The Leader recommends another four years for Keith Fagundes

By The Leader Staff
Keith Fagundes
Keith Fagundes

The Leader recommends that Kings County District Attorney Keith Fagundes be given another four-year term as the county’s chief law enforcement lawyer. The Leader is not alone in offering an endorsement.

An avalanche of public safety and public service individuals have jumped aboard the Fagundes election train, including all five City of Lemoore councilmembers, and a plethora of former and current local leaders.

Other endorsements came from Corcoran Police Chief Reuben Shortnacy, former CHP spokesman  Jerry Pierce, longtime Kings DA Ronald Calhoun, and former DA Gary Gonzalves.

Fagundes has earned the Kings County Republican Party’s endorsement as well as public safety organizations including the Hanford Police Officers’ Association, Correctional Officers Association, the Kings County Prosecutors, and the Hanford Professional Firefighters Assoc.

He has also received the endorsements of a myriad of local business leaders, educators, and farmers – simply too many to list here.

As a former educator, I worked with Mr. Fagundes as Lemoore High School orchestrated its bi-annual look at drunk driving, known as “Every 15 Minutes.” His presence in the school’s gymnasium – as the county’s prosecutor – was believable and certainly educational and influenced a litany of impressionable teenagers.

The business of law enforcement – keeping criminals off the street and ensuring that the mechanics of law enforcement are fair to everyone – is important to our society.  It’s how we judge right from wrong. It’s how we protect the good guys and put the bad guys away.

The Leader also interviewed Fagundes’ opponent, Sarah Hacker, a former assistant Kings County DA from 2006-to 2015. She told The Leader that she sees a need in our county. We need strong leadership, she said. “I know I can do better than the current district attorney providing leadership and putting our community first.”

Maybe she will get her chance, but not this time.

Mr. Fagundes has done a credible job for Kings County and devoted his terms to a litany of public outreach programs including domestic violence, child gun safety, elder abuse, human trafficking, gangs, child abduction, active shooter response, and more.

As I am writing this, I have the television on in my office and, sadly, yet another mass shooting has occurred, just a week after the massacre in Texas where a lone, 18-year-old shooter killed 19 students and two teachers in one of the worst mass shootings in American history.

This time the rampage is in a Tulsa, Oklahoma hospital. Two weeks ago, it was a supermarket in Buffalo. There will undoubtedly be another … and another.

I might recommend that Mr. Fagundes might help to improve upon his efforts to keep our Kings County schools safe from such wanton attacks on our children and teachers, and businesses. 

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