To the Editor:

On a cold night in late September 2013, I was trying to purchase food in the Fraser Valley before Safeway closed. I was doing 45 mph in a 55 mph zone, rolled through a stop sign in the empty Safeway lot, and parked in a handicapped zone. In a sprint for the Safeway doors, I was confronted by Winter Park-Fraser Police Department Officer Brett Schroetlin who yelled “get your ass over here, you’re on my time now, do you wanna be arrested?” Within one minute, I was surrounded by four $50K patrol SUVs with spotlights on and officer Roy Ybarra threatening me while I tried to film the encounter. That’s right, four officers to write this 12-year, unarmed local a ticket in the Safeway parking lot. It must be shoulder season in Grand County.

I have been threatened with arrest three times in the last eight years, all in the Fraser Valley, all by officer Schroetlin. Professional officers do not go around threatening people. We live in a sleepy county of 15,000, mostly law-abiding citizens who are “protected” by more than 50 law enforcement “professionals” from five different agencies.

How can we trust a man who never finished college to handle a $4 million budget? A man who has never led before, to lead this county’s most powerful agency? How can we trust a man with a high school education to implement the complex laws of our great state?

A vote for Brett is a vote for more cops, more enforcement, a bigger budget, and greater incompetence than we already experience in Grand County. A vote for Brett is a vote for the saying: “Grand County, come on vacation, leave on probation.”

Austin Pottorff

Lakewood and Grand County

Editor’s note: Mr. Pottorff shot a video of part of the referenced encounter. It can be viewed at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GovzmLqFnU&index= 3&list=UU_7B6oOWCw3DDvU8cupfR1A. On the video, he is cited for driving 45 mph in a 25 mph zone.