Carson City Sheriff: Guimont to focus on gangs, victims and drug issues

Carson City Sheriff's Deputy Bob Guimont said if elected he will take a tough stance on gangs and drug use in the city.

"I want to improve the quality of life in this community greatly and work at the will of the citizens," said Guimont, 45. "I think the biggest problem that's dragging our quality of life down is the gang and drug issue. This community is too small to have the size of the problem that it does."

Guimont said if elected he will aggressively go after gang members, unlike what he sees as the current administration's casual approach.

"I think their tactic on how they are approaching it is not working. You can go after the gang member walking down the street and (interrogate) him and every time you see him, make his life miserable. If we have individuals in the community harboring these guys we need to go after them, too, taking away their ability to relax," he said.

Guimont, a law enforcement officer of 19 years, said he also sees the department becoming a support for youth in the city, giving children alternatives to gang and drug lifestyles.

"We have to stop recruitment. We have to hit the elementary schools and the middle schools so hard and heavy and give them different avenues. If you can build up the confidence in a child then they aren't going to want to be part of a gang," he said.

Toward that effort, Guimont vows to create "Team Sheriff" a donations system within the department to which he will give $5,000 and said he has gotten each of his potential administrative appointments to agree to match. With the money in the fund, Guimont said he will fund youth sports, or any extracurricular youth activities that prevent "idle hands."

He also intends to do away with take-home vehicles for non-essential employees and bring in at a lower pay rate his undersheriff Sgt. Darrin Sloan and his chief deputies.

Guimont also intends to create a victim's advocate. As it is now, he said, a crime victim has to track down the deputy who took the report, and that deputy has to come off the street to look up the record and inform the victim.

He said he plans to:

• Provide each victim with a law enforcement advocate specially trained in the field of domestic violence.

• Contact every victim of domestic violence, sexual assault, and child abuse in order to evaluate the emergency needs of the victim.

• Ensure that offenders are held accountable by providing the District Attorney's Office with thorough and complete investigations.

"The deputies are so busy on the street; when you have someone who's working victim advocacy all they have to do is look up on the computer and see the status of the case and tell the people what's going on," he said.

Some of Guimont's other goals include:

• Enhance partnerships with neighboring law enforcement.

• Reorganize current assets to direct more attention toward gang activity.

• Create community forums for information sharing and intelligence gathering.

• Ensure that gang members receive the message that their activity is unacceptable.

• Provide a complete and well-rounded education for officers and appropriate resources to obtain quality information and present that information for prosecution.

• Increase pressure on violent gangs by lobbying to lawmakers to create more stringent penalties and aggressive new laws that will effectively address gang activity.

"We will bring a new approach. It's a whole different paradigm. A whole different thought process," he said. "We're not doing the same old thing, and going after the same old problems."