LAKEPORT, Calif. – As a recall of the county's sheriff gets under way, a law enforcement veteran came forward on Sunday to announce he would seek the sheriff's job in the recall election.
Brian Martin, a former sheriff's lieutenant currently serving as assistant chief of the Lake County Probation Department, made the announcement Sunday morning in front of an estimated 100 supporters at the Lake County Sheriff's Office.
“It's time to move beyond conflict and move toward progress,” Martin said.
Martin, 41, told the group that they had a “huge mess and an embarrassment to law enforcement and Lake County occupying the office of sheriff,” referring to Sheriff Frank Rivero, now 26 months into his first term, who Martin said has failed dismally as the county’s top law enforcement officer.
Standing before the sheriff's office sign in the bright morning sunshine, Martin emphasized the need for healing, leadership and a positive path forward.
While Martin pointed out numerous shortcomings in Rivero's leadership – including Rivero’s penchant for conflict, revenge and personal attacks – Martin himself said he intended to keep the campaign focused on the issues and wouldn't engage in the kind of character assassination that Rivero has employed.
Martin said he was committed to laying the foundation for the department’s success, which will go well beyond winning an election.
“Our success will come when we rebuild the relationship and reestablish trust between law enforcement in Lake County and the communities which we serve,” Martin said.
“This won’t be accomplished by vicious attacks, lies and vengeance. It will be accomplished by hard work, dedication and honesty,” said Martin, with applause erupting at the word “honesty.”
Rivero has been a disappointment and failure, Martin said. “I’m tired of paying for his intentional and reckless misconduct,” adding that he was prepared to work to repair the sheriff’s office’s reputation and relationships.
“The people of Lake County didn’t vote for rage, chaos, retaliation and incompetence,” Martin said. “We wanted, and still want, Lake County to be the great place it can be, a place we can be proud to call home.”
Martin, who had worked for the sheriff's office for several years by the time Rivero took office in January 2011, left the agency in August of that year due to concerns about Rivero's behavior and leadership.
“He was asking me to do things that were unethical and in conflict with the law,” and also violated the basic principles of leadership, Martin told Lake County News.
Since then, the sheriff's office has become a statewide embarrassment, said Martin.
Rivero was the focus of a lengthy District Attorney's Office investigation that ended with findings that he had lied about his actions during a nonfatal 2008 shooting.
As a result, Rivero has become the first sitting sheriff in the state's history to receive a “Brady” designation, which means the prosecution must disclose his credibility issues in any case in which he is a material witness.
For many law enforcement officers such a finding is career-ending, and Rivero himself in court filings seeking to stop the disclosure has said it would harm his ability to act as sheriff.
In addition, crime statistics recently released by the sheriff's office show that crime has been up during Rivero's tenure. Three employee terminations he carried out were reversed by the Board of Supervisors, with the staffers reinstated and given back pay, and he’s had an increasingly tense relationship with officials around Lake County and beyond.
The Brady finding led to Rivero receiving a unanimous no confidence vote from the Board of Supervisors at its meeting last Tuesday. At that time Rivero also was served with a notice of intent to circulate a recall petition by the newly formed Committee to Recall Rivero and Restore Integrity.
The group served Rivero with an identical petition on Friday to correct Rivero's title in the paperwork, as the original petition had left off his duty of coroner, a technicality they believed he would use to try to stop the action.
The group needed only 20 signatures to start the recall, but received nearly 40, among them Martin's signature, that of his wife Crystal, Clearlake City Councilman Joey Luiz and Mary Behrens, the mother of Forrest Seagrave, a Kelseyville man who died after being shot in a January armed robbery.
Behrens also was at Martin’s announcement. She and her family have faulted Rivero for his failure to communicate with them about the status of the Seagrave murder investigation. After she wrote a letter about her concerns to the newspaper Victim-Witness and a sheriff’s staffer – but not Rivero – contacted her, she said.
Rivero has seven days to respond to the notice, with the group then required to follow an intricate procedure that includes gathering just over 7,000 signatures in a 120-day period in order to place Rivero's recall on a ballot before county voters.
Martin is a 1989 graduate of Clear Lake High School who served in the U.S. Army for five years. In the Army he was a military police sergeant and paratrooper, receiving numerous commendations and awards.
After being honorably discharged Martin would go on to work at the Pismo Beach Police Department, was a special agent with the California Department of Justice and worked his way up to the rank of lieutenant in the Lake County Sheriff’s Office.
He holds a bachelor’s degree in public administration with a concentration in criminal justice, has basic, intermediate, advanced and supervisory certificates from the California Commission on Peace Officer Standards and Training, with more than 1,900 hours of certified law enforcement training.
While with the sheriff’s office he helped bring the agency’s training program up to contemporary standards, implemented Nixle alerts – a community information service that he said was never intended to be the sheriff’s personal propaganda machine – and coordinated a program between the sheriff’s office and the Department of Veterans Affairs that allows military veterans to receive GI Bill benefits for on-the-job training while starting their careers at the sheriff’s office.
With Martin joining the race there are now two candidates to seek Rivero's job should the recall make it to the ballot.
Last summer, Bob Chalk, the city of Clearlake's retired police chief, said he planned to run for sheriff in the 2014 election.
Chalk has since told Lake County News he plans to run in the recall election.
Martin said he's pursuing the sheriff's job, and the role of public servant, because service to the community is a family tradition.
His wife, Crystal, works as a victim advocate in the District Attorney's Office's Victim-Witness Division.
His mother, Joyce Campbell, is a retired prosecutor who now works part-time at the Self-Help Law Center in Clearlake.
Martin's father is Judge Richard Martin, who has presided over Lake County Superior Court's Department 2 since 2005.
In addition, Martin's grandfather was a firefighter, his grandmother worked in education and a great uncle was a pilot in the military.
Martin said he had his family's full support for the run for office, and couldn't – and wouldn't – do it without their approval.
If elected, what’s the first thing Martin would do?
He said it would be something Rivero promised, and failed, to do – giving everyone in the department a clean slate in order to move forward.
Email Elizabeth Larson at
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