Eleven hundred square miles. Six towns. One sheriff's office. I'm running because how long you wait for help shouldn't depend on which end of Delta County you live on.
The distance problem
Delta County covers roughly 1,150 square miles with about 31,000 people spread across it. When you call 911 from a ditch road outside Crawford, the honest question isn't whether a deputy is coming — it's how long.
Drive times are estimates from the Sheriff's Office in Delta under normal conditions. Add winter, a closed road, or a deputy already on a call, and the wait grows. Ask me for the actual average response time by district — I'll publish it.
Where I stand
Staffing should follow geography, not habit. I'll shift patrol assignments so Paonia, Hotchkiss, Crawford and Somerset have a deputy stationed on their end of the county through the night — not dispatched from forty minutes away.
A monthly public report: calls answered, response times by district, use-of-force incidents, jail population, and what the budget actually bought. Posted online, in plain English, whether the numbers look good or bad.
Equipment theft, fuel siphoning, cut fence, rustled livestock, and mail theft hit working families hardest and get written off as unsolvable. I'll build a real ag-crime response with the brand inspector and neighboring counties.
Go hard after the people trafficking fentanyl into this county. For the people in crisis or addiction, work with local providers so a jail cell isn't the only option a deputy has at 2 a.m.
Meet Demitri
Demitri Stelter has spent [XX] years in law enforcement, including [role] with [agency]. He and his family live in [town], where [one true, human detail — coaches wrestling, runs cattle, volunteers with search and rescue, whatever is real].
[Two or three sentences on why he's running, in his own voice. What did he see on the job that he couldn't fix from where he was standing? Voters in a county this size will read this paragraph more carefully than anything else on the page — keep it specific and keep it his.]
[Certifications and credentials: Colorado POST certification, supervisory experience, budget experience, SAR, investigations, military service. List what's real and leave out what isn't.]
Get involvedThe badge belongs to the county, not the man wearing it.
— Demitri Stelter
Get involved
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How to vote
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