House District 16 Primary Conversations: Frank Cooke & Pam Salaam

I’m running again to complete what I’ve started since 2018.

That includes dealing with environmental issues, dealing with economic development, dealing with education, and dealing with our electric bills here in the state of Delaware. And also, impacting a little bit in my district, homelessness and also housing. We’re trying to get more affordable housing, and also working on the food desert that we have.

We need a real grocery store, and we need brick-and-mortar banking in our district.

Well, I’m looking at moving forward with a footprint of our Rose Hill Community Center. The other most important issue in the State of Delaware, and it may be important on the East Coast, is the Port of Wilmington.

As you know, we moved from the Christina River onto the Delaware River, and we’re starting the expansion in Edgemoor, where we’ll have a groundbreaking Sept. 14.

Economic development to me in the State of Delaware is very, very important, because people need jobs so that you can make money to support housing, support your family, support education, and be able to pay for things that you need to live every day, but comfortably.

I’m also finishing up with the dump next to the police station on Route 13. It should be just about done in December or early 2027.

I’m also looking at air quality. I’m still working with Croda, which is over here in my district, trying to make sure they’re following all the environmental rules, federally and locally and at the state.

So I’m trying to finish that, especially looking at economic development myself with Sen. Darius Brown, who is my senator in my district.

And also I want to make sure dealing with those who have been incarcerated or dealt with our judicial system. We want to make sure they use our Clean Slate bills, SB 111 and 112, which are for expungements. We have people that have records that did things when they were 12 or 13 years old or when they were younger and now they’re in their 30s and 40s and can’t get housing, can’t get a job, can’t get a license.

It’s a chance where we can use that to clean up their backgrounds of being incarcerated and/or being arrested.

Well, I was doing this way before Ms. Salaam was thinking about it. I’m the one that’s paying for signage so that more trucks don’t run through Southbridge.

Don’t forget that before there was I-95, I-495, there was Route 13 going through Southbridge.

We do have a problem. The houses in Southbridge and other places are a little older. The foundations are a little shaky. I’m just being real about it. And they do this thing called the Jake braking that makes a loud noise. I know exactly what Ms. Salaam and others on the Route 9 Corridor mean about that noise.

 And it’s about enforcement, and it’s about working together with these trucking companies that have been here for generations.

Today, a lot of issues have been circulating around justice reform. We know that Delaware’s Law Enforcement Officer Bill of Rights (LEOBOR) has come up recently in Wilmington following the June 24 officer-involved shooting of Kadir Skinner. Many residents, advocates, and city council members have been calling for reform of LEOBOR, as a result of the shooting.

I’m curious, do you think further changes need to be made to LEOBOR today, and if so, what specifically?

Well, that’s a very good question. We need to work together with all the different advocate groups that are out there. First of all, you need to know the history of LEOBOR. Most of them don’t.

There’s a history to it, and it’s a shame that they don’t. They need to do my three Rs: read, research, and then respond. LEOBOR, at the end of the day, was for police officers and other police officers. And a lot of these advocates when I first got here, they tried to do that and get some reforms.

In my task force I had 92 people and four subcommittees. And you can still go to delaware.gov and look how it worked out. We passed nine pieces of legislation, including body-worn cameras, choke holds bans, and prohibitions on taking pictures of juvenile defendants.

We had one subcommittee that did work on LEOBOR, and it didn’t make it over the hump. But we did some things that other states around us recognized. We go to the National Black State Legislators Conference, where all of us meet together yearly, and they praised Delaware for passing nine pieces of legislation of police reform.

At the end of the day, what some advocates are trying to do is reshape qualified immunity, which means that if something bad happens and you go through the due process of the judicial system, you could be personally liable.

If you take that protections from officers, then who is next? Will you be able to take qualified immunity from judges or teachers?

And I just want say I don’t know any police officer who wants to work with a dirty police officer. And I’m on the POST Commission, where I decertify and certify police officers.

Well, I don’t think we should be doing anything until the due process is over, on both sides. It’s unfortunate this happened in our state of Delaware. We’ve had other shootings in the state of Delaware, and I think that there’s people that want to look at everything, because you can do things much better.

And I don’t care what color you are or who you are or where you come from, it’s something that we need to work on and look at after the due process is over. Because there’s a lot of identities that you have to look at. You’ve got to look at the Department of Justice and what they do. You’ve got to look at the Office of Defense Services.

There’s a process. And then at the end of that process, if it’s not right, it’s not correct, and there’s a injustice, that’s when we need to put our foot down. We can’t do it before it, because we don’t know what’s gonna happen or how it ends up.

I don’t know her platform or anything like that. I don’t know if she’s ever been to a police citizens police academy to learn how we work. That’s one thing I would never do, is tell somebody what they’re doing if I’ve never been there to know how they do it.

We just can’t talk about legislation, we have to know how you’ll govern. And I think I do a pretty good job since 2018 in the 16th District.

One thing I want the people in the 16th District to understand what is going on with the marijuana right now, and these distribution centers and the places up and down our cities, and in our counties, that, we keep a good eye on what’s going on. That’s one thing.

I need to make sure that we pay attention to our Department of Education, because we’re reading on a third-grade level. And really get involved with our school boards and find out what our children are doing in these schools, and make a good plan, have a great solution on why we’re reading on a third-grade level in the United States.

