Guest Commentary | Community is committed to meaningful action – Santa Cruz Sentinel

By any measure, the past couple of months have been difficult for Santa Cruz County.

Spurred by the desire to save lives, we have made, and will continue to make, tremendous personal sacrifices to fight the spread of COVID-19. We have also watched our nation, and our community, confront the painful scourge of racist violence through protest and resistance.

And on June 6, we lost a dedicated law enforcement officer, Santa Cruz County Sheriff’s Sgt. Damon Gutzwiller, in the line of duty during a brutal ambush that robbed a young family of a husband and father, and left our county without one of its hometown heroes and best officers. Because a Ben Lomond man stands accused of committing this tragic act in the San Lorenzo Valley, our tight-knit mountain community has been particularly affected.

It’s understandable to think “It’s all too much” or ask “when will bad things quit happening” and “how much can we take?” None of us know the answers for certain, but what is clear to me is that we are well-practiced in coming together to support each other through hard times.

We saw it during the flood of Love Creek in 1982 and again during the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake. We saw it in 2013 when Santa Cruz Police Sgt. Butch Baker and Detective Elizabeth Butler were killed by a gunman during an investigation. And we have already seen it in the response to Sgt. Gutzwiller’s death, with the multitude of mourners who attended a vigil the day after and made generous donations toward a family fund.Sheriff Jim Hart’s words in the hours and days after the tragedy keep repeating in my mind. “Damon was a good man,” who in 14 years with the Sheriff’s Office had not one community complaint filed against him. He was simply “doing his job” when he was killed, and the department will never fully recover from losing someone so violently.

I am also reminded of Sheriff Hart’s remarks just two days before the attack. Talking to participants of a telephone town hall I hosted, he registered a passionate rebuke of the law enforcement officers involved in the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis, a horrific incident that sparked protests in Santa Cruz County and throughout the United States.

“People of color have suffered institutional violence since this nation was formed,”Hart wrote in a Sentinel op-ed. “But today we have the opportunity to reject the practices, patterns and beliefs that delivered this ugly history to us. Enough is enough.”

Similarly, Santa Cruz Mayor Justin Cummings, the first African-American man to hold that post, has shown great leadership, addressing large gatherings at the police station, calling for a peaceful movement, and taking a knee alongside Police Chief Andy Mills during a recent solidarity event.

We have demonstrated through our personal and collective actions our values as residents of Santa Cruz County. While we may never fully know the motivation behind the attack against Sgt. Gutzwiller, we know that this heinous act in no way resembles those valiant efforts to stem racist violence and address police brutality, nor does it mirror the high esteem and gratitude that our San Lorenzo Valley community holds for our law enforcement officers. Our Valley benefits from sheriff’s substations in Felton and Boulder Creek that are part of the national Community Oriented Policing model adopted early on by the Sheriff’s Office to build partnerships for addressing common causes of crime.

Today, I pray for Sgt. Gutzwiller’s family; I pray for our Sheriff’s Office; and I pray for healing in a community committed to meaningful reflection and action.

Bruce McPherson is the Fifth District Supervisor for Santa Cruz County and former California Secretary of State.

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