares and to have access to media and access to content when that used to be you know only very few people had come access to content and now you can put it on the internet anybody can access it and the ability to express yourself and to say what is important to you and particularly  as maybe someone who's newer to this region or nor to the state of washington or seattle that's a big deal i mean again you can sort of be heard and you can express your opinion and you know i did have an opportunity i asked the sheriff about marijuana and alcohol you know what else can i was your age and to have it broadcast and that's a tough question when you're asked to be very difficult questions and i'm happy to answer him but that didn't exist before and sort of have access to that kind of media and access to a channel and an outlet to do it so that anyone can look at it anytime they want that's about that's a good change that's a big change i would tell you two things and this is based on my my experience and can't that younger people particularly newer residents that they're coming from other countries and again i can't speak for them but i'm just telling you anecdotally kind of what i heard was younger people who particularly those with better language skills you know having an outlet and some communication for them to petition particularly some of the older and i when i say old regiment mid twenty's and up who haven't developed language skills as quickly english language skills can feel very very isolated they don't feel at all including the community and if you are all connected there's no sense of anyone sort of reaching out to them and it was again this is just my experience has been you know it's very easy to only talk to and communicate with other people who have the exact same background and you don't feel like you're part of the community at all and you know i'm in the rotary club in canton one of the things we're trying to do is go beyond that and sort of reach out because it's not you know we shouldn't be waiting for people from other communities to come to us who should be going and saying we want you to come and be part of us and that's kind of where we are right now in king county is i'm a little bit afraid we're breaking up and silos where we all talk to just people that you know have the same background as we do and so any to me this provides an opportunity or any kind of media provides an opportunity to break that down because i'm sure people will watch this show who have no relationship the east african community or to seattle or to this area but will learn a lot and they'll say i had no idea and i didn't know about that so it it's sort of a non threatening way to reach out and that's i mean i know i've done that when i've watched th the one thing i would mention to if there's a way to communicate this is and it's a good this is a good channel to do it on is we need people who reflect a community come to come work for us right now the economy's bad and you know we had a layoff deputies a couple years ago but we're going to a lot of retirements in the next five years and we're going to have a lot of turnover at the sheriff's office same is true of seattle p d and we need to reflect the community including newer communities and it still require still a requirement to be a citizen citizen of twenty one years of age but citizen twenty one years of age and some some college is a great way to become to have a you know entry and access to law enforcement it's a very good job i've been doing a long time but it is traditionally been you know it hasn't had a lot of diversity and we need much more diversity and we need different communities to become part of one fortune and so i've talked to groups and i'll say i need you to come work for us and i've had you know sixteen year olds or eighteen year olds have never thought of that it's never occurred to me well we want to occur to people and so for people to start thinking about this is a profession because we we need you to come work for us so  very helpful they're helpful yeah and any kind of other language skills are extremely helpful so any any language goes beyond english or is we really really want that so right when i try to become citizen thing good come and see me volunteering to help teach the kids here how to complete project guidelines for our media and content the project that they're working on right now community and in what positive ways and what if any negative way is and and the the fear factor that goes along with a major change like this so this is about media will this be like on television or on in the on the internet you know i am not sure what format should and we haven't more about it in the middle of the project making so we haven't gotten that far bad i know that they have a plan i'm just not sure what that plan is are you guys working on the  t the media development right now yeah yeah like that cut content the project the project guidelines how to implement that who in the community need to interview and where to find references and resources and so we're about halfway there starting next week we'll start with like what you're doing here at the interviewing and the coverage and is a major tool to have a major scale that can be used in almost any avenue you know as far as the future is concerned because everything is in social media now so informs people and forms people of what's going on in their communities and especially like when it comes to seattle's a big major city and and the changes that happen and the infrastructure of this city can be used to either gauge whether or not that's a successful project for another city to implement or are can be used to huge project that is happening in the center of seattle and so it'll be very interesting how it will pan out and i think that's the question is that nobody knows if it's going to be that a really great thing or if it's going to make their life more uncomfortable so by being able to spread that information to people in lightens name is steve strand and i am your king county sheriff this is the multimedia resource and training institute which is that m m r t i seattle dot org and this is a resource for people to you know sort of to empower themselves  create their own content to have it available to other people and it is especially something that is very very valuable to our entire community in seattle i encourage you as you are sure to utilize the multimedia resource and training institute again that website is and