Gonzalez’s effective, compassionate approach should earn him a second term as Harris County sheriff.
Anyone who has been led by personal experience or the events of the past year to conclude that cops are callous and jaded hasn’t meant Ed Gonzalez.
The compassionate approach of this 51year-old homicide detective-turned-city councilman-turned-sheriff might even win over some in the “defund the police” crowd.
Gonzalez doesn’t just give lip service to criminal justice reform or decriminalizing mental illness health, drug addiction and homelessness. He is enacting policies within the Harris County Sheriff ’s Office.
“The word defund is not effective,” he says. “We need right-sized policing.”
To him, that means more focus on fighting violent crime and forming a regional task force to reduce drunken-driving deaths.
Elected in 2016, the Democrat brought the long-troubled Harris County Jail into state compliance and later made it the first in the state to address the opioid crisis by offering a drug that helps curb cravings and prevent relapses. He was among the first local officials to support reform of a misdemeanor bail system a federal court deemed unconstitutional.
The sheriff led the way in implementing cite-and-release, a program seeking to reduce the jail population by treating some misdemeanor charges like speeding tickets
— that is, with citations rather than arrests.
Gonzalez says conversations are underway about how health providers could respond first to lower-risk calls that don’t require armed deputies. Other programs connect domestic violence survivors with social services and another improves interactions with people with autism.
Challenging Gonzalez is Joe Danna, a longtime lawman who previously ran for constable in Precinct 1, where he was removed from his job as deputy constable in 2012. Officials say he falsified records but Danna insisted in a recent email that he did nothing wrong and his removal was political.
Danna declined to meet with the editorial board but his email presented Gonzalez as a mere politician.
Gonzalez’s decades-long career in policing cannot be disputed. As sheriff, he has turned critics into boosters with his humility and a willingness to admit shortcomings and then hunt for best practices.
He acknowledges he’s still got work to do and we recommend voters give him another term to get it done.