Noticias

Lane Masters grew up in Telluride, the son of former Sheriff Bill Masters. He graduated from Telluride High School before joining the Marine Corps. After retiring from the military, he stepped into law enforcement. Masters joined the San Miguel County Sheriff’s Office in 2023, and now works as a Telluride Marshal Deputy.

Masters recently announced his candidacy for San Miguel County Sheriff. He spoke with KOTO’s Julia Caulfield.

Julia Caulfield (JC): Why are you running for sheriff?

Lane Masters (LM): My overall career trajectory, my life goals were all oriented around someday getting back to Telluride. My joke is I spent 17 years trying to get out of here to spend the next 17 years trying to come back. Personally, I believe in civic duty. I feel a bit of a responsibility to this community because it’s the community that raised me and helped shape my personal outlooks on the world and also how my profession should be conducted.

Now being a family man, I have one son and we’re expecting our second. My kids will be raised here and I want them to have that same quality of life that we’ve all come to know and love living in San Miguel County. So that’s, that’s my major motivation.

I would say secondarily, I think the sheriff position is very important because it is an elected position and it should be the voice of the people on how they want policing to be conducted. Whether we like it or not, the reality is politics and policing are intertwined. I think this past year has really demonstrated that. We’ve seen much more action with federal police than we’ve ever seen in modern history. So I think it’s really imperative that a community be able to vote for and decide what they want policing to look like within their jurisdiction.

JC: If folks vote for you, it’s voting for your vision of what policing should look like in the county. So what does that look like? What are folks voting for if they vote for you for sheriff?

LM: The easy thing to say is, if you liked my dad, I was raised by him. I’d like to point out, I became a peace officer and had a successful career far outside of his sphere of influence, but generally speaking, who your father is, who your parents are, how you’re raised has a big implication on how you see the world and what that worldview actually looks like. So I’d like to say, if you liked my father’s policies and practices, I’m very similarly aligned. With that said, I bring a more modern view of how things need to be conducted in the modern era.

We’re seeing a crisis of staffing across the nation for police officers; and one thing that I’ll say is what we want out of our peace officers is we want informed, educated, experienced, physically fit peace officers that are, emotionally intelligent. Well, those people are worth a lot of money in any profession, right? So I think it’s really important that who’s running an agency, who’s that figurehead, is building a culture around that and demonstrating that what we want to see with our peace officers are members of the community that are involved in the community, that understand the community, and that care about the community. So that’s a major push for me.

Also, I think there’s a lot of technological advancements that need to be implemented. One of the major things (not to jump on the AI bandwagon) but a recent technology is with body-worn cameras being able to live translate using AI. We have a diverse community here, and I just think everybody understands, being able to actually understand what somebody is saying, especially in a potentially stressful moment, where they’re interacting with the police, is really paramount, and it’s important to get that right. And it’s important to make sure that all community members, regardless of what language barriers there may be, have a trust in their police officers.

So it’s another push of mine is to ensure that we’re modernizing appropriately and using tools like that to ensure that what we’re doing is effective and continues to build up the community trust that was such a harbinger of my dad’s career.

JC: Why are you the right person for this job, recognizing that Sheriff Covalt has also indicated that he’s planning to run as well?

LM: I think I’m the right person for the job because I offer both local knowledge and experience. I understand what it’s like to live in our community, throughout our community, and the challenges therein. I understand the people. I understand the differences between our communities. We’re small, but we’re interdependent on each other. You know, we have a community of ranchers, of athletes, of immigrants, and business professionals. Though we might not always agree, all of us need one another. So I have that local experience.

As far as moving forward, I also bring with me a breadth of experience, a volume of experience that came from working in a more kinetic area in a larger agency, in an agency that is objectively more modern and had to be more modern because those problems arose more often, more rapidly, and more consistently. So it’s an advantage to be able to say, ‘well, I understand these things and I know where these issues are coming from’, and getting ahead of them beforehand.

JC: Taking back to the beginning, and I think you’ve probably spoken to this throughout the whole conversation, but big picture, what do you think policing’s role is in San Miguel County?

LM: So not to echo my father too much, but I’m a strong believer in upholding public peace. I say that because it’s an easy enough thing to say is an overarching goal, but it’s actually a very complicated and nuanced matter to achieve. I would say there are plenty of instances where maybe what a police officer is trained to do in a moment is might actually conflict with what is the bigger picture for promoting public peace.

You know, my dad in the early days was one of the first County Sheriff’s to say, ‘I’m done with enforcing marijuana laws in particular. I’m done with this because this isn’t a problem for us in my community doesn’t need it to become a problem and my enforcing it isn’t improving public peace. It’s rupturing it’.

He was mocked for it at the time, and now we see, I think pretty broadly that he was right. He was just way ahead of the curve on that. So the question is always going to be looking at every situation moving forward and trying to have that same mindset of, ‘is this what’s right for public peace? Is this the right thing to be doing?’

Lane Masters is a Democratic candidate for San Miguel County Sheriff.

Sheriff Dan Covault is running for San Miguel County Sheriff as an unaffiliated candidate. Tune in to KOTO on Wednesday, March 18th for a conversation with Covault.

The candidates will face each other in the general election on Nov. 3.