Eagle County voters will choose their next sheriff this November.
Incumbent James Van Beek, a Republican, has served as the Eagle County sheriff since 2014. He’s an Army veteran who’s lived in Eagle County since 1989. In the early 2000’s, he spent nearly a decade working abroad in law enforcement in Kosovo and Afghanistan.
“My whole life has always been about serving the country, serving the community,” he said. “I've got a proven track record … even before I ever became the sheriff.”
In the past several elections, he hasn’t faced much of a challenge. He ran unopposed in 2018, and in 2022, his opponent was arrested during campaign season for unpaid traffic tickets.
Rebecca Anderson is hoping to change that. Originally from Wisconsin, she currently serves as a patrol sergeant for the Vail Police Department, but she also spent 17 years with the Eagle County Sheriff’s Office.
She said the agency needs a leader who will mentor officers and create a better workplace culture. She won the Democratic primary in June against Jason Boston, who also ran on reforming the agency’s management structure.
“It's really about providing change to the agency that I believe desperately needs changing,” Anderson said. “I think the only way to do that is to bring in some new thoughts, new ideas.”
If elected, Anderson would join the 2% of sheriffs in the country who are women and become Eagle County’s first female sheriff.
“I have had to prove myself my entire career that I can do the job just as well as the men that are in the field, and I think I’ve done a fabulous job of that,” she said.
The two candidates share similar philosophies about the role of a sheriff and interagency collaborations, but they differ on a few key issues.
Workplace culture
Anderson is motivated to change what she describes as a top-heavy management structure.
She said she would seek feedback from staff and community members on how to restructure the sheriff’s office and suggested creating more individualized enforcement plans for different municipalities.
“With the diversity of Eagle County, … the policing cannot be one size fits all,” she said in an interview in June. “It needs to be really formatted for what those communities want — how they want their police officers to work. And right now, I don't think that that's happening.”
She wants to bring back the county’s resident deputy program, in which deputies are stationed in one community long-term. And as sheriff, she would design more flexible schedules so managers could move personnel if a team dynamic isn’t working.
In that same June interview, Anderson said she didn’t feel like Van Beek and the undersheriff listened to deputies’ feedback about how to better serve the community.
“There is a little bit of heavy top leadership right now,” she said. “The only command structure is the sheriff and the undersheriff. There's no sort of middle management until you get straight to the sergeants who supervise the patrol.”
Van Beek disagreed with Anderson’s assessment that the agency lacks middle management.
“We're not top heavy,” he said. “I would actually say it's exactly the opposite. Sergeants have said, ‘We like a flatter scale, so we have more direct contact with upper management.’”
Anderson also mentioned that her mental health suffered during her time working for the Eagle County Sheriff’s Office, so she’d like to expand deputies’ access to resources.
“Having a wide variety of choices for people to talk to counselors, to talk to therapists, to get out and actually have activities, that will help,” she said.
Van Beek said that he has prioritized offering mental health resources to deputies during his tenure. He said officers must complete one mental health check-up per year, but they also have access to additional appointments if needed.
He said many officers take advantage of the services, which are also extended to spouses.
“There's a lot of stressors, and those stressors can be reflected at home,” Van Beek said. “And if they're not 100% at home, it's really hard to be 100% [at work].”
Mental health response
The sheriff candidates are also considering how to improve the agency’s response to mental health calls.
The sheriff’s office collaborates with nonprofit organizations like the Hope Center to respond to mental health crises in the county. But Van Beek said there’s still room for growth, and that plenty of mental health specialists want to work with the agency.
He added that it’s hard to keep up with the community’s demand for mental health support, even with their nonprofit partners trying to hire new therapists as quickly as possible.
“As fast as they get those people online, their schedules are filling up, because we're discovering such a huge need for people,” Van Beek said. “One of my passions still is to continue to build on that.”
Anderson agreed that the county needs to figure out how to meet the rising need for mental health services, especially when community members are in crisis. She suggested leaning on nonprofit partners for guidance.
“Sometimes that response time can take a little bit longer,” she said. “So working very closely with those partners and really having those conversations to find out the best practice, I think, is going to be the way to go.”
Drug trafficking and use
Van Beek said the agency has made “great strides” in tackling the county’s drug trafficking problem, particularly along I-70. Last winter, state and local officials confiscated a record-breaking amount of fentanyl and methamphetamine. But they said the problem continues as state overdose rates remain stagnant.
The sheriff’s office is part of a multi-jurisdictional task force with the Vail Police Department and other agencies that targets narcotics dealers, the Gore Range Narcotics Interdiction Team (GRANITE).
