Bill Hutchison believes his background as a longtime county resident who has experience in local law enforcement, and as a prior business owner, make him a good fit for San Benito County sheriff/coroner.
Hutchison, age 44 and a deputy with the San Benito County Sheriff’s Office, is running against two-term Sheriff Darren Thompson, 53, for the role.
Some of Hutchison’s top issues to address related to the sheriff’s office include increasing patrol staff, establishing school resource deputies at county schools, develop training for post-traumatic stress disorder and special needs, fixing radio communications, increasing transparency
“My background is, I’ve been a San Benito County resident for 40-plus years,” Hutchison said. “Prior to law enforcement, I owned a business in San Benito County for about seven years. Since I’ve been in law enforcement, I’ve held the position of field training officer, deputy sheriff’s association president, K-9 handler, acting sergeant. And I think with that, I’ve had the experience of being in the leadership role, and I think that gives me some advantage there.”
As a deputy working for Sheriff Darren Thompson, he was motivated to run for several reasons, he said.
“My motivation was the fact that I have strong ties to the community and I think at this point our sheriff’s office has become kind of complacent,” Hutchison said. “I think we can do better things and go more in a positive direction.”
Asked about the most important issues to address, and Hutchison mentioned staffing and radio communications as big ones for him.
“I think the top issues that need to be addressed at the sheriff’s office currently are the fact that we’re understaffed and we have several open vacancies that need to be filled. Since our radio communication has moved from the actual City of Hollister to Santa Cruz, SCR911, we’ve had problems ever since,” Hutchison said. “Most areas that we patrol in Aromas, we can’t even get out on our car radios. A lot of times we can’t even talk to each other while we’re on patrol. That’s a huge issue and a huge liability.”
He said his goals include increased communication in the community, among others.
“My goals in the office are to be transparent, get out into the community a lot more, let the community know what we do (and) where we’re coming from,” he said. “The fact that we are so short-staffed, I think that most of the community has not been aware of the short staffing that we currently run patrol with.
“I think that’s a huge deal with the community not knowing that,” he said. “{Most of the time, we’re running two deputies per shift.”
He said for the last two years, the sheriff’s office has been running patrol shifts without an actual patrol supervisor on shift.
“Those are some of the things I’d like to work on,” he said.
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