LAKEPORT, Calif. – The county’s sheriff has become embroiled in a new dispute after locking the Lakeport Police Department out of a county law enforcement records system, a move that it’s alleged could compromise public safety.
Lakeport Police Chief Brad Rasmussen said he and his staff were locked out of the county’s Records Information Management System, or RIMS, by Sheriff Frank Rivero without warning, discovering it on Tuesday afternoon.
Then, on Wednesday, Rivero followed up by accusing the Lakeport Police Department of misusing the system after having initially told Rasmussen that it was part of an auditing issue.
“We don’t want to play into the sheriff’s games and antics, and this is exactly what I expected from him,” Rasmussen said.
Lake County Probation Chief Rob Howe also reported that his agency was locked out of the system on Tuesday.
Rasmussen said the city of Lakeport has asked the Board of Supervisors to take immediate action to deal with the situation that has resulted from Rivero’s unilateral decision, which Rasmussen said is jeopardizing his officers’ safety and that of the public.
A letter asking for the action, signed by Lakeport Mayor Tom Engstrom – the city’s retired police chief – was delivered to the Board of Supervisors late Wednesday afternoon, Rasmussen said.
The contract for the system is between the county of Lake, not the sheriff’s office, and Sun Ridge Systems Inc., the software’s developer, according to the contract, which Lake County News obtained from the county administration. The Board of Supervisors approved purchasing the system in June of 2002; the initial expenditure was $213,197, with annual expenditures of $28,830, according to county documents.
County Internet Technology Director Shane French said the sheriff’s office controls who has access and handles all of the permission issues, and his department offers technical support. He said nobody had directed him or his staff to lock anyone out, as they don’t have the ability.
It’s not the first time Rivero has locked another agency out of RIMS, the security of which Rivero claims he is tightening up in order to protect law enforcement records.
District Attorney Don Anderson said his staff was locked out in April 2011, and despite reaching a formal contract with Rivero the access still has not been restored.
“It’s hurt a lot of investigations,” said Anderson.
Information and safety
Rasmussen said his department relies on RIMS records for its everyday operations. The records include daily police logs generated for local media, public records act requests, statistics for grants writing, booking records, sex registrant compliance history and calls for service statistics, which include the officer’s response time, nature of call and action taken by the officer.
In addition to those records, the police department relies on Computer Aided Dispatch logs to submit cases to the District Attorney’s Office for filing, Rasmussen said.
In a press release issued by his office Wednesday afternoon, Rivero said his agency and the Lakeport Police Department maintain separate RIMS systems. “It is unnecessary for the Lakeport Police Department to have access to the Lake County Sheriff’s Office criminal information system, when they have their own system that the Sheriff’s Office does not have nor wants access to.”
However, according to several local law enforcement chiefs, the sheriff’s RIMS system has been used cooperatively by their agencies since the sheriff’s office purchased the system in 2002 as a way of sharing information.
Anderson said the sharing of information between local law enforcement agencies “is one of the greatest tools we’ve got.”
The situation between Rivero and Rasmussen continued to escalate on Wednesday, after Rasmussen issued a press release that raised concerns about officer and public safety.
In a subsequent Wednesday afternoon email exchange, Rivero accused Lakeport Police staff of misusing RIMS, and notified Rasmussen that temporary access that had been granted to the system for Rasmussen, Lt. Jason Ferguson and the agency’s two sergeants would be revoked because he claimed they all were accessing RIMS information to which they were not entitled.
“Had the sheriff had such a problem with this on Tuesday, perhaps he should have made me aware of his concerns at that time and not after I made my safety concerns public,” said Rasmussen. “I asked the sheriff yesterday if any of my people had done anything wrong or done anything inappropriate and his response was, ‘No, absolutely not.’”
If a problem truly had existed, Rasmussen said Rivero should have called him first to discuss actions to take. Instead, access was shut down without warning.
“To shut down my entire system and hamstring my operations is totally ridiculous,” said Rasmussen.
Rivero is now claiming that an audit he carried out since speaking with Rasmussen on Tuesday showed that agency members were inappropriately looking up information, including one officer who allegedly changed information about his wife in the system.
Rasmussen said Rivero is claiming that the Lakeport Police department has had “hundreds” of inappropriate accesses to RIMS in the last four months.
On Wednesday Rasmussen received an envelope full of documents from Rivero, who is alleging that those documents show wrongful use of the system.
