Lake Forest’s Chief of Police, Lt. Brad Valentine, is getting a well-deserved promotion to Captain and will be leaving the City and moving to the OC Courts. His last day will be March 14.
Lt. Valentine’s term in Lake Forest and my own term on the Council overlapped. He started in January 2014 and my term began in December. My last day as Mayor was in December 2018 and he is leaving next week. So we shared the bulk of the 4 years.
Lt. Valentine was the fourth Lake Forest Chief of Police with whom I had contact over the years. In addition, in my capacity as a Clinical Psychologist, I’ve worked with Police Departments in Ohio, Michigan, and Australia.
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Valentine was among the hardest working officers I’ve had the pleasure of working with. During my term on the Council, especially when I was Mayor, we were in constant contact on a wide variety of issues. He was concerned with the quality of his service and did the homework to make it better. We spent countless hours discussing crime statistics and how to provide the best service at the most reasonable cost.
His achievements are note-worthy.
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- During his term in office, from 2014 to 2018, Lake Forest had the lowest crime rates in our history.
- Not only were our crime rates low, our crime rates compared to neighboring cities improved. Prior to Valentine our crime rates were among the highest in South Orange County. Under Valentine, we moved up to be among the lowest.
- We instituted the “Don’t Make it Easy” program that substantially reduced our property crimes.
- We increased our child safety programs and expanded the scope to include internet predators.
- We created the First Responders Grab and Go program to support our officers (thanks to Michelle Tan and Larissa Clark).
- We added to our parking enforcement and more than doubled our tickets and towing.
- The City transitioned to the Saddleback Substation.
Lt. Valentine helped us through several traumatic incidents, including the murder of Blaze Bernstein and the machete attack at WalMart.
Brad Valentine leaves big shoes for the next person to fill. Personally I will miss him.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Dr. Jim Gardner was on the Lake Forest City Council from 2014 to 2018 and Mayor in 2018. Under his leadership the City became the first debt free city in the U.S. with a population over 25,000 people and the first city to live broadcast City Council meetings that allowed residents to participate online (Click Here). Dr. Gardner is one of the organizing members of Lake Forest Community Action Network. You can check him out on LinkedIn and/or Facebook and you can share your thoughts about the City at Lake Forest Town Square on Facebook
