GILPIN COUNTY — In the October 1, 2026, issue of The Mountain-Ear, Gilpin Sheriff candidate Zach Meyer answered questions to be published in the paper. In the spirit of fairness, we have taken the answers that Gilpin Sheriff candidate Greg Demo verbally answered at the Gilpin County Candidates Forum and put them in written form. 

What are some specific steps you will take to ensure public trust in the department?

One of the things if elected I will initiate immediately—I’ve spoken to my running mate and we think it would be a great opportunity where we have open forums with the sheriff’s office with him and I at least bimonthly if not monthly to get feedback from our community and to engage our community and see where the priorities need to be. And to see where the community is seeing inadequate service and then to provide us some guidance on the things we need to improve. 

If you agree with spending County funds to cooperate with Federal immigration enforcement, what is your rationale?

Currently, there is specific Colorado laws that prohibit certain collaboration with our federal partners. As I stated earlier, the job of the sheriff is to preserve peace. So, we can’t interfere when federal authorities come into Gilpin County and want to exercise enforcement operations, for example, involving ICE, but we can be a support role in ensuring it's being done humanely and preserving the peace to our citizens.

Our jail operations specifically do not allow us to cooperate with ICE or immigration. There’s certain laws in Colorado that, for example, you have to release somebody who is ready for release from jail within six hours and if you don’t you get sued. That puts a hardship on Gilpin County, puts a hardship on our deputies, puts a hardship on the sheriff’s office. We can’t take these risks. 

Essentially, the law governs what we can and can’t do to help our immigration enforcement in Gilpin County. And there really isn’t any funding that would be going towards immigration activities, only to preserve the peace when they’re in our county doing whatever it is they’re doing. 

Has the Sheriff’s office had any encounters with ICE?

Not recently. One of the things that we seem to get into our jail division is what they call ICE detainers. They’re detainer requests. They’re written by law enforcement officers and not judicial personnel. 

In other words, there’s no judicial review that makes them a lawful warrant to hold somebody in custody. There is case law that specifically says you need to have judicial warrants to hold somebody against the Fourth Amendment. 

Please tell us what Gilpin County’s yearly budget is for the Sheriff’s office.

The sheriff is responsible to oversee an $11.3 million budget spread over six divisions. These divisions are the jail, patrol, dispatch, office of emergency management, victim services, and the administration. 

We bring in approximately $2.5 million in revenue to offset that $11.3 million which brings us down to basically an operating cost to the general fund and our game revenues and all the other revenues of $8.7 million. 

Do you believe the Sheriff's Office currently has enough deputies to adequately cover Gilpin County? 

I currently do not. My email is filled with concerns from our citizens about road safety and persons travelling our highways and our inability to practice safe traffic enforcement. 

In 2023, there was a staffing analysis that established a recommendation of nine additional full-time employees to the sheriff’s office, which basically equals 10 personnel because we still had a part-time emergency specialist for our emergency department. And also a part-time program manager for our jail staff. They would focus on programs for persons experiencing incarceration in our jail. 

Right now we don’t have a solid relief factor for the office. It recommended three or four deputies just for the relief factor, in addition to supervision in the sheriff’s office. There were additional administrative sergeants that were recommended. 

As of right now, a lot of administrative duties that the sheriff, the division chiefs don’t have enough time to complete falls on your sergeants in our individual divisions, which takes them out of the group. 

When you are responding to your calls, responding to 911, responding to instances in the county and those deputies are relying on often two or three years experience without having a sergeant available on the scene. 

Do you have new recruitment ideas?

We need to focus on our wellness of the organization. We currently do not have a robust wellness program. That is one of my visions for the sheriff’s office, focusing on deputy wellness. For those of you who don’t know, we currently have 44 armed deputies and officers in the sheriff’s office. That includes the sheriff and myself, the undersheriff, as well as our chief and our sergeants, officers, and deputies. 

70.45% of us in that staffing level come from the metro area and my concern is getting buy-in and getting commitment to our community with those staffing members. We currently have a lot of staff with less than 10 years of service with Gilpin County. There’s only 14 in the range of 10 years to 15 years and there’s only seven of us in the sheriff’s office who have been with the sheriff’s office greater than 15 years. That is a problem. 

My recruitment would focus on local community. I was to get back in the school and get counselors involved. When I was a sergeant, I used to participate in education at the Nederland school in Nederland, Colorado. We need to get more participation and focus in our community and our youth. And bring back programs such as Explorers to get them interested and make them aware of the opportunities that are here locally when they come of age that they can participate in our workplace. 

What is your position on deputies partnering with mental health providers?

I think it hasn’t been used to its full potential here in Gilpin County. We do not have the program with our MDTs, which is basically our computers and our vehicles that were paid for by grant at no expense to the county general fund. 

We do have access to mental health services while we are responding to our calls within the community. I think it's a valuable tool. But it has not been taken full advantage of because we don’t have an actual call base that needs that service. But it is available for our call service. 

What do you believe is the biggest public-safety problem facing Gilpin County, and what specifically would you do about it?

I currently think our biggest public safety threat is wildland fire, our wind events, and our lack of preparation with our community. 

We’ve worked on plans in the last year and a half. We established last year our first sponsored Red Cross shelter, which was quite an achievement, but we still have a lot of work to do. 

I think my focus will be to bring our community with our partnerships—Timberline, GCART—and bring in some realistic community training where we bring in community members to train us. 

So, when the terrible day comes, whether it be a wildland fire or an extended wind event, we’re saving lives and people are not left to fend for themselves and they’re provided proper support from emergency services.

I think that’s our greatest threat. 

What specific changes would you implement regarding school safety?

In the last year and a half and longer we’ve worked with our partners. We’ve brought in technology. I can’t go into specific security measures that we’ve taken for fear of letting these things out and provide an edge to someone who would want to harm our children. 

I can tell you that we’ve brought in our partners Jefferson County, Clear Creek County, Boulder County, in our plans as well as our local assets  Gilpin Ambulance, Timberline, Central City Fire, State Parks, Division of Gaming. All of us have been in a room discussing these plans. What we need to do now is bring these plans in our office and actually have live exercises. 

In addition to that, some of you have seen our reunification has occurred twice in the last few years where we’ve implemented training and brought in other departments within the county to make sure we are making strides in this area. 

Would you support county commissioners contracting with Jefferson County for dispatch services resulting in the loss of county dispatch for Gilpin?

As a resident and as hopefully your sheriff, I think it would be a terrible mistake. I’ve done nothing since taking my current position but to fight for Gilpin County Dispatch.

We currently have an assessment in process to identify what we need to be doing for our retention and recruitment for dispatch. What processes can we improve upon to maintain our current staffing levels and get back to where our authorized FTE should be.

I’ve been in communication with our neighbor Clear Creek who did go with Jeffcom. To be quite frank, the citizens don’t like it. It’s very impersonable. They don’t recognize down in Jeffcom the interest of small towns and small counties and that’s what we are. Our strength is knowing our county, knowing our residents and knowing the services we need to provide. I’m absolutely 100% not behind going for them. 

What is one decision you have made in your career that you would handle differently now?

I was a sergeant, not under Sheriff Armstrong but the previous administration. There was an individual in our office who essentially didn’t execute their duties properly and was asked to resign and move along. 

I spoke out, not enough, about letting this person move on with his law enforcement certificate intact. That person a short time later went to another agency and caused harm in that agency. 

I learned from that moment on that the integrity of our postcertified positions is paramount. We can't have people in these positions that bring discredit upon the office of deputy sheriff, sheriff, police, etc.