It was a drug deal that prompted Craig Gilliland to run for Logan County Sheriff.
Waiting in a drive-through line at a Sterling fast food spot recently, Gilliland said, he saw what could only have been a drug transaction in broad daylight. Disgusted, he mentioned it to his son, who replied. "That's just the way it is, Dad."
Craig Gilliland
Not, he thought, in my town.
Gilliland is well aware of the ongoing war on drugs and, in particular, the impact crystal methamphetamine has on the community. A former Colorado corrections officer and long-time parole officer, Gilliland knows how hard law enforcement in rural Colorado is trying to stem the flow of the drugs into the community.
But what's being done just isn't working, and Gilliland has some ideas about how to do it better.
"We've filled up the prisons, but we haven't stopped the drug problem," Gilliland said in a recent interview. "We need to use the business approach. Drug traffic is a business, so how do we make them fail? We disrupt them by taking over their assets."
He has no illusions that using the "business model" will solve the problem, but he believes it will disrupt the supply enough to work the other side of the equation – options for the customers that don't include automatic incarceration.
"You can do some short-term rehab in jail, yes, but you need long-term options as well," Gilliland said.
His plan, if elected, is to work closely with judges, the District Attorney, the Logan County Commissioners and others to offer options to those who seek escape through drugs. He knows about the dollars for mental health resources soon to be available in rural Colorado, and he wants the Logan County Sheriff's Office at the table when decisions are made about how the money is spent.
While drug traffic may be the motivating factor for Gilliland's candidacy, he has a larger platform that includes changing the culture of the LCSO, engaging with youths in the community and building trust.
Among other things, Gilliland wants to work with the Board of Commissioners to do a salary survey and try to bring the sheriff's office's pay scale in line with prevailing wages, to help slow down the turnover in the department.
But he is not, he emphasizes, looking to bring a big broom into the sheriff's office.
"I want to be a sheriff those (LCSO employees) want to work for," he said. "I want it to be a family atmosphere. Yeah, we may have our internal differences now and then, but at the end of the day there is respect and professionalism all around."
A fourth-generation native of Sterling, the 47-year-old Gilliland was a standout athlete for the Sterling High School Tigers. He graduated high school in 1994 and earned a bachelor's degree in education from Colorado Christian University and, later, a Masters of Business Administration from Chadron State College in Nebraska. He later worked for the Department of Corrections at the Sterling Facility, and was a parole officer for 16 years.
His dream was to go into human resources management, and he almost did until COVID-19 put him down for "a five-week nap." Hospitalized in a drug-induced coma, Gilliland beat the disease but lost the job opportunity.
Gilliland is politically unaffiliated and is running as an independent in the November general election. He claims to be no kind of politician, just a guy who wants to make a difference.
"I just think it's time for a change," he said. "And I think I'm the one to bring that change."
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