Resilience — that is what Jacksonville Sheriff's Office Assistant Chief Lakesha Burton says she has had since she was a child.
Now the 22-year department veteran says that resilience will help her as the first Black woman to run for sheriff in Jacksonville, according to WJCT News partner The Florida Times-Union.
She officially filed after an interview about her life, beliefs and plans if elected next year to succeed Sheriff Mike Williams.
Seated in a coffee shop within walking distance of the Zone 2 substation that the 46-year-old administrator has run for a year, Burton is animated as she speaks of how the sexual abuse of her teen years, then her turnaround in high school that ultimately led her to become a police officer under then-Sheriff Nat Glover.
Glover, the city's first modern-day Black sheriff, was making community-oriented policing the "fabric of everything" she learned as an officer, she said. Now she said she has many reasons why she is running, but one is to give what she has learned in life and as an officer back to her community.
Read the rest of this story at Jacksonville.com.
