Abigail Salas:
Can you tell us about how your background has prepared you to serve as sheriff?
Todd Garrison:
I was born and raised here in Doña Ana County. Law enforcement is something I had always wanted to be involved in. I turned 21 in the Las Cruces Police Academy and became an officer at 21. And I worked for the City of Las Cruces for 16 years, working normal regular patrol. I was part of the DWI unit, the first DWI unit that the city had. traffic accident investigation, those kinds of things. I was on the SWAT team. I ran the academy for a number of years, involved in training. I've been a certified trainer in six or seven different areas, law enforcement related, and traveled all over the state, training officers and everything else. And in 1999, we had a chief come into that department that I didn't agree with and I left and I went to work for the state of New Mexico with the New Mexico State Police in the Motor Transportation Division work in commercial motor vehicles doing patrol in five counties. I worked Doña Ana, Sierra, Socorro, Lincoln and Otero counties. We did weights and measures inspection on commercial vehicles plus any other law enforcement related job there was. I became a supervisor there over those five counties. And when Sheriff Juan Hernandez got sick, had to step down, the county commission put it out that they wanted to appoint someone for that position. Ten of us, 10 people applied. And after a three day, grueling three-day process, I was selected and voted by the board of county commissioners at that time to take over the remaining time that he had. After that was completed, I ran for sheriff two different terms until I was termed out in 2014. So, a little over 31 plus years.
Abigail Salas:
And why are you running for sheriff?
Todd Garrison:
I am just not ready to stop working. And I still have a compassion for law enforcement and for public service. And I just see a need to try to get involved with the community and our law enforcement community and try to bring them closer together. I see a division that's been going on for a number of years, and I think I can help with that. I think my love for solving problems and collaboration, those kinds of things give me the skills I need to really work with the community and try to make the best of that. As a leader over the years, it was never about my knowledge and my skills. It was more about putting the right people in the right places to do the best job we could for the public. And that's what I hope to continue to do.
Abigail Salas:
What are the top issues in the county and how would you successfully address those issues?
Todd Garrison:
Well, I think we have a number of issues in the county from thefts and different gun violence and juvenile issues and things like that. Those are always, have always been law enforcement related issues. And I think that as law enforcement, we do that job very well as far as taking care of those things. We make the arrests, we do the reports, we write citations, we do the class threes for juveniles, different things like that. But I think the biggest thing is sheriff, you have more of an ability to be able to work with our legislators, our other elected officials to try to come up with better solutions to solve those problems because just arresting people, that doesn't solve the issue and the problem. We have to come up with better ways of dealing with the things that make them go away and not occur as often. But accountability is very important.
Abigail Salas:
Technology is rapidly advancing the footprint of law enforcement. What technology that exists now in DASO would you expand upon, and what new areas would you develop?
Todd Garrison:
There are a lot of different things. Things continue to improve every year. When I was sheriff from 2005 to 2014, we were very progressive in that aspect. We tried to keep up with the current best practices and those kinds of things. Now we have, golly, there's all kinds of different things to utilize, the tools, the resources. I mean, you have drones you can use. As long as we Keep in mind that protecting citizens' rights are the most important number one issue. I would use whatever I could to make our job better and to do it the best we could to support and serve the public.
Abigail Salas:
The training budget for DASO is about $100,000 a year. Would you expand or contract it and why?
Todd Garrison:
I would expand. I think training is one of the most important things we have in law enforcement. Like I said, things constantly change. We come up with better ways, best practices, to make our officers better public servants. And I think that is one of the things that we need to make that investment in our officers to make them best for the people they are to serve. But we have a lot of trainers within the departments where we can do that cheaper instead of sending them out to expensive classes. There's ways of doing it, which I did when I was sheriff before. We would have a sheriff's conference and bring a week's worth of training in 10 or 15 different categories and let officers go to those things. They would get out of town for a week, but the training was for free because we worked together with other agencies and used their instructors to do that. So, yes the training budget needs to be higher, but we can make better use of it and make it work, go further, stretch it further.
Abigail Salas:
And what role in budget preparation, presentation, and monitoring do you see yourself in a DASO?
Todd Garrison:
I think, the sheriff is like a CEO of a company, but he's an elected official voted in by the people of the community to do that law enforcement position. And as that, I would represent the people in law enforcement. I would work with our state legislators. I would work with our federal legislators to try to work on the issues that need to be fixed and taken care of. And there's many of them. And I think we could do better. I think, we keep passing laws and then never enforcing the laws we pass. Just adding more laws to the books doesn't help. We need to really focus on the things that would make a difference and work on those. And as sheriff, that's one of the things I would work on. Overseeing your officers overseeing the needs, providing resources, and going to the county commission and working with and justifying those things, working together with them. They hold the purse strings and if you can't make a justification that's worthy of the presentation, then you shouldn't get the money in the first place. But those are the things we need to work on. And you have a number of officials that are elected for positions like that the other needs is more important. And I think having that communication with them and trying to show how law enforcement could better serve the community is always a great plan and a great idea and it's the only way we can make it happen and work good.
Abigail Salas:
What else do you think is important for voters to know about your campaign?
Todd Garrison:
I have a heart and a compassion to serve. I've done that for over 31 years, and I've loved every minute of it. It's what I feel the Lord made me to do and it's what I want to continue doing. I feel that being able to communicate well with the public, being trustworthy in their eyes, being transparent as possible in law enforcement, there are some things you can't disclose. When you're working on a case, you can't tell them all the things because you might lose the case. But being as transparent as possible is very important. And I think educating the community as to what law enforcement does and why we do certain things certain ways is so important because if they understand what's going on, then that communication is better and that transparency is better too. When they realize you can't release everything, but you release as much as you can and the reasons why that is there. And then when the case is closed, then you release other information. You can gain that trust in the public, and that's what I'll work on.
