Meet the candidates running for Ottawa County sheriff

OLIVE TOWNSHIP, Mich. (WOOD) — Two candidates are on the Aug. 6 primary ballot vying to become the next Ottawa County sheriff.

Jon Anderson is the interim county administrator who owns a gun shop in Holland and Eric DeBoer is serving as the undersheriff. Both are running as Republicans and are the only candidates listed on the ballot.

Sheriff Steve Kempker is retiring at the end of his term.

News 8 interviewed Anderson and DeBoer on Wednesday, asking the same questions to each candidate.

Why are you running for Ottawa County sheriff?

“Towards the end of last year I started talking to a lot of people that were staff, sheriff staff on the department, other citizens that were a little concerned because they heard that Kempker was gonna be leaving and they weren’t really sure who else was going to be stepping up and a lot of people knew my experience,” Anderson said.

“I’ve grown up here and I’ve watched how the sheriff’s department has interacted with the community and I know the things that are important to both the community and the sheriff’s department so when I was made aware that the sheriff wasn’t planning on running again and they were talking to me about running I had to weigh the options of what does that look like for the department going forward?” DeBoer said.

What makes you qualified to serve as sheriff?

“I have 32 years total law enforcement experience. Fifteen of those is in leadership roles. All the way from just your first line of supervision all the way up to command level and executive leadership roles. I’ve served in roles of chief of police and most of this stuff was out west in California,” Anderson said.

“I’ve worked for the sheriff’s office in many different capacities for the last 25 years starting in the marine patrol as a summer job when I was in college to the road patrol to working on our undercover taskforce to being a detective, to being a sergeant, and now the undersheriff. I’ve gone through, I’ve seen what the department has done and what’s worked and what hasn’t worked,” DeBoer said.

What are the biggest challenges facing the department?

“The biggest right now, and it’s not just unique to Ottawa, I think is recruiting and retention. It’s, law enforcement is kind of a funny game because it’s, you got to get the right people that even want to do the job and then get them through the training,” Anderson said.

“We’ve always had this connection with the community and a lot of it had to do with — it was a lot easier to do when you were 24 deputies that were assigned to each of the communities that were out here and knew. But over the course of the last 50 years, we’ve evolved so much, we’ve grown so much and so we want to keep that small town police department feel,” DeBoer said.

What is your vision for the department if you are elected to serve as sheriff?

“I’ve taught community policing at our academy and taken it to the levels that it’s meant to be which is really building collaborative partnerships within the community and that starts at the top and goes all the way down, but I also want to modernize it a little bit, see some changes not just uniforms but with equipment,” Anderson said.

“My vision for the department is to continue to grow and evolve to deal with these complex issues and to become even more of a professional organization than we are now which is one of the standards that we hold, I’ll hold this department up to pretty much anyone out there as far as doing things the right way but to continue to evolve to do those things,” DeBoer said.

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