LAKE COUNTY, Calif. – The second act of the race to become Lake County's sheriff – now in its final weeks – has been marked by a series of new allegations involving the two men seeking to be the county's top cop.
Deputy Francisco Rivero, 51, and incumbent Sheriff Rod Mitchell, 52, are racing toward Nov. 2, each hoping to start 2011 as the sheriff of Lake County.
Rivero was the top vote-getter in the June 8 primary, coming in with 5,642 votes, or 38.4 percent of the vote, followed by Mitchell, seeking his fifth term, with 5,078 votes, or 34.3 percent. Jack Baxter came in third, with 4,024 votes, or 27.2 percent of the vote.
The fall portion of the race has so far been a heated one.
Compared to the months leading up to the June 8 primary, it was a fairly quiet summer for candidates in the county's spotlight races for the sheriff's and district attorney's posts.
Throughout the summer candidates were busy with appearances at local parades and events, but waited until August to begin the fall kickoff to their campaigns, with more signs going up around the county and debates planned for the months before the Nov. 2 election.
However, in the words of J.R.R. Tolkien, that relative calm appeared to have been “the deep breath before the plunge,” at least in the sheriff's race, where the quiet gave way earlier this month to a new series of allegations between Mitchell's and Rivero's camps.
A group identifying itself as the “Family and Friends of the Lake County Sheriff’s Deputies and Correctional Officers” took out a newspaper ad on Sept. 4 that stated Rivero lacks the law enforcement experience to be sheriff and called attention to information about Rivero's past that includes three arrests while he was a young man living in Florida.
They also took Rivero to task for a lack of experience – only 485 days as an active deputy. Rivero said he has been off variously on medical leave for injuries and this year has taken unpaid personal leave in order to conduct his campaign.
“Aside from inexperience, we simply do not trust Francisco Rivero and in our opinion, neither should you,” the ad stated.
It went on to give brief details of the three arrests, which the ad said are “readily available” from Florida law enforcement.
“What they put out in the ad makes it sound like I'm a convicted felon,” Rivero told Lake County News.
In turn, Rivero's supporters have accused the group behind the ad of dirty politics, an accusation that has gone both ways through the course of the campaign.
Those developments in the campaign have led to the fall leg of the race starting to resemble the race before the primary. Anonymous attacks via e-mail, blogs and phone calls typified that earlier portion of the race and impacted many people directly, and indirectly, connected to the campaign – from deputies and their families to the candidates, to local business people receiving threats for posting signs.
Rivero pointed out that Bob Jordan, listed on campaign documents filed with the Lake County Registrar of Voters as a leader of the group that paid for the ad, was the person who did the background investigation on him when he was being hired by the sheriff's office. He alleged that it was Jordan that disclosed his personal information.
He added that Jordan told him he had one of the cleanest backgrounds he'd seen.
Rivero also alleged that Mitchell had the information and disclosed it.
But Albert League, a former sheriff's deputy who today runs an out-of-county security business with another former deputy, Stacy Barker, said he's the one who wrote the ad, and that neither Jordan nor Mitchell inappropriately disclosed the information it contained.
“I wanted an ad, I thought it was the way this thing should go out,” he said.
League, who was in Florida in May for his own business, also did the footwork to look up Rivero's arrest records, and even came away with copies of microfilm records, which he provided to Lake County News. He said that he paid for the trip, not the sheriff or the county.
The fact that there are arrests isn't the issue, said League, who also has done backgrounds on other law enforcement officers over the years.
Rather, he said he and others are concerned that Rivero is not being forthright about the circumstances of his arrests, and that he's changing his story.
That's a stance shared by Mitchell. “Old arrests are not nearly as important as new dishonest statements,” he said, adding that Rivero's version of events is not consistent with what the police reports say.
Rivero counters that he hasn't changed his story.
On Sept. 11 Rivero responded with a newspaper ad of his own. He didn't go into detail about the arrests, instead calling for a focus on the issues.
As well, he has now received the official endorsement of Baxter, who Rivero said he wants to enlist as his undersheriff should he win.
“What I want is the best person possible for the job,” Rivero said. “An undersheriff is necessary to complete the proper chain of command.”
Both men deny that Baxter has been formally offered the job, which doesn't currently exist – and hasn't for close to two decades.
