initiatives

Residents of St. Joseph County, I am announcing that I have officially filed to run for the St. Joseph County Sheriff’s position in 2024. I am very pleased to be able to say that former Sheriff Brad Balk and former Sheriff Matt Lori fully endorse me and are supporting my campaign, as well as many other elected leaders, county residents and business people. It has been a great privilege to serve the wonderful residents of St. Joseph County while being employed at the St. Joseph County Sheriff’s Dept for 26 years, of which 20 of them I was the Undersheriff. For the last 10 years, I have served the citizens of the Village of Centreville, Florence Township, Lockport Township, Nottawa Township, Sherman Township and now Sturgis Township by being a member of the Centreville Village Council for (3) three years and as a member of the St. Joseph County Board of Commissioners for the last (7) seven years. I was elected Chairman of the Board for (4) four of those years.

As a proven and successful leader in St. Joseph County, I would ask all of the residents of St. Joseph County to join my effort by supporting my campaign and voting for Dennis Allen, so that I can quickly restore the trust, integrity, honesty and credibility at the Sheriff’s Department. Transparency will be the avenue to restoring the great reputation of the people’s Sheriff’s Department. As a trusted and respected servant of the residents of St. Joseph County for over 35 years, I promise that will be my top priority. In addition, we will work on many more issues, such as recruitment and retention of the fine people that, both we need and those that work there now. My plan of action to quickly turn the department around and restore it to the quality the people expect and deserve can be found on my web page at DennisAllenforSheriff2024.com. 

Here are just a few of my plans to improve the department’s effectiveness. I will work hard, immediately if given the opportunity to be your Sheriff:

• I will immediately address the department’s significant recruitment and retention shortfalls. The department has lost 20 full-time personnel in the last year alone, of which only five are due to retirement.
• I will assess the training needs of our officers and ensure our officers have the training and equipment necessary to effectively combat serious crime in our county.
• I will embrace procedural justice as the guiding principle for internal and external policies and practices in order to better guide the department’s interactions with our residents
• I will emphasize and increase a culture of transparency and accountability within the department to build back public trust in the position of sheriff and in the public trust of its officers.
• I will establish formal community/citizen advisory committees to assist in developing crime prevention strategies and agency policies as well as to provide input on policing issues.
• I will work to create opportunities in our schools and communities through non-enforcement interactions with our students and school faculty; we will publicize the fruitful outcomes and images of these positive, trust-building partnerships and initiatives.
• I will seek grants and available funding to hire a criminal intelligence analyst in order to track, analyze, report and share findings and criminal activity trends with each of our county’s law enforcement agencies.
• I will evaluate the department’s patrol and investigatory practices to ensure our officers have sufficient time to participate in problem-solving and community engagement activities.
• I will ensure our officers are engaging our youth and our communities in joint training with our officers via citizen academies and ride-alongs.
• Our youth are our future and their future is so important! I will work hard to recruit young people in our county who are interested in pursuing a career in law enforcement or criminal justice.
• I will establish a department K-9 program so our department is more self-sufficient when situations arise that require the use of a police K-9 and its handler.
• I will re-constitute the St. Joseph County Area Narcotics (SCAN) team in order to ensure our investigators are focusing on the serious drug activity in our county, solely.

My wife, Vicki, and I have been married for 48 years. We live in Centreville, Michigan and have three grown children and 11 grandchildren. My wife and I belong to the family of Firm Foundations Ministries (FFM) in Centreville. I coached both Varsity and Junior Varsity football and basketball at Centreville High School for nearly 20 years, beginning in 1990.

Questions regarding my candidacy for St. Joseph County Sheriff can be directed to my phone, email and/or through one of the following website and social media platforms: