LAKEPORT, Calif. – Just before a Tuesday morning Board of Supervisors discussion was set to begin on whether or not to take a no confidence vote on the county's sheriff and seek his resignation, a newly formed citizens committee served the sheriff with a notice that a recall effort was getting under way.
Sheriff Frank Rivero was served with the notice by a group that is calling itself the Committee to Recall Rivero and Restore Integrity, according to its spokesman, retired Lake County Sheriff's Sgt. Chris Rivera.
After nearly three hours of discussion and public input, the board voted unanimously that it had no confidence in Rivero's leadership of the sheriff's office and that it would seek his resignation.
Afterward, Rivero refused to respond to a Lake County News reporter's request for reaction to the supervisors' vote.
Following the meeting, Rivera, who served 27 years with the sheriff's office and retired after Rivero came into office, said signature gathering for the recall effort is set to begin.
He outlined the reasons for seeking the sheriff's recall, noting that many of the committee members included people who once had supported the sheriff. The full committee membership has not yet been released.
Rivera said that the sheriff's integrity is an issue as is a string of broken promises, compounded by District Attorney Don Anderson's finding in February that Rivero lied during a 2008 nonfatal shooting while Rivero was working as a deputy sheriff. Rivera said the shooting – involving a man who was holding a can of pepper spray, not a lethal weapon – was unjustified.
“We feel it's actually our duty to initiate this recall,” said Rivera.
He said the committee believes Rivero has dishonored the county's citizens, and hurt the credibility of the sheriff's office through unethical actions and decisions.
According to the committee, Rivero tried to withhold from the public his false testimony about the shooting.
Anderson's finding that Rivero lied resulted in Rivero being placed on a list of “Brady” officers, under the 1963 US Supreme Court decision Brady v. Maryland, which requires prosecutors to divulge to defendants in criminal cases any exculpatory evidence.
Rivero's Brady finding makes him the first known sheriff in California to have had such a finding. Ron Cottingham, president of the Peace Officers Research Association of California, or PORAC, told Lake County News in a previous interview that the association is not aware of any sheriff or police chief in California ever having received a Brady determination before.
The Brady finding, according to Rivera and the committee, is a key motivating factor for the recall.
Rivera said the Brady finding nullified the public trust necessary for Rivero to lead the sheriff's department and put the taxpayers of the county on the hook for costly lawsuits, such as the one Rivero now has against Anderson over the Brady matter.
Another factor, according to Rivera, is that the sheriff has alienated himself from every law enforcement agency in the county with his “unethical and erratic behavior and lack of integrity.”
“The committee believes Rivero should do the honorable thing and resign,” Rivera said, adding that the citizens can't afford a sheriff with a demonstrable record of dishonesty.
Rivero has fired reserves, caused many experienced officers to leave because of his “erratic” behavior, lost the control of the Office of Emergency Services – which Rivera had coordinated during his time with the agency and said was a “terrible loss” for the sheriff's office – and failed to follow up on his campaign promise to create a citizens advisory board intended to make the department more transparent.
Rivera said the committee believes Rivero has spent so much time dealing with what he believed to be corruption in county government – an issue he raised at the board meeting on Tuesday – that he has failed to actually fulfill the responsibilities of the job of sheriff.
“We want to bring this recall to the public so that they can certainly make a choice,” said Rivera.
Present for the Tuesday discussion was retired Lake County Sheriff Ray Benevedes, who Rivera said had hired him back when he first arrived in Lake County from Humboldt County, where he had been a reserve deputy for two years.
After Benevedes left office, he was followed by Sheriff James Wright, who served one term. Early in that term, according to Rivera, the Lake County Deputy Sheriff's Association gave Wright a no confidence vote. Wright would be succeeded by Rod Mitchell, who Rivero defeated in November 2010.
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