Asked how Rivero could know that all of those cases were the result of inappropriate access, Rasmussen responded, “He doesn’t know that.”
In reviewing the cases, Rasmussen said he’s seeing access related to his department’s investigations.
He and his command staff are now going through the records to see if there was any inappropriate conduct. If any is found, they will conduct an investigation and take the necessary action.
The Lakeport Police Department has contracted with the county of Lake for dispatch services for decades; that agreement was in place 24 years ago, when Rasmussen became a Lakeport Police officer.
The most recent version of the contract, from 2005, has the city paying the county $87,600 annually for the services. Because Lakeport Police’s dispatch services go through the sheriff’s office, information on their cases are collected in the sheriff’s system, Rasmussen said.
He said he advised Rivero that cutting off RIMS had the effect of breaching the dispatch contract. During their email exchange, Rivero disagreed, saying the contract doesn’t specifically mention RIMS.
“It’s been a custom and a practice that we’ve had that as part of this service,” Rasmussen said of RIMS, thus his assertion that being locked out is a violation of the dispatch contract.
Rivero ended by telling Rasmussen in an email that the temporary access to the system he granted would end at 8 a.m. Thursday.
“I think it shows the sheriff’s inability to work with other law enforcement for the good of the community,” Rasmussen said.
In the sheriff’s office press release, said to have been written by Lt. Steve Brooks but containing language identical to that contained in the emails to Rasmussen, it was noted that, “By law, Sheriff Rivero has the responsibility of protecting the information contained within the system.”
It stated that Rasmussen had assured Rivero before the audit “that there had not been any unauthorized access by him or his staff.”
The press statement continued, “Due to Sheriff Rivero’s audit findings and the inconsistencies of Chief Rasmussen’s statements, coupled with his failure to take responsibility for his staff,” Rivero ordered the temporarily access granted the administration and supervisors of the Lakeport Police Department canceled as of 8 a.m. Thursday.
Rivero continues to provide Lakeport Police with access to system information through an alternative method, according to the statement.
“That information is not coming to us as he said it would,” Rasmussen countered.
Other agencies affected
The allegations that Rivero has used to justify cutting off Lakeport Police from the RIMS system don’t explain why the sheriff’s office cut off the Lake County Probation Department.
Howe said his employees notified him on Tuesday morning that they couldn’t get into the system. When he called the sheriff’s office, command staff told him he needed to contact Rivero personally, which he did.
“We’ve actually had quite a bit of back and forth,” said Howe, adding that Rivero has offered to allow just one Probation Department staffer access.
On Wednesday Howe and his staff remained without access. Howe said Rivero has not offered a clear justification for his actions. “I’m assuming something happened to prompt this.”
When it comes to explaining the action, “I have asked him several times,” said Howe.
He’s gotten vague answers from Rivero, who has claimed that having to audit all of the Probation Department’s staff’s use of RIMS is too labor intensive and burdensome for him.
Howe, formerly a command staff member with the sheriff’s office, said the system was meant to be shared. He said his staff’s input into the system actually offers more benefit to sheriff’s deputies than vice versa.
“We input current probation information,” he said, including current information, addresses and contacts.
That benefits deputies or officers in the field who make contact with those individuals. “For any officer in the field that requests a RIMS check, they would get probation status,” said Howe.
Now they can’t update that information, and neither can they access the InCustody portion of RIMS, which allows them to draw information from the jail for the kinds of reports that are Probation’s responsibility to provide to the courts, Howe said.
Now, they must either go to the jail or make a call and request the information, rather than being able to pull the information up on the computer. “It has certainly decreased our efficiency,” Howe said.
Clearlake Police Chief Craig Clausen said his agency has its own RIMS system; part of the big selling points of having it was that they would be operating on the same system as the sheriff’s office. “That way we can share.”
Clearlake Police’s RIMS link began having trouble Monday evening. On Tuesday, after hearing about Rasmussen’s issues, he contacted the sheriff’s office, with command staff telling him that he had been disconnected and to call Rivero himself.
Clausen couldn’t get through to Rivero – he said Rivero’s cell phone mailbox was full – but on Wednesday command staff told him he wasn’t locked out, and a tech from Sun Ridge Systems said it appeared to be a technical issue.
In an effort to become paperless, Rivero’s predecessor, Sheriff Rod Mitchell, had put the system in place with the idea of allowing all of the agencies access, Clausen said.
