LAKEPORT – The 2010 race for the office of Lake County Sheriff has just doubled in size.
Martin McCarthy, 55, and Jack Baxter, 65, both of Lakeport, told Lake County News that they will seek the office this year.
They join a field so far that includes incumbent Rod Mitchell, seeking his fifth term, and Deputy Francisco Rivero.
In response to the news about the men joining the race, Rivero said, “Welcome aboard.”
He added, “I'm grateful that the public has an opportunity to make their decision. The more choices the better.”
Mitchell said he would decline comment at this early stage in the race.
Both Baxter and McCarthy bring extensive law enforcement experience to the race and ideas for how to run the department, which has a $26 million annual budget and more than 100 personnel.
They each criticized Mitchell's administration, saying that they felt it lacked transparency and that better leadership and staff development is needed.
“This race is, in my opinion, about integrity, in addition to the decision making processes that the sheriff has used,” McCarthy said.
Each of the men has taken out papers with the Lake County Registrar of Voters to begin circulating petitions to collect signatures to submit in lieu of filing fees. Declaration of candidacy and nomination papers will be circulated beginning Feb. 16.
Baxter wants to bring new ideas to department
Baxter, a fourth generation California native raised in San Juan Bautista and Hollister, has worked in law enforcement for 38 years.
He retired in 2003 as a sergeant with the San Jose Police Department, an agency with 3,000 personnel. During his career he had a wide variety of assignments, from the Bureau of Field Operations and Special Operations Division to SWAT and a mounted horse unit. He also worked in the department's investigation bureau, working on homicide, robbery, narcotics, sexual assault and special investigations cases.
After his retirement, he and his wife moved to Lakeport in 2004. Baxter has three grown children and four grandchildren. His oldest grandson is a Marine based in Camp Pendleton who is preparing to deploy to Afghanistan.
In retirement, he's remained active as the executive director of the California Robbery Investigators Association, which serves 3,500 members from the western United States and is dedicated to providing professional training through an annual training seminar. He also coordinates the association's robbery intelligence network.
He and Lou Riccardi – a retired San Mateo homicide detective who moved to Lake County and now is a part-time investigator with the Lakeport Police Department, working on the unsolved murder of Barbara LaForge – also worked to find a young woman named Christie Wilson, who disappeared in 2006 in Placer County. The young woman has never been found.
Baxter's educational background includes an associate's degree in police science from Gavilan College, a bachelor's degree in public administration from the University of San Francisco, an AA in Police Science from Gavilan College and postgraduate courses in peer counseling, post traumatic stress disorder and critical incident stress debriefing for emergency service personnel through the Jeffrey Mitchell Institute.
He received his teaching credential from UC Berkeley and the Peace Officer Standards and Training's (POST) Robert Presley Institute of Criminal Investigation, and is a faculty advisor, senior instructor and program coordinator for the Administration of Justice Bureau at San Jose State University where he teaches several times a year.
In addition to his experience, connections and background, Baxter said he has strong leadership skills. His experience in leadership included running patrol units of about 11 officers in the capacity as the San Jose Police Department's most senior sergeant.
He said he enjoyed working in the field and talking to people, and in his role with San Jose Police they practiced community-oriented, team policing, which in part focuses on the community's needs and wants.
Baxter said when he retired the thought of running for office was the furthest thing from his mind. Serving as a board member of San Jose Police Officers Association was the closest thing he got to politics.
Now, however, he wants to enter the race due to his concerns about how the department is being run.
Many of Baxter's concerns arise from recent cases, including the Bismarck Dinius sailboat crash case, and allegations that a sheriff's sergeant used grant funds to pay for helicopter flight training, which he's read about at length on local medias and blogs.
Those issues have led him to conclude that “something is radically wrong” in the department, which he attributes to poor leadership and poor management style.
“I think this department certainly lacks a well-defined chain of command, where each level knows who they're reporting to,” he said.
He said he believes the Lake County Sheriff's Office needs to be reviewed from “top to bottom,” and one of his goals as sheriff would be to develop people to assume leadership positions.
He said he's talked to both Rivero and Mitchell at length. Of his discussion with Mitchell, he said, “We agree on some issues and some other issues we don't.”
Baxter said he's also talked to department members who told him they were afraid of retribution for speaking out. “Whether it's perceived or whether it's real, I don't know,” he said.
He suggested that law enforcement officers need to be problem solvers, who are actively engaged in proactive policing.
Baxter has seen outsiders come into departments and help make important changes.
He said the sheriff's office has evolved to what it is, and they need to be open to change.
“I think new ideas are exactly what's needed,” he said. “You can be in office too long.”
Baxter, at age 65, said he wouldn't expect to serve more than two terms, and would work to develop a successor to eventually seek the office.
