LAKE COUNTY, Calif. – On Friday the county’s sheriff filed a response to the notice served to him last week by a group that plans to circulate a petition in an effort to recall him from office.
Sheriff Frank Rivero filed the response with the Lake County Registrar of Voters Office within the seven day time period, as required by California election code.
“Based solely on inaccuracies and mistruths, this recall petition unjustly nullifies the will of the people and your vote to end corruption. It is as reckless and faulty as the District Attorney’s deceptive ‘Brady’ process,” Rivero states in the opening paragraph, referring to the process in which it was determined that he had lied about a 2008 shooting.
On March 22, the Committee to Recall Rivero and Restore Integrity served him with the notice, signed by 39 people.
The notice of the recall effort came the same week as Rivero received a unanimous no confidence vote from the Board of Supervisors, which also sent Rivero a letter asking for his resignation. He refused.
The notice of intention to circulate the recall petition accused Rivero of conducting himself in an unethical manner, cited his failure to form a citizens oversight committee or meet with the public as promised, and stated that he alienated every law enforcement agency in the county as well as the entire Board of Supervisors “with your lack of accountability and your failed leadership.”
The notice also made several mentions of District Attorney Don Anderson’s findings that Rivero had lied about his actions in a February 2008 nonfatal shooting.
Rivero, then working as a sheriff’s deputy, had shot at a man holding pepper spray during a welfare check. The man was unhurt.
Shooting at a person holding pepper spray was a violation of department policy, and Rivero allegedly changed his version of events during different statements to investigators.
When new evidence was brought forward to Anderson in 2011, not long after he took office, he began a nearly two-year-long investigation into the matter under the auspices of the 1963 US Supreme Court case Brady v. Maryland.
That case requires that prosecutors disclose to defendants in criminal cases any evidence that could clear them, including credibility issues of peace officers involved in their cases.
In February, Anderson concluded that Rivero had lied about the shooting and placed him on a “Brady” list of officers with credibility issues.
In a court appearance earlier this month, Rivero attempted to get a restraining order against Anderson to prevent disclosure of the finding. Instead, retired Butte County Judge William Lamb ordered that the documents be unsealed and made open to the public.
Attempting to withhold that information from the public was another of the points cited by the recall committee.
In his response, Rivero said that in 2008 a “thorough internal affairs investigation” determined his actions were “appropriate,” “justified” and within department policy.
Anderson’s investigation, said Rivero, “is politically motivated, violates due process, and has serious negative implications for law enforcement. A lawsuit underway will ultimately expose those false allegations and the political corruption upon which they are based.”
Former Sheriff Rod Mitchell confirmed during a 2010 interview that the sheriff’s office’s internal affairs investigation cleared Rivero.
However, a 2010 report by then-District Attorney Jon Hopkins noted that Rivero “does somewhat contradict himself relating to whether he could see the object in the subject’s hand,” and explained that Rivero told a sergeant that the subject was holding a can of pepper spray, while he later tells a detective that he could not tell what was in the man’s hand.
Anderson’s findings in Rivero’s Brady investigation cited the discrepancies Hopkins noted in his report.
In his response to the recall petition notice, Rivero did not answer all of the points raised by the recall committee, particularly the allegation that he failed to form the citizens oversight committee.
In an apparent response to the allegations of failed leadership and lack of ethics, Rivero stated that under his leadership the sheriff’s office has “assembled a professional and superior staff equal to any in the U.S. My administration performs at the highest level of ethics and accountability. Deputies are preventing and solving crime at a record rate.”
Rivero’s other claims in his response include that he returned more than $1 million to the county’s general fund in his first year, reinstated a drug task force, and has made significant progress reducing drugs and street crimes.
He said the school patrol program is working and the jail has been “improved from neglect and disrepair to a functional detention facility.”
He added, “Complaints are rare and thoroughly investigated.”
Rivero had, during his campaign for sheriff, said he would reinstate the drug task force that he claimed had been discontinued, a statement that local law enforcement officials said at that time was inaccurate.
The California Department of Justice Bureau of Narcotics Enforcement withdrew from the local task force in 2009 citing budget issues but local law enforcement agencies – including the California Highway Patrol, Lake County Sheriff’s Office, and the Clearlake and Lakeport police departments – said they were continuing to keep full-time staff assigned to drug enforcement efforts.
A school resource officer recently had been assigned to Kelseyville Unified School District after meetings with sheriff’s command staff and district officials. The school resource officer at Lower Lake High School is supplied by the Clearlake Police Department.
Next steps in the recall process include publishing the notice of intention to circulate the petition in a local newspaper of general circulation and approval of the signature petition forms.
Once those steps are finalized, signature gathering can begin.
The recall proponents will have 120 days to gather the necessary 7,026 signatures to place Rivero’s recall on the ballot, according to the Lake County Registrar of Voters Office.
Email Elizabeth Larson at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. . Follow her on Twitter, @ERLarson, or Lake County News, @LakeCoNews.
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