An Open Letter to the Men and Women of the Grand County Sheriff’s Office

 

My name is Jim Winder, and I'm asking for a few minutes of your time. Not to sell you on a campaign, but to talk with you directly, the way I believe people in this profession deserve to be talked to.

 

I've spent nearly forty years in law enforcement. I started where most of us start: doing the work, learning the job, figuring out what kind of officer and what kind of person I wanted to be. Over those years I've led large agencies and small ones, including organizations that were struggling and needed to find their footing again. What I learned through all of it is that the job itself is rarely the problem. People in law enforcement almost always know how to do the work. What wears people down; what drives good people out, is leadership that doesn't listen, that applies rules selectively, that reacts instead of leads, and that treats the people doing the hardest jobs as problems to be managed rather than professionals to be supported. I've seen what that does to an organization, and I've seen what it does to the individuals inside it.

 

I'm not going to pretend I don't know what some of you have been experiencing. When people feel like the ground keeps shifting under them: when a policy means one thing one week and something else the next, or when speaking up feels more risky than staying quiet, that takes a toll. It erodes trust, it drives attrition, and it diminishes something that's genuinely hard to rebuild: the sense that this work matters and that the people doing it are valued. I believe the men and women of the Grand County Sheriff's Office deserve better than that, and I mean every role. Deputies, corrections officers, dispatchers, search and rescue, emergency management, administrative staff. Every single one of you.

 

What I'm offering isn't a list of promises. It's a track record and a way of working. I've invested heavily in my own professional development because I believe leaders owe that to the people they lead. I've tried to bring that same investment to the people who've worked alongside me: creating environments where people could grow, where expectations were clear and applied to everyone, and where trust between leadership and the workforce was something built deliberately rather than demanded. That's the kind of organization I want to help build here.

 

I'm running as an independent because I believe this job has to be free from partisan games and personal agendas. The only agenda I'm bringing is this one: show up, do right by the people in this organization, and earn your respect through actions rather than words. I'm not asking you to take that on faith today. I'm asking for the opportunity to introduce myself, to sit down with each of you, hear what you think, and let you decide. That's a conversation I'm genuinely looking forward to.

 

Respectfully,

James M. "Jim" Winder