He said the sheriff’s department is the hub, and his department has limited access to the RIMS information, including contact information, probation status and terms of probation, the kinds of information that Howe said his staff updates. It also contains officer safety flags and has a messaging system between departments.
Clausen said restrictions can be written into the program to limit what certain people can see. He said the system also allows local law enforcement to get information from systems outside of the county, including agencies in areas like Cloverdale and Calistoga.
Sheriff’s motives questioned
As for what’s behind Rivero’s issues with RIMS and allied agencies, he’s not raised the matter at the monthly meetings of the allied chiefs, where Clausen said Rivero’s attendance has been “sporadic” at best.
Anderson said Rivero has been to one meeting in the last year and a half. Rivero unsuccessfully asked his fellow law enforcement chiefs for money at a meeting six months ago – during which Anderson said he and Rivero “got into it” – and Rivero hasn’t been back.
Regarding the motivation to lock out Probation, “I could speculate all day long,” said Howe, adding that he wouldn’t do that.
For Anderson, the reasons seem clear cut.
Revenge, he said, is “the only motivation it can be.”
Anderson recounted a series of disagreements he and Rivero had in early 2011 shortly after taking office that he said led to the District Attorney’s Office being locked out of RIMS.
He said Rivero refused to continue the subpoena service the sheriff’s office had done, then stopped sending copies of police reports, and Anderson said Rivero was angry about the decision not to prosecute Clausen for an assault allegation in a case that Rivero tried to resurrect after he came into office.
“He got mad at me over these three issues and cut our office from RIMS,” which happened in April 2011, Anderson said.
Publicly, the matter was blamed on investigators in Anderson’s office who had worked as part-time dispatchers for the sheriff’s office. They had been accessing the system and updating information, and it was working well, said Anderson.
In a report that Rivero hired California Judicial Investigations to complete in 2011, Anderson’s agency – not unlike Rasmussen’s – was accused of having inappropriately accessed RIMS, with four investigators who previously had been sheriff’s employees alleged to have looked at approximately 4,984 records. The report did not specify what constituted a “record.”
Those four individuals were accused of having used their previous sheriff’s office passwords and credentials to access the system, rather than the new ones issued to them when they were hired by the District Attorney’s Office.
Despite those allegations, Rivero and Anderson agreed upon – and signed – an October 2011 memorandum of understanding that authorized limited, read-only access to RIMS by the District Attorney’s Office for the purpose of maintaining the most current contact information on subjects.
However, Rivero has failed to honor that MOU. “Basically, he just lied to us. I don’t think he ever had any intention of allowing us reader access into RIMS when he made this agreement,” Anderson said.
“He’s taken away a great tool in law enforcement,” said Anderson. “It makes it a lot more difficult, not only trying to locate people but trying to investigate crimes.”
Anderson said that it’s common in other counties for agencies to work cooperatively and to share such information systems.
About a month after Rivero and Anderson reached the MOU for RIMS access, Anderson notified Rivero via letter that he was considering a “Brady” determination against him for allegedly lying to investigators about his actions during a nonfatal 2008 shooting. At the time, Rivero was a deputy sheriff who shot at a man with a can of pepper spray, a department policy violation.
This past February, Anderson determined Rivero was a “Brady” officer. The term comes from the 1963 US Supreme Court case Brady v. Maryland, which requires the government release to criminal defendants any potentially exculpatory information, including determinations that officers involved in their cases have credibility issues.
A key witness in Anderson’s investigation was former Deputy Michael Sobieraj, who had been at the shooting scene with Rivero.
Sobieraj, who left the sheriff’s office in early 2011, citing harassing treatment by Rivero, was hired by the Lakeport Police Department last month.
As for what other motivations Rivero may have to block Lakeport Police and Probation, Howe’s assistant chief, Brian Martin, recently declared his intention to run for sheriff, and both men are listed as signatories for the recall effort now under way to remove Rivero from office. Supporters gathered nearly 1,000 signatures last weekend.
Howe said there has been precedent for firing employees for misuse of RIMS.
He was referring to the case in 2010 in which then-Deputy Mike Morshed was alleged to have taken reports from RIMS and posted them online, as Lake County News has reported ( http://bit.ly/12J1792 ). Morshed, a friend of Rivero’s – Rivero suggested at the time that Morshed had been “railroaded” – later was terminated.
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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