The other important thing, I wanna make sure that we pay attention to the Port of Wilmington. We’re trying to grow it and step up to what’s going on today in logistics, and getting the Port of Wilmington done and up and running.

And people want to see a safe Route 9. And our numbers in policing and in enforcement, and also our numbers are down in police complaints, internal affairs. No one looks at that. The ones we had when I came in were very high. Through the state police, county police, Wilmington police, New Castle City and DRBA, our numbers are down.

I decided to run because knowing that Rep. Cooke’s been there for a long time and there’s a lot of communities in the district. There is a lot of need for elected officials to be active in those communities.

And through my experience prior to me announcing running, I have not had the opportunity to glean off the benefit of having an elected official sharing the responsibilities or leading within the communities.

So I decided I’m going to get up and do that.

I spent 28 years at ChristianaCare, so I had a very strong background in healthcare, and I was able to take those skill sets and move on in my career.

I also always wanted to help people, so that led me to obtain a degree in human services, drug and alcohol counseling, and I did it on an outpatient/inpatient level. And then I was able to retire and then start my own nonprofit, Positive Thinking, Positive Change, and we believed in helping people as well.

One is feeding people. So I had the skill set to reach out to the community. I understand the needs of the community, and I’m willing to be able to share my skill set to help edify the people, the constituents in the community.

One of my bigger topics is the emissions from the tractor-trailer traffic and the chemical companies that are within the district. So I wanna get down there and begin to do some legislation work on accountability.

We don’t have to fight these companies, but just have to have some accountability and a working relationship where we can do things to help the community.

The constituents in District 16 have a very high rate of illnesses, cancer, diabetes, and so forth and so on. So my biggest goal is to get down there and to start to build relationships where we can build legislation to be able to help the people in that district.

Mandatory notification laws. I am working with two nonprofits as we speak right now, WILMAPCO with Bill Swiatek and I’m working with Jeffrey Richardson with the Delaware Community Benefits Agreement Coalition, and these are two organizations that are helping me organize to fight for stronger mandates from these companies.

Not to twist their arm or force their hand at anything, but have a working collaborative relationship where they can get their job done, but yet we can live healthy in the community.

Well, again, create some type of incentives because I don’t wanna take away from the corner stores that are there.

But what I would like to see is accessibility to fresh fruits and vegetables because in our community, we do not have that access. We may get a banana or so.

But I would like to see local farmers bring their product in and be able to make that available to the communities, not just in Southbridge, but the whole Route 9 corridor.

Yes. I’m so excited because at Positive Thinking Positive Change, we just believe in helping people change their thinking so that their behaviors change. And what I did, was I came up with about five different programs that would help one to change.

One would be to feed people, because you cannot get anybody to do anything if their bellies are screaming. So we realized that we had to feed people. And initially, we went out, to feed homeless people but when we got out there, we realized that homeless people weren’t the only people who were hungry, so we feed hungry people.

With homelessness, we need more shelter beds for these people. So that would be my fight to get more shelter beds.

With affordable housing, we wanna look at that. I hear two numbers: affordable housing for those who have 60% of their income, and then there’s for those who have 30% of the income.

So whatever direction we go in, we need to make sure that we have housing that is affordable for whomever. And we know that the minimum wage is where it’s at, so how can we in the state of Delaware be a viable state with minimum wages so that people can not only pay their rent but pay their electric and buy food, childcare, and transportation?

So that’s my fight.

I see the need to connect with the real issues of the people, or the real issues with a group of people who may feel that they’re not relatable to.

So I like their mission. I am a part of that work, and it speaks right to who I am and where I would like to be and how I want to do my work.

Public safety is a much-needed concern of mine at this point after all we have been through here in the city of Wilmington.

I may not have the police background, and I don’t believe I need that for public safety. Working with Haneef and a few others, I understand that there still is a need for police accountability and transparency. There’s a need for that.

And I just stand firm that we have to have law that says that just because you are a police officer, you can’t do anything you want to. Now I get it. They need to be equipped to handle whatever circumstances that arise in their workload.

However, they’re still human beings as well, and we don’t deserve to be treated as though we’re not human. And all I’m asking for is that there be accountability and not excessive force.

I wanna keep the focus on myself. The difference is that I’m bringing a whole different spin because I’m talking more for the people. I’m out there in the community. I hear what the people are saying, and they’re not talking about police officers protecting them.

They’re not doing that. They’re talking about how they are treated by police officers. I’m out in the community listening to people, and these people don’t even have a voice. They’re not even engaged with the political piece.

That’s my experience. So I just believe that my role is to engage the people, empower them to have voice, hear their voice, listen to their voice, and take their voice down to Dover.

I want them to understand that I am one of integrity. I’m very upfront. I’m honest. There’s no behind-the-scene moves from me. What I say I’m gonna do is what I’m gonna do. I’m accountable for what I do.

I understand the needs because I’ve had needs one time or another and had to reach those particular services and people to get those needs met, and it didn’t make me any less of a human being.

We need to hold elected officials responsible. Once I win, I’m going to make sure that whatever I said I was gonna do, I’m gonna do; and then there will be a opportunity to remove me if I don’t do what I’m supposed to do.