Recently, three local PAVE (Pottawatomie County Advocates for Voter Education) forums were presented so residents could get a glimpse of where the candidates stand on issues before the June 18 primary elections.

On May 23 Candidates for Pottawatomie Sheriff gave brief opening statements and responded to written questions from the public. Questions were submitted at the forum or in advance by email and were screened for appropriateness and duplication.

Ronnye Perry Sharp served as moderator.

Sheriff candidates are Travis Dinwiddie and Freeland Wood.

Some of the candidate questions and responses are, as follows:

QUESTION: What is your primary residence zip code and how long have you lived there?

DINWIDDIE: It’s Wanette, 74868, and I’ve been there a little over a year.

WOOD: It’s 74804 – it also was 74801 – I’ve lived in Pott. County for 57 years.

QUESTION: What is your plan to combat rampant drug abuse in the county, most specifically the Fentanyl epidemic?

WOOD: First of all, what I think we need to do is get our officers out there – get them out on the street, get them out in the southern part of the county. And also get them patrolling out there – with patrolling you can make traffic stops; you can catch some of this stuff while it’s out there and on the street. Second, I believe that I’m going to have a great working relationship with the District Attorney and Drug Task Force. And I believe that will help also. … I think it’s important to work with all those departments and get on board together to fight this problem, because it’s a terrible issue. It’s a terrible problem we’re fighting right now.

DINWIDDIE: Well, first and foremost, we’ve got to get our lawmakers on board to start prosecuting people over drugs. A lot of people ain’t aware, but all drugs now are a misdemeanor offense. We’ve already put measures in process, now that we’ve got a good district attorney back in office. He’s got a good staff over there. He has recently commissioned up quite a few deputies at the sheriff’s office, and we have one deputy in particular that is tasked to the Drug Task Force; that’s his primary focus. He works all our narcotics cases, all our overdose cases. He’s got the team of the DA’s task force backing him, helping him along with our other deputies, our canine deputies that pitch in and help out. It’s just a growing problem that until we can get the lawmakers on board it’s just going to continue to get worse.

QUESTION: Do you know who will be – or who you will select as your undersheriff? What are their skills that you most value?

WOOD: Well, right now, I do not have an undersheriff. My plan is to get one. I have not committed to an undersheriff; I’ve talked to a few people about that, but obviously they are not willing to do that job right now. Plus, I can’t commit to anybody until after I’m elected. But their qualifications are – they are going to be able to assist in budgeting, they’re going to be able to assist especially out in the county – along with me – and keeping it safe. And keeping you guys safe. That’s a big deal there, as far as finding one who wants to step up and do it.

DINWIDDIE: If I am elected as sheriff, I have not put a lot of thought into that yet, until I become the sheriff. We have a lot of good, qualified candidates that already work for the sheriff’s office. I don’t plan on, you know, if I win the election I don’t plan on making a lot of changes; we’re not going to have to worry about a bunch of people losing their jobs. We try and make it where people can only go up, not down, at the sheriff’s office.

QUESTION: Is it true that deputies are not compensated for their time worked over shift? If so, what do you plan to do to fix this?

DINWIDDIE: Currently at the sheriff’s office, we do not have overtime; it is not in our budget. They are compensated with comp time for when they work overtime, and it will continue to be that way. It’s worked that way for a lot of years for Sheriff Mike Booth. As far as I’m concerned, it will continue to work that way. When people come to work for the sheriff’s office, they don’t intend on coming to the sheriff’s office to get rich. They know it’s not it – it’s because it’s in their blood and it’s what they want to do. They want to be here to take care of the citizens of Pottawatomie County.

WOOD: Well, like Travis said – I’m going to reiterate what he said … it is comped time, and some of them don’t even get comp time. I plan on working with the commissioners to try to figure out a way to fight that as far as getting them compensated. I do know that comp time does work, and I know they are salaried. But they also need to be able to take care of their families. I know that when I hired on it was that way; we didn’t make enough, so we had to work a lot of extra jobs to make ends meet. It’s a battle because there’s not a lot of tax revenue like the city has coming in. But I would love to see them compensated. It’s going to be a challenge, like Dinwiddie said, it’s hard to do.