McCarthy brings background that includes tribal policing
McCarthy, who first moved to Lake County in 1988, isn't new to sheriff's campaigns. He ran against Mitchell in 1994 in a wide open field of five candidates and no incumbent. Mitchell and Joe Totorica would runoff in November, with Don Anderson, McCarthy and Earl Whitmore out after the June 1994 election.
Since then, he's been approached by former supporters who urged him to run for the office, and after talking with several influential county residents, he decided to join the race.
McCarthy and wife, Judy, live in Lakeport with their son, Brenden, 13. He also has grown children from a previous marriage.
He spends a lot of time in the leadership at the Evangelical Free Church. “That's a big part of my life.”
The McCarthys also are active in the Center for Life Choices in Ukiah, and he coaches youth football and basketball.
Like Baxter, McCarthy criticized Mitchell's decisions, but he said he doesn't think Mitchell himself is a bad person.
He also pointed to perceptions that favoritism – not merit – is how people advance through the agency.
McCarthy has a bachelor of science degree in criminal justice administration from Pacific Union College in Angwin and 25 years in law enforcement. He began as a police officer in Santa Clara in 1980 and eventually moved on to Santa Rosa Police before arriving in 1990 at Clearlake Police, where he was a senior patrol sergeant.
In 1999 he left Clearlake and became a quality control supervisor with L3 Communications in Folsom, and later was a security screener for the Transportation Security Administration in Sacramento for a year before he was hired as a police sergeant with the Hopland Tribal Police Department in 2003.
In 2004, he worked as chief of guards for Sectek/Dyncorp. at Beale Air Force Base, moving on a year later to become assistant director of public safety at University of the Pacific/McGeorge School of Law. In 2007 he was vice president of operations for All Phase Security in West Sacramento.
In November 2007, he was hired as Hopland's tribal police chief, where he served until this past September.
McCarthy said he was able to do some pioneering work in tribal policing, including establishing memorandums of understanding with the Mendocino County Sheriff's Office for booking prisoners and with the Mendocino County District Attorney's Office to allow the department to directly file criminal cases. He also established an MOU with the US Department of Justice for asset forfeiture.
He also recently worked with POST on developing a tribal policing video that was just released, and he spoke at a California Indian Legal Services event in San Diego.
“There were a lot of firsts,” McCarthy said.
Despite those accomplishments, McCarthy was terminated by the tribe this past September, which he said has never happened to him before.
He said his termination resulted over the tribal chairman's perception that he had political loyalties to a previous tribal chair. After McCarthy left, other council members were removed and an injunction was filed.
McCarthy has experience with total quality management, and he said he would use that method to help evaluate the sheriff's department from top to bottom.
If elected, he would start on day one by sitting in the dispatch center to watch calls come in and to begin tracking cases as they moved through the department.
He believes that within 90 days of beginning an administration he could have a plan to revamp the agency. Part of that would include drafting organizational and mission statements, empowering every employee to help people and solve problems, developing a system for continuous feedback and promoting community oriented policing.
“The time has come to give the sheriff's department back to the people,” he said. “For too long you have a sheriff's office that tells you what you need rather than asking you what you want.”
McCarthy said it also would be critical to try to motivate deputies to stay with the agency and not move on, and part of that would include strongly advocating for the 3 percent at 50 Public Employees' Retirement System plan, which the county doesn't currently have for sheriff's personnel.
McCarthy, who is a sailor, joined others from the sailing world in criticizing the sheriff's office for its part in the Dinius case, which he said was “mishandled terribly.”
He stated that there was a fatal incident protocol that was established countywide in the 1990s that came out of a situation in which an off-duty sheriff's deputy was involved in a crash that killed another driver in the city of Clearlake.
McCarthy, an accident reconstructionist, was on the scene and stated that he couldn't take on processing the scene because he knew the deputy involved.
“After that it was developed,” said McCarthy. “They realized they didn't have anything in place for people who knew each other.”
He saw the document and gave input on it, but added, “I don't know what's happened to that.”
People are the agency's greatest asset, and he said the most important positions in the department are the first line supervisors, or sergeants, who can “make or break the organization.”
He said a very important managerial principle he espouses is “no surprises” – if there are performance issues, it's important to let people know immediately.
McCarthy – who said he takes a “buck stops here” approach – suggested that having administrative staff occasionally cover beats is a good way of making sure policies and procedures work.
He said he believes the most important quality for a sheriff is accountability to the people.
“The weakness of mine is not being in the sheriff's department right now,” he said,” but I also believe that to be a benefit.”
Both McCarthy and Baxter say they expect to have Web sites and more information about their campaigns available soon.
McCarthy welcomes people to contact him about his campaign at 707-533-0654.
E-mail Elizabeth Larson at
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