Major Dawanna Witt wants to be the next Hennepin County Sheriff.
She describes herself as a mother, a wife, a grandmother, and a granddaughter with 22- years-experience in law enforcement. A graduate of Minneapolis South High School. Witt earned degrees in chemical dependency and family therapy from St. Catherine, a B.S. degree in police science and dual Master’s degrees in public safety administration and management from St. Mary’s. In February of this year, she was one of eight recipients of the national Black History Month in Law Enforcement Award from the Police Studies Institute at St. Elizabeth University in New Jersey.
She discussed her vision and her point of view, in last week’s Monday edition of The Conversation with Al McFarlane, livestreamed locally and nationally at Insight News and Black Press USA Facebook and YouTube channels, and on Twitter and Linkedin.The Monday series of the 1pm daily webcast is entitled, Governance at the Neighborhood Level, and is a collaboration with Hawthorne Neighborhood Council and other neighborhood organizations.
Witt said her grandmother owned and lived in a townhome in North Minneapolis for over 30 years. Her grandmother lived on the third floor of the townhome because it was too unsafe to live on the ground level or second floor. “She had a bullet go through her walls,” Witt said, explaining how violence in the community has touched her family, personally. “She used to work for Hennepin Healthcare, formerly known as HCMC (Hennepin County Medical Center) but took early retirement after being mugged while waiting on a bus in front of her home. She never drove a car.”
Witt says she comes from a large family, deeply embedded in South and North Minneapolis. “Some have been on different sides of the law, but they are still family and manage to work things out,” she said.
She said she never saw herself getting into law enforcement. “It was an accident that became my purpose.”
“I am a person who knows what it feels like to be afraid and not trusting of law enforcement. That was my childhood. Those were my lived experiences. Through a late 20-year-old’s lens, I saw law enforcement and restorative justice far differently than my predominantly white colleagues. I also knew what it took for me to release some of the barriers from past and present that were holding me back,” she said.
“My passion is being the person I needed to see growing up as a child, who suffered trauma and abuses no child should ever experience,” she said.
“I am a candidate for Hennepin County Sheriff because of those lived experiences,” she said. “It’s important that the leader makes sure to talk to residents and officers about the impact of their lived experiences, too,” she said.
Witt, who began her career in corrections as a detention intake officer, has always been a teacher. She claims that as her purpose. She is an adjunct professor teaching Juvenile Justice and American Corrections at Inver Hills Community College. It’s about being a leader and able to be vulnerable in using lived experiences as real-life examples. The last three years have been challenging for everyone, but the murder of George Floyd and others and subsequent high-profile trials put the Twin Cities on the map, she said.
She said strong and trusted leadership and dedicated partnerships and resources will be key components in a plan to curb teen violence and community crime.
“Our agency was there during the riots and demonstrations, and I was there talking to the people who I understood were angry and in pain. I talked to inmates inside the facility a lot, having known some in high school and in the neighborhood. I was comfortable talking to them and listening, and they felt the connection. I didn’t stay behind the barriers. I led by example. But my methods of healing and reaching that soul spot did fare well with some of my white counterparts. They thought I was too comfortable. But I’ve learned over the years that ‘trust’ and ‘respect’ are big, important words for those who have been harmed mentally and/or physically by those charged to protect and serve. There was no question in the majority of citizens’ minds that most of the uniformed officers were concerned about their community, but we also had a job to do amidst all the chaos,” she said.
“83% of the people in our custody in Hennepin County, the largest jail in the state, are here on felonies. Interchangeably between the first and the third, our top three reasons for holding people are weapons, murders, and domestic violence with criminal sexual misconduct not far behind,” she said
“We’re not the ones to decide when someone leaves our jail and goes through the court system. But I have never believed in ‘dead time’,” she said, “so we do what we can with the time we have with them. We have their attention, so we should be identifying resources and programming. giving people positive and constructive things to think about, skills to master, and useful knowledge to learn. Some are in custody because of child abuse, so why not teach parenting classes? Some barely made it through junior high school. Where are the educational and skill-oriented programs? The county is now offering some programming. I am proud to say that recently we held a resource fair for four days. But our challenges lie in the fact that we are a large facility and have had to limit the size of our classes. We never know how long individuals will be in custody, and with our classification system in place, there are certain people who cannot be mixed. And let’s not forget, we’re still not completely out of the pandemic.” Witt said.
Witt champions re-casting and elevating the education and training of law enforcement professionals as well, so that those who want to pursue of law and public safety careers will understand the mission before they make a decision. Witt sees her job not only as restraint and detainment but as a community conduit educating individuals, both residents and officers, about the law, describing what proper behavior looks like, and underscoring the importance of having a department that is equitable, non-partisan, friendly, and carries out required duties in a friendly and organized manner.
Witt operates with the certainty that the wrong thing to do is nothing. She says people cannot thrive in communities where people are afraid and isolated. Reform is definitely needed so people can feel safe when stopped or apprehended by those charged to serve and protect. But then there are some that just need to be incarcerated until they can fight themselves in mind and soul for a better way to live; she says, and there are some in law enforcement who should decide on a different profession.
Witt says people can learn from their mistakes and our young people need to see that grown-ups have been through some of the same mistakes they have. As a result, they need to also see that there is a way out. She says she knows what it feels like to think like her life had no meaning or honestly not know what a good life looks like. “We’re asking what’s wrong with our kids,” she said, “and I will tell you there’s a population of kids that we’re forgetting about. Those are the kids too afraid to say ‘no’ to their peers and they end up getting caught up in all these violent activities. They don’t understand accountability and end up in danger or incarcerated. We need to act now to start caring for our babies and our senior citizens. How about bringing meaningful activities back to the Boys and Girls Clubs or the YMCA! How about knowing who your neighbors are and asking them if they have needs. We are all in this together, and we can accomplish great feats with a common goal of quality living for all citizens,” Witt said.
For further information: Witt for Hennepin County Sheriff, PO Box 15225, Minneapolis, MN 55415,
Tel: 612-567-6514 or email: contact@wittforsheriff.com