QUESTION: Sheriff Booth declared Pottawatomie County a sanctuary county in 2020. Does this make your job easier or more challenging?

WOOD: I’m a firm believer in that. I feel that everybody should have the right to bear arms. Is it challenging? When it first happened — not here, but when they first allowed Constitutional Carry – it was kind of scary for me being on the street. But I’ve noticed that when we deal with people, we always treat people like they’re armed, so I got used to that. Like I said, I’m a firm believer in Constitutional Carry and I believe everybody should have the right to protect themselves, especially in their home.

DINWIDDIE: We’re absolutely a 2A (Second Amendment) Sanctuary county. Sheriff Booth signed a proclamation letter. I intend to carry that on if I’m elected sheriff. I will sign a new proclamation letter. I definitely believe in everybody having the right to bear arms. You know, the world we live in now is very unpredictable and I think people need to always be able to have the right to be able to protect themselves at any given time, in any circumstance. You know, there’s a lot of criminals out there and they don’t care about the good citizens and the good folks, so you’ve always got to be aware and try and help protect yourself as much as you can, as well.

QUESTION: Is there any additional equipment or training you consider essential to maintain the county’s working relationship with all other law enforcement agencies?

WOOD: Well, first of all, that’s what I plan on doing and I’ve already got that in the works – is working together, building that bridge to work together and for all of us to get along. I look forward to working with other departments. And that’s not just municipal departments, I’m talking about state departments. I’ve already got connections with OSBI (Oklahoma State Bureau of Investigation) and OBN (Oklahoma Bureau of Narcotics) and even got a friend in the Secret Service. So, I’ve got these connections that I believe are essential for that working relationship. That’s my part of it, just getting together and brainstorming.

DINWIDDIE: As far as equipment with that, I don’t think that has anything to do with the working relationships. Pottawatomie County and Sheriff’s Office already has a great working relationship. We’ve got four different Tribal agencies down here. We have lots of officers through those Tribal agencies that are cross commissioned with us. We’ve got Shawnee officers that are cross commissioned with us. We have some other municipalities that are cross commissioned with us already. Over the years we’ve had TFOs (task force officers) with the U.S. Marshal’s Office, with Homeland Security and we continue to carry that on because that’s all very beneficial when you can have somebody – either a part of bigger Federal agencies that can always reach out hand to hand to give out the things that we need help with.

QUESTION: What will you do to maintain the existing great relationship with the county emergency management department?

DINWIDDIE: We currently have a great relationship with them. We train together with them. They’ve put together a drone team. We’ve got our drone guy from the sheriff’s office. He works with them, trains with them. Any time we need them, all we have to do is reach out to the emergency manager, Chad Larman, and he is Johnny-on-the-spot. They’ve got some equipment that we don’t have that they help us out with. They’ve got a command post. They’ve brought it out a multitude of times. They’ve got light towers. I don’t think it can get any better; we’ve got an excellent working relationship with them guys and hopefully it will just continue to grow over the years.

WOOD: Well, first of all, I’ve seen firsthand by going to the meetings that the sheriff’s office does have a great working relationship with emergency management. They are some great guys. I’ve gotten the opportunity to know a few of them. They work very hard, and I don’t see why that won’t continue. I definitely see where it will grow.

PAVE forums

PAVE is the successor organization to the county League of Women Voters. The non-partisan group has been hosting candidate forums for several years.

The three forums were live-streamed on the City of Shawnee website and recorded for later playback.

Voting

The election is June 18. Polls will be open from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m.

Early voting starts June 13 and 14, from 8 a.m. to 6 p.m.; and June 15, from 8 a.m. to 2 p.m.