Convention of States District Captain, Bill Rolph, hosted a meeting on August 25 at the Broken Arrow Veterans Center where Tulsa County Sheriff Vic Regalado spoke about trends in law enforcement and how the public can support our men in blue. During his speech, he discussed how current movements such as Defund the Police and Critical Race Theory (CRT) are detrimental to law enforcement and society.
According to Sheriff Regalado, the Defund the Police movement has particularly damaged police recruitment and morale, noting that officers question why they should care about the public if the public doesn’t care about them.
Sheriff Regalado quoted from a study published in February 2022 by Karl Schuster at Benchmark Analytics which showed that from April 2020 to March 2021, overall law enforcement resignations rose 18%, while retirements jumped 45%. Further, recruitment fell by 36%, causing severe shortages in staff leading to long hours, difficult working conditions, and overall burnout.
Sheriff Regalado has noticed changes in the quality of potential recruits in the last 3-4 years. He says he routinely asks potential recruits, "Why do you want a career in law enforcement?" Before educators implemented CRT curricula in public schools, recruits usually responded that they wanted to serve their community. Now, recruits react in one of two ways. They say, "I want to show the community that law enforcement is not systemically racist" or "I want to build bridges between law enforcement and communities of color."
Another area of concern is the increase in the crime rate after the passage of SQ 780 in 2016. SQ 780 lowered simple drug possession and low-level property crimes from a felony to a misdemeanor no longer punishable by a prison sentence. Sheriff Regalado believes that imposing fines and placing people in the drug court system is not working to deter recidivism.
Regalado would like people to be a little more aggressive in holding political and public leaders accountable for their promises and actions in office. He thinks the best way the public can support law enforcement and turn around our country’s decline is by attending school board meetings, participating in local elections, and diligently researching candidates, state questions, and ballot initiatives before voting.
Regalado believes our children need to hear stories of the brave men and women who fought for our country, the US Constitution, and our God-given right to freedom of speech and religion, a goal Convention of States fully endorses. Children must see the good in our country to counter the divisive theories and indoctrination by educators regarding socialism, without telling children about the millions of lives that have been lost through the actions of communist regimes.
Sheriff Regalado's observations about the societal effects of uninformed voting and movements such as CRT demonstrate the importance of maintaining an active grassroots effort to educate the public about current issues and the remedy for government overreach: an Article V Convention of States.