In his written endorsement of Rivero, Baxter said Rivero “has demonstrated a willingness to learn and adopt new ideas.”
He added, “I see his goals as both reasonable and attainable and I feel with the help of the community his plans can easily be implemented.”
Rivero's touting of Baxter for undersheriff nearly led to a write-in candidacy, with retired sheriff's Sgt. Kip Ringen, 57, looking at jumping into the race over the summer.
A longtime and severe critic of Mitchell's, Ringen has nonetheless decided to throw his support to Mitchell over what he says are concerns about what Rivero intends to do to the sheriff's office. Ringen also claimed that Rivero had offered him the undersheriff's job, which Rivero denied.
Ringen sat alongside Rivero in a June 2009 interview – aired the following November – with Bay Area TV reporter Dan Noyes. In that interview, Ringen, Rivero and former sheriff's Deputy Brian Lande criticized Mitchell's administration.
Today, Ringen denies that there is the rampant racism that the report alleged. “I won't deny there's discrimination. It's not department-wide. It's only a couple of guys.”
Ringen, who said Rivero never mentioned to him his past arrest record, explained that his support for Rivero evaporated on July 14, when he received a phone call from an attorney with the law firm Morrison & Foerster.
According to Ringen, the attorney told him the firm needed to speak to him about a discrimination case they were filing on Rivero's behalf. “We're preparing Frank's case in the event he loses the sheriff's race,” Ringen recalled the woman saying.
Rivero said no such suit is in the works, but acknowledged that the firm is his general counsel as he runs for sheriff. He said he believes he needs such legal advice because he's had multiple internal affairs investigations filed against him during the race.
“They are monitoring the events that are happening to protect my interests,” he said. “I have some very deep concerns about the way this campaign is heading.”
Baxter has come to Rivero's defense over the issues raised regarding his previous arrests, calling it nothing more than “dirty politics.”
Denying that the incidents were actual arrests, Baxter said they didn't disqualify Rivero from being hired in either San Francisco or Lake County.
“He told me that he had told both background investigators about it,” Baxter said.
Baxter added that if a person isn't charged with a crime, an arrest can't be held against them.
Rivero said he doesn't plan to retaliate.
“We're either going to win this thing on the issues or the people of Lake County will send me packing,” at which point, he said, he'll do something different, “because that's what God has in store for me.”
He said he didn't want to get into further mudslinging.
“We have to do better with this office,” he said. “It's time to shine that star back up.”
The facts behind the allegations
In recent weeks the issues raised in the ad about Rivero's arrests have continued to surface in letters and campaign debates.
Rivero said he has not tried to hide the information and hasn't sought to have it expunged, as he could legally do.
“This is part of who I am and I'm not embarrassed about it and I don't have any issues with it,” he said.
He called the arrests “unnecessary detections.”
Although he said he isn't alleging he was arrested in those instances because of being Cuban, he pointed out it was the late 1970s deep in the Southern U.S.
“Generally speaking, the law enforcement back in those days was much different than it is today in most parts of the U.S.,” he said.
Rivero also emphasized that the arrests, which occurred several years prior to his entry into law enforcement, were disclosed to the San Francisco Police Department in his background before he worked as an officer there from 1984 to 1990.
He said they also were revealed to background investigators with the Lake County Sheriff's Office and the California Department of Consumer Affairs' Cemetery and Funeral Bureau, which has licensed Rivero as a funeral director.
Rivero said he further disclosed them to the US Coast Guard, which has granted him three captain's licenses and a merchant mariner document, all due for renewal in October, according to the US Coast Guard's online credential check.
Rivero's identifying information on those records matches the vital statistics on the arrest records, including the last four numbers of the Social Security number listed on the arrests, which some have suggested were not his and actually belonged to another person named Francisco Rivero.
The Department of Homeland Security's application for the licenses does not ask about arrests, but does ask about court convictions beyond minor traffic violations, use of “a dangerous drug” – including marijuana – and any revocation of Coast Guard licenses or documents.
In addition to those disclosures, “I have spoken on the campaign trail to people about my having been subjected to what I feel was unnecessary detentions during my childhood and growing up in Florida,” he said.
According to court records, Rivero was arrested on Aug. 17, 1978, at age 19, by the Miami-Dade Police Department for possession of dangerous drugs. Records obtained from the Miami-Dade County Clerk's Office show two initial felony charges for possession of barbiturates with intent to distribute and possession of marijuana.
