Supports local, independent police force

I just wanted to say I’m a strong proponent of supporting your local police and keeping them independent. Reminding a council and you also that if you accept equipment from say the military, federal government, it comes with hooks, and we need to keep our police independent and locally controlled. Also, I want thank you. Several times that I’ve had to ask for help, I have a bipolar granddaughter, and sometimes when things just got out of hand, and they have been fantastic with her. I know that they’re not supposed to be social workers, and yet this has been kind of dumped on them. I’m wondering, do you know of anything that’s going to be positive for the police? Don’t have to handle it, and the mental health people should or could, would?

Littleton Police Chief Doug StephensChief Douglas Stephens: Thank you for your support once again. We appreciate that. I’m so pleased to hear about the good work that our officers have done helping you with your situation. Again, like I said earlier, I believe that one of the positive things that can come out of what’s happening now with our profession and across the country is I think there will be some opportunities here for expansion of other services to assist us with our responses to those social services or mental health type needs. I’m interested to see where we go with that and where we are even a couple of years from now with, especially the social work type responses and those models that are available.