For most of my life, my dad worked as a prosecutor, leaving me acutely aware of the dangers that law enforcement face. Growing up, we had to get used to strange men staking out my grandma's house or making threats against my dad's life. Nobody's family should have to live in fear. And I understand, as a lifelong activist, that this must necessarily include working-class communities, immigrant communities, and communities of color who are afraid that law enforcement will profile them instead of protecting them. No matter how you look at this issue, it's clear we need to do more to repair trust and build stronger social ties so that everyone feels safe in Adams County. That's why I want to heal the divide around public safety issues in our community and reorient our efforts toward best practices with proven results that build community trust.

I know this is possible because when my dad served our community as the elected District Attorney of the 17th Judicial District, he worked with our County Commissioners and others to fund vital programs that would later become the Rocky Mountain Partnership. Youth crime plummeted as a result. But, more importantly, thousands of kids were diverted from the school-to-prison pipeline so that they could go to college or a trade apprenticeship. Here's what I would like to do:

• Expand childcare access, fully fund summer and afterschool programs, and maintain safe spaces for youth to organize and congregate.

• Fund more co-responder positions, provide all public safety staff a living wage and fully funded benefits, ensure that we can retain and recruit compassionate and diligent public servants.

• Centralize services for homeless people, work with our municipalities to reduce redundancies and inefficiencies when delivering these services, fully fund programs like TANF that prevent homelessness.

• Increase opportunities for community dialogue with our law enforcement, promote community policing and oversight opportunities.

• Support legislation that empowers victims, reduces the rape-kit backlog, and prevents domestic violence and sexual abuse.

• Promote and expand public transportation to get more people off the roads and reduce our road rage epidemic, ensure that public transportation is safe and usable.

I am also a longtime public health advocate. In college at CU Boulder, I found community with the Atlas program at the Boulder County AIDS Project, which allowed me to serve others in our LGBTQ+ community by providing scientific information and crucial health services. One of the greatest joys of my life has been helping people in my community fight addiction, homelessness, and mental health struggles. As someone living with severe OCD since early childhood, I know from personal experience just how transformative mental healthcare access can be. That's why I'm proud to be a Mental Health Now candidate. Here are my priorities for public health:

• Provide compassionate care for those struggling with mental health and addiction, including housing and employment assistance that provide long-term stability.

• Support and promote mobile clinics and health fairs.

• Prevent pollution by holding big polluters accountable, supporting our existing fracking and drilling regulations, and calculating environmental and public health externalities when making land use decisions.

• Support our seniors with programs that give them access not only to healthcare, but also affordable housing, legal assistance, appliance repair, and more.

• Ban industrial pesticides and herbicides that cause cancer and ruin our environment for generations to come.