A microfilm copy of the arrest file said that just after 2 a.m. two officers saw a car with an open door and a dome light on, with a subject – alleged to be Rivero – going through the glove box. They asked him to get out of the car.
Once out of the car they spotted a bulge in the waist of his pants, and upon examination the bulge was allegedly two packages – one of suspected Quaaludes, 49 in all, and the other a bag of what they believed to be marijuana. He was arrested and transported to Miami-Dade Police Department where he was booked. The report also noted that the car belonged to Rivero's cousin.
Rivero said the barbiturates that were found had nothing to do with him.
He said the man who owned the car was his first wife's cousin, and that the man had parked the vehicle outside of Rivero's home with the windows down.
Rivero said two cops pulled up in front of the house and began going through the car.
“I walked out of my house and they hooked me up,” he said.
He told them it wasn't his car but his wife's cousin wouldn't come out of the house. Later, his wife took the cousin to the police station where he admitted it was his car. Rivero said a charge later was made against the car's owner.
The case was closed May 4, 1979, with the file noting “nolle pros,” the shorthand for the Latin term “nolle prosequi,” meaning “unwilling to pursue.”
However, the disposition also noted “comp PTI,” which in Florida relates to completing a “pretrial intervention,” which can take the form of community services and/or a class and drug testing.
Rivero denies that he ever did a class or that there was any pretrial intervention. He said his father, who had been an attorney in Cuba, worked to help get the charges dropped by talking to the district attorney.
The second arrest for loitering and prowling took place on Sept. 23, 1979, when Rivero was 20. The arrest was for a municipal ordinance violation – which was an infraction, not a misdemeanor – and also occurred in the Miami-Dade Police Department's jurisdiction.
A brief description from the case file says that officers were dispatched to a reported breaking and entering in progress in the 1000 block of Meridian Avenue at 5:20 a.m. The area is located in the middle of the city, several blocks distant from either beach.
Upon their arrival in the area the officers reported encountering Rivero coming out of the alley at 11th and Meridian, and noted “subject had no shirt, was sweating.”
The report stated, “When approached and asked for ID and reason for being in area, subject stated he was looking for his girlfriend but conflicted his statement by stating later his girl lives at 12th and Penn(sylvania) Avenue,” which a map of Miami shows is in the opposite direction.
The report noted that Rivero was arrested due to the time of morning and his alleged conflicting statements.
Arrested at the same time but in another area were three other men who were in a vehicle, who were noted in the same arrest report. Police discovered at that time a pack of gloves and several tools that were found “not in conjunction with any subjects (sic) profession.”
Of the three other individuals – Jose Febles, Osualdo Fernandez and Michael Wight – only Wight's name shows up in court records. He also was charged with loitering and prowling but has case was closed the day after the arrest.
Rivero said he was working as a dishwasher at a Miami restaurant at the time and was walking home in the early morning hours, stopping at a friend's house along the way.
While he was walking home he said the police drove up in a “paddy wagon,” and picked him up, placing him inside with several others who were then driven around for four to five hours before being taken to the station, written tickets and released.
Court records showed a trial was ordered in the case but the matter eventually was closed on Jan. 28, 1980, with a report on the case set for three months later. Rivero was given 90 days probation, with community service to be done at the Salvation Army, and a $525 fine, $400 of which was suspended.
He said he recalled paying a $50 fine at the time, but based on the last assessment of the case fine record on March 21, 1999, the records showed he owed $125. Rivero said he wasn't aware of that fine until it was just pointed out to him. He said he would have expected a warrant to have been issued and to have surfaced during his background check. Neither has it emerged on his credit ratings, he added.
The last arrest, on July 9, 1980, when Rivero was 21, occurred in Osceola County, Florida, when he was riding with his friend, Juan Carlos Alonso, on the Florida State Turnpike.
Amy Envall, a spokesperson and general counsel for the Osceola County clerk of the court, retrieved the 1980 files on both Rivero and Alonso at Lake County News' request.
“This file is very sparse,” Envall said of Rivero's file.
Envall said the file explained that Rivero was a passenger in a 1980 Jaguar when a state trooper stopped the vehicle for a traffic violation on the Florida Turnpike at mile post 185.
