Legislative District 27

Public safety is community safety. I think we need to understand root causes of crime, figure out meaningful ways to address crime when it occurs but also understand that we need services to assist folks in reclaiming their lives and getting out of the cycle of crime and poverty. This includes ensuring that folks have access to safe and sustainable housing options. Put another way, our traditional systems of dealing with public safety have proven grossly inadequate and we can do better .

I had a bill that didn’t pass but that I am working on for next session that looks at data integration to allow our criminal legal system to share data with public health. When we can document, map and address these issues upstream, we will be able to catch where we are failing and correct course.

As Vice Chair of the Law and Justice Committee and a member of the Human Services Committee, I have supported policies to support a community safety model and ensure that there are wrap around services to support it instead of just relying on legal system responses that do not serve our communities health and well-being.

I am sure there are, but I would like to work with community members to figure out what is left and what is most meaningful.