Thurston County Commissioner Gary Edwards spoke on the issues of homelessness, home permitting processes and the judicial system of jury trials due to COVID-19 restrictions in front of 100 people at the Lacey South Sound Chamber Forum today.
The Lacey Chamber’s June 1 Forum at Indian Summer Golf Course marked a mainly maskless affair as the majority of the audience members had been fully vaccinated.
On homelessness
Edwards classified himself as having a tough-love mindset when it comes to how to treat the homeless populations in the county.
“The majority of homeless are from elsewhere and letting someone die in the gutter is unacceptable,” Edwards said. “I think we should require certain treatment aspects and we need to hold them accountable. We could handle it if they didn’t come from somewhere else. The solution is accountability, one way or the other.”
Edwards, who frequently reminded the audience that he was in the political minority on the commission by a 2-1 vote, said that keeping the camps located in municipalities rather than in urban growth or unincorporated county areas was the best method of keeping services going.
“We need to keep those camps located near where the services are at,” Edwards said. “Compassion is not letting someone freeze to death or die in the gutter.”
On home-construction permitting
The home building permit process was another topic in which the audience engaged with Edwards. Two audience members offered up their personal stories of the months it took, and the additional cost with the rising price of wood, in order to build their home. Edwards told both audience members that his sympathies were with them.
“Are we making headway? Yes,” he said. “It is quite a process to go through. We’ve got good people, but we just need to make adjustments to reduce the pain on those going through the process.”
On the courts and police
The county’s “speedy trial” response to COVID-19 has also been an issue, especially when it comes to the request for a jury trial.
“That has been a nightmare. We have to deal with the problem, especially when it comes to plea bargaining,” Edwards said. “The jury trials not happening due to the pandemic means a lot more potential for people to be let out on the street who have harmed someone. It’s gonna be painful to watch.”
Edwards shared his issue with defunding the police, which he termed as wrong. Edwards has decades of experience in law enforcement and formerly was Thurston County Sheriff for five terms from 1987-2007.
Edwards mentioned an instance where a sheriff’s deputy responding to a call in Yelm was stabbed by an assailant. The officer survived and was able to get three shots off, wounding the assailant.
“Unfortunately the guy lived and we had to take him to Harborview where he’ll be on the public dole forever.”
Re-elected last November to a second term as county commissioner, Edwards gave out his home landline in case the audience members needed to reach him directly.
“Call me if you’ve got questions. I work for you. I’ve been in the phone book for 52 years,” Edwards said. “Heck, you might want to ask me about a flying saucer that I went for a ride in once. I don’t know.”
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AmVANDEMAN
Wow, sounds like what Edwards means by "tough love" is the right of police to be judge, jury AND executioner!
Thursday, June 3, 2021 Report this
franiazgorski
No. I think he means accountability.. Assisting those who want/need help and have residency in Thurston County.. moving drifters and those who are not interested in help such as MH, SA or transiional housing .. mving them away from Thurston.. ridding cites of encampmets.. ..
Thursday, June 3, 2021 Report this
AJoytoknow
Elitists ideas about "tough love " is almost always platitudes. The love part will fade to the background as elitists decide it's easier or less expensive to keep the tough part and treat people who are already having what is most likely the hardest time of their lives as criminals for the fact they exist. Not all people who are without proper homes are the same, but elitist a-holes will shove everyone together into unsafe conditions, as close as they can possibly stack them together, capture the narrative, and paint everyone with the same broad strokes of discrimination. Shameless. Shame on our elitist citizens and shame on our elitist elected reps. Shame shame shame!
Thursday, June 10, 2021 Report this
AJoytoknow
I'll add that this is my home county, I am not homeless currently, but have been more than 20 years accumulated. Some of that time period I chose to travel. The whole world is mine as much as anyone else's. I belong where I want to be just as much as anyone else. This country is populated with people who came from somewhere else. Our county is filling up with people who are moving from other counties, other states, and other countries. People like myself and many others are finding ourselves priced out of and displaced from our hometown communities. If you wanna play the game of who belongs where, start with elitists moving into my hometown community and displacing me and others like myself because their wealth and our gov reps say that they can. I am so sick and tired of supposedly educated people being so very ignorant to what humanity is. Walk a mile in your brothers and sisters shoes. See what being homeless is. Where would you sleep? Where would you simply exist? How would you stay cleaned up like shower and laundry? Pretend for just a moment it was you. You have nothing. No money, no hope , imagine if you knew you were hated for falling through cracks that were created for you to fall through. Imagine you had mental illness and were homed so treated with some respect, not discrimination. Then because of life being unpredictable, you lost the security of that home. Once you find that you have fallen into the trappings of being homeless you are never treated with any respect, no care. All of a sudden you are treated like a crazy criminal/ feral animal. Something for pest control to take care of. Strangers eyes dart disdain for you (without knowing a thing about you) noses snoot up, pearls get clutched, you are a problem or a project now, not quite human in the eyes of your more lucky neighbors. I doubt you'd like it at all, so please refrain from treating people who are living this nightmare any way you would not want to be treated. If you are lucky enough to be benefiting from the "American dream " you should be doing everything you can to end the nightmare for less fortunate people, not finding new and evil ways to otherize them.
Thursday, June 10, 2021 Report this