Carson City Sheriff Ken Furlong at the Nevada Day parade on Oct. 30, 2021 in Carson City. (Photo: Angila Golik)
Ken Furlong announced Friday he will run for reelection as Carson City sheriff in 2022.
He is seeking his sixth four-year term in the office.
Furlong, 64, said the biggest challenge will be to repair some of the damage the past two years have done to law enforcement.
“I want to see us through some of these social changes that are happening,” he said “The different things the public is concerned about.”
He said not so much in Carson City but, nationally over the past couple of years people have developed a different view of law enforcement.
“People are afraid of cops,” he said. ”I want to see us reaching out as much as we can.
“We have been set back many years because of all that’s happening,” he said. “Building relationships with the town is critical. That’s going to be our biggest challenge, building back what we lost.”
Furlong said that means working with all sides to create relationships with everyone in town.
Saying that, “we’ve been through hell in the last two years,” Furlong said he is proud about how his department and his deputies have stood up to the challenges.
“We’ve built substantial collaborations that have benefitted this entire community, and were able to weave our way through a lot of social, political and pandemic unrest with great respect for the opinions and beliefs of the people who live and visit here.”
Despite initial concerns when body cameras arrived two years ago, he said he has seen more benefits from them than anything else.
“I can’t believe how much patience these officers have,” he said.
Furlong said the department will soon add cameras to their patrol vehicles which will give his staff a view they can’t really get from body cameras.
But he said you just can’t please some people. He said he rode with a deputy on Monday and he gave a motorist a warning: “And he flipped us off as we drove away.”
“I‘m very proud of this agency,” he said. “For what it requires to be an officer, they do an amazing job.”