When the trooper called in a registration check, the vehicle came up as stolen, the file said.
Rivero, who told the trooper that Alonso had picked him up at his home in Miami, “said he did not know the vehicle was stolen” and he was getting a ride to California, according to the statements in the file.
In reviewing the file, Envall said the Florida assistant attorney filed a “no info” on the case because there was insufficient evidence to prosecute Rivero, who she said appears to have been arrested by association.
Alonso's file shows he also was not prosecuted in the case. He told the trooper that he got the car from someone named Mario.
Rivero said he recalls few details of the 30-year-old incident. He said he remembers going to Disney World – Osceola County is located to the southwest of the resort and is several counties north of Miami– and that the car had belonged to Alonso's girlfriend. He believes it was registered to the girlfriend's father.
When they were pulled over, Rivero said Alonso couldn't produce the registration, so they were taken to a station. The girlfriend's father “had to be contacted before this was cleared up,” Rivero said.
Court records show the case was dismissed just under two weeks later, on July 22, 1980.
Rivero's law enforcement career would begin several years later, after he paid a visit to his sister, Dr. Maria Rivero, who had moved to the West Coast to pursue a medical career.
Dr. Rivero, who specializes in internal medicine and geriatrics, worked for many years at Laguna Honda Hospital & Rehabilitation Center in San Francisco and, like her brother, has been featured in stories done in recent years by Bay Area TV reporter Dan Noyes. Dr. Rivero took the hospital to task for allegedly using a patient gift fund for gourmet meals as well as trips for staff.
When Francisco Rivero came to visit his sister in the 1980s, he said he saw an ad for the police academy in the San Francisco Chronicle that said, “Join the force behind the star.”
“I wanted to be a police officer,” he said. “I stayed.”
Following the police academy he began work as a San Francisco Police officer in 1984, remaining there until 1990, when he left to pursue a mortuary business he founded, Pacific Interment Service.
He held a contract with the city of San Francisco to offer mortuary services for the indigent dead, and when the city attempted to cancel that contract in 1993 he successfully sued and won a $1.7 million settlement for breach of contract as well as allegations of racism, retaliation and interference with his First Amendment rights, as Lake County News has reported. He said in a Monday debate that he spent $1.5 million to litigate the case.
In 2001, he purchased a home in Middletown, and in May 2007 was hired as a deputy sheriff by the Lake County Sheriff's Office, he said in a previous interview.
Mitchell said he finds the conflicting statements noted in the arrest record a major concern. “That's what everything here boils down to,” along with what he said is Rivero's unwillingness to accept responsibility for his actions.
“The big issue is, he's got a history of making statements that are either inconsistent or blatant lies,” Mitchell said.
Someone with an arrest record from many years ago would not be disqualified in the hiring process, although a felony conviction would be a disqualification, as would any lies about past history, said Mitchell.
Rivero's position with the San Francisco Police Department was the last law enforcement job he held before being hired as a deputy in Lake County in 2007. Mitchell said his background investigators typically don't go and look at old backgrounds – especially not that far back – and that background investigators collect information based on computerized records. Although Rivero's arrest record can be found online, it didn't come up at the time of his hire.
Mitchell said he's confident no other member of his department has a similar arrest record.
“The clamor of it being dated material would be understandable if it wasn't for his current association and willingness to accept campaign contributions from someone under indictment,” said Mitchell, referring to Tom Carter of Upper Lake, arrested by federal officials in August 2009 on marijuana charges and arrested again earlier this month, as Lake County News has reported.
Mitchell said he would be troubled by any member of his department having such an association.
Rivero said he believes Carter is a good man and that he's innocent until proven guilty in the case, which goes back to court next January.
Mitchell shot back that Rivero doesn't extend the same belief about being innocent until proven guilty to fellow deputies, who he accused of racial profiling.
Rivero said he's blamed deputies for things that he now believes had to do with bad leadership or no management.
“And for that I am sorry,” he said.
There appear to be an attempt to mend fences between Rivero and the deputies, as he's said to be scheduled to meet with the deputy sheriff's association in October.
As to the lasting impact of the political ad and the allegations it made, Rivero said he'll know for sure on Nov. 3.
“I believe that, in the end, the truth will come out,” he said.
E-mail Elizabeth Larson at
How to resolve AdBlock issue? 
