This touching letter was hand-delivered around my neighborhood. Even in tragedy, Lisa Vakoff has the same problem as many of us – being heard. We hear you and are sorry for your loss… (reprinted without revision) Dear Neighbor, Please indulge me and read this email string and letter. It is a tough one. My dear friend’s son, Dillon M. Vakoff, was murdered 9/11/22. He was 27 years old and an Arvada Police Officer. If you need a good cry while receiving incredible inspiration, I invite you to check out his memorial service on Utube. I asked if there was anything I could do to help my friend with her grief and the most important thing to Lisa at this time was that I distribute this to all my family, friends & neighbors with a request that it be shared. Lisa read her letter on 710 AM radio. If you would like this to share electronically, please email me at Charles.Debra.Buck@gmail.com. Deb Buck I have had the sad and solemn honor of standing watch over the memorials for all three of these police officers. At each I have had members of the public openly lament these murders and question who is responsible and what can be done. People think that showing support for our officers means thanking them for their service. While kind, that is not what officers need. I will answer those questions and tell you what officers need at the end of this post. This post will probably piss off a number of people. Good. We should all be mad. I only ask that if you start reading it you finish it. Short on time? Save it for later. Pissed at me? Keep reading. None of these officers should be dead right now. They died because of the failure of our criminal justice system, the failure of district attorneys and judges, the failure of our mental healthcare system (or complete lack thereof), the failure of politicians, the failure of parents and families, the failure of our public school system and the failure of the public in general. We have a criminal justice system that is designed to protect criminals, not the general public. Let me give you an example. The POS that shot and killed Officer Dillon Vakoff had already been convicted of attempted 2nd degree murder. Rather than spending 15 years in an adult prison (which he was eligible for), he was sentenced to 6 years in juvenile detention. I’ll touch on lax sentencing in a moment, but why do we have a system that treats a person who tries to kill someone differently than someone that succeeds in killing someone? Why should it matter if they succeeded? They have no business walking our streets to try again. As far as lax sentencing, that is on our DAs and our judges. When I see sentences dumbed down so that DAs can maintain perfect or near perfect conviction rates I think we should fire them. I could give a crap what their records are. I want criminals locked up. If that means taking greater risks, so be it. I am also sick and tired of judges who give chance after chance after chance to thugs and murderers. They deserve as many second chances as they gave their victims. NONE. The judges should be kicked out of their jobs if they can’t do them. Our mental healthcare system in this country is pathetic. We have taken the burden of mental healthcare and very, very sick people and dropped it straight on the shoulders of our police departments and prison systems. They are not equipped to handle that kind of burden and we are failing the officers and the mentally ill. I am including a link to a show, “Insight with John Ferrugia: Breakdown”. He and the team do a fantastic job of showing vividly how the system is broken. The episode is an Emmy winner and I cannot encourage you enough to watch it. You can see it here: https://youtu.be/uCDlNDc8IiA Politicians. These are the people tasked with creating our laws. They are some of the worst offenders with regard to failure. The laws they have created and the changes they have made to existing ones is systematically destroying our country. One need only look at the extraordinary increases in crime rates in the last few years to know this is true. They need to be individually and collectively held accountable for their failures. You cannot point blame without focusing closely on the parents. Your son is suicidal? What kind of moron goes and buys them a gun 2 years later? They rightly should be held accountable for the actions of their child as should all parents enabling children to commit crimes. This would include things like leaving your kids unsupervised to run rampant around our streets. Officer Dillon Vakoff was killed after responding to a call at 1:45am. He was rushed to the hospital where he was pronounced dead. After an officer is killed he is prepared for transport to the Coroner’s Office. Police will escort his/her remains the entire way. Let me tell you something you probably don’t know. While officers were escorting his remains, just hours after his death, a call came in for everyone to hear. Another “Unknown Disturbance” call to the EXACT SAME ADDRESS where Dillon was murdered. Can you imagine being one of those officers listening or having to respond?!?! What kind of people do that??? Talk about the POS not falling far from the tree. Let’s talk about our school systems. There are public school systems around this country that have “Zero Tolerance” fighting policies. It doesn’t matter what the circumstances are, who started it, why it was started and who ended it. If there is a fight all students are held equally accountable. It’s bullshit. Both Dillon and my oldest son had similar experiences when they attended elementary school. Both saw a bully picking on a weaker, smaller child. Both Dillon and