But Van Beek acknowledged that drug enforcement is a two-sided problem of both supply and demand. If re-elected as sheriff, he said he would work with the state legislature to pass laws that ensure “the safety and security of children.”
Anderson is more concerned with staffing GRANITE. She believes she can improve the task force by identifying and training younger deputies to fill those positions.
“My proposal is using a lot of that mentorship and a lot of that expertise that we have on that team to kind of teach and train the next generation,” she explained.
Automatic license plate readers
Law enforcement agencies across Colorado use automatic license plate readers to investigate crimes, like car theft and kidnapping. But across the state, residents are questioning whether private companies and other public agencies, like U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, can access that data.
Some local jurisdictions, like the Glenwood Springs Police Department, have turned off data-sharing.
According to Van Beek, Eagle County operates six Motorola and Avigilant brand automatic license plate readers, mostly in Gypsum. While he understands residents’ privacy concerns, he thinks people don’t fully understand how they use the cameras.
“They don't do facial recognition and so on,” he said. “They take a picture of the car, and they take a picture primarily focused on the license plates.”
He said the county originally installed them to help track car theft, especially from the Eagle County Regional Airport. The sheriff’s office keeps camera data in its systems for 60 days and requires any outside agency requesting access to agree to only use the data for law enforcement purposes.
Those guardrails don’t guarantee that officers won’t abuse the data, but if they do, Van Beek said there would be strict repercussions.
“We would be able to deal with them, kick them out of the system, and if necessary, we could criminally investigate,” he said.
Anderson agrees that the cameras can be a helpful law enforcement tool, but she suggested lowering the data retention policy somewhere between seven and 30 days.
“You don't want to lose the data that's going to help us solve those crimes,” she said. “But I don't see any reason for it to sit there.”
She also suggested increased oversight over the agency’s officers to ensure they don’t misuse the data.
Bear-human interactions
Drought has pushed more bears into populated areas this summer as they look for food sources in human environments. As a result, state and local officials have killed about 300 bears this year.
At an apartment complex in Eagle-Vail on Sept. 8, an Eagle County Sheriff’s deputy fatally shot a bear after several less severe attempts to scare it away were unsuccessful.
Van Beek said the officer followed proper protocol, which he confirmed with Colorado Parks and Wildlife afterward.
“We've talked to some of the subject matter experts, and a vast majority of them said you did everything that we could think of possible, but there may be some alternatives in the future,” Van Beek said.
Moving forward, Van Beek said the agency’s policies could “evolve” in line with Parks and Wildlife’s recommendations.
Anderson also said she would also like to work with officials to stay up to date on best practices and keep educating community members.
“We need cooperation from the community to try to lock those containers, to not feed the bears [and] to make sure all the trash is getting in the containers,” she said.
Trust with immigrant communities
Local law enforcement agencies in Colorado cannot arrest or detain people based on immigration status alone. But an uptick in U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement activity in Eagle County over the past year has sown fear among immigrant communities.
Anderson said, as sheriff, she would serve as a resource for residents, regardless of immigration status.
“My message would be that we will provide the same service to every resident, every guest, every visitor to our communities,” she said. “We're not going to ask anybody's immigration status. … We can't stop a federal immigration operation, but we will be there to support our residents.”
Van Beek said he’s been engaged with the issue through participation in the Law Enforcement Immigrant Alliance, of which he’s a co-chair.
“We participate in continuously building bridges, and that's just an ongoing process,” he said.
Last January, in Vail, some local residents found “death cards” in abandoned cars following a series of ICE arrests. Van Beek said he quickly addressed the issue by calling the ICE office in Denver.
“I said, ‘to me, that's completely inappropriate,’” Van Beek said. “I was assured within two days that that was dealt with, and that it would never occur again.”
Anderson and Van Beek both emphasized the importance of having bilingual and bicultural staff in the sheriff’s office. Van Beek admitted that there have been some missteps in the past, though.
In 2018, the Lake Christine Fire burned more than 12,000 acres across Eagle County, including neighborhoods close to Basalt and El Jebel.
Some Spanish-speaking Latino residents in the area said they didn’t have adequate information about the progress of the fire or evacuations.
“Lesson learned. We made a mistake,” Van Beek said. “No harm was intended in any way, shape, or form.”
Eagle County voters in the Roaring Fork Valley can drop off ballots at the Clerk and Recorder’s Office in El Jebel or the town of Basalt municipal building.
Election Day is Nov. 3.
