Opinion
California law clearly establishes both the right of a citizen to file a complaint against a peace officer as well as the duty of the agency to thoroughly and fairly investigate every formal complaint.
Investigations are to be conducted with strict adherence to the laws of procedural due process assuring that whether the alleged misconduct is petty or egregious every person and every complaint is handled the exact same way.
The rules of procedural due process are not about any individual and this – in my opinion – is one of the most valuable tenets of our broader justice system.
There are several hundred law enforcement agencies in the state of California and every one of them handles personnel complaints against peace officers the same way: officers under investigation are ordered not to discuss the complaint or the allegations with anyone but their attorneys until the investigation is concluded.
It is that simple. Deviations from those rules are considered to be an act of insubordination. The rules are long-standing. They are universal. And they exist for a reason.
In January of 2010, a woman filed a formal personnel complaint against two sheriff’s deputies alleging physical abuse during an arrest a year earlier. Pursuant to state law and department policy, our department initiated a formal investigation into the allegations and both deputies were given the standard order to speak only to their legal representatives about the allegations until the investigation is concluded.
One deputy obeyed that order and the other – Francisco Rivero – held a press conference announcing the details of the allegation and accusing the department of plotting against his campaign for elective office.
The public was not aware of the department’s investigation until Francisco held his press conference wherein he professed himself a victim of a smear campaign.
To reiterate, Rivero alone was responsible for making the citizen’s complaint to the department broadly known – so he alone was responsible for a smear campaign against himself.
This kind of public antic by a peace officer can have potentially catastrophic effects upon victims of police misconduct.
Gloria Flaherty is the executive director of Lake Family Resource Center and a lifelong advocate for victims of crimes with special focus on crimes against women. In the interest of full disclosure, she is also one of my supporters.
Although people who know Gloria know well that her opinions and beliefs are her own and I certainly have no influence over them. Without steering Gloria to a particular answer, I asked her for her opinion about Rivero’s press conference and she expressed immediate concern about the implications of it.
Gloria put it this way: “I see the press conference as intimidating and counter to the credibility of safety and confidentiality within the justice system. Imagine being a woman who is trying to build her courage to report a sexual assault committed by a peace officer from any agency. After seeing the press conference, there is no reason whatsoever to believe that she will not assume that she would be met with reprisal and public exposure by the accused officer if she files a complaint. How is she to know that this is not what she should expect if she makes her own allegations against another peace officer? How is a real potential victim of such a crime supposed to know the political machinations that were a motivation for that press conference?”
So why would Rivero want to make a formal complaint that the department kept confidential a very public issue?
The answer is – so that he could claim to be a victim of retaliation.
It is precisely the kind of thing that professional victims do. It is precisely the kind of thing that made Francisco Rivero a millionaire in the 1990s when the taxpayers of San Francisco paid for a lawsuit that Rivero filed against the San Francisco Coroner’s Office.
Retroactive allegations of discrimination were the hallmark of Rivero’s claim against the San Francisco Coroner’s Office but only after they terminated his very lucrative contract for cremating the remains of indigent people who died there.
Rivero took on the mantle of “corruption buster” and made allegations against the San Francisco Coroner’s Office that included: claims that the coroner unlawfully terminated his contract; claims that the coroner discriminated against him because of his Cuban heritage; claims that coroner employees were corrupt and were taking bribes; claims that the coroner’s office was a 'good old boy network'; and finally – and most lucratively – the claim of retaliation when the coroner’s employees lashed out at him for all of the allegations that Rivero made against them.
Rivero’s claims of discrimination and unlawful contract termination did not stick but the retaliation claim made Rivero a fortune – just shy of $2 million.
Rivero had made all of his claims before the trial in a very public manner using a variety of different media outlets. Those public claims of retaliation worked so well for Rivero in San Francisco that the circuit court actually commented on his deft use of the media during his lawsuit against the taxpayers of San Francisco.
Rivero joined the Lake County Sheriff’s Department in May of 2007 and he was an ardent supporter of the entire department through March 2009 – which is when the sergeants’ promotional examination took place.
On March 27, 2009, 14 days after Francisco learned that he did not place as high on the sergeant’s promotion list as did deputies with eight times his level of experience, Rivero activated the script that made him a fortune in San Francisco.
It was only after Rivero’s failed attempt at promotion that he began making retroactive allegations of discrimination against him for his Cuban heritage. It was only after his failed promotion attempt that Rivero began alleging corruption in the sheriff’s department and only after the failed promotion attempt that Rivero took on the mantle of the heroic corruption buster.
Finally, in keeping with his profitable San Francisco strategy, Rivero used the woman’s personal complaint made against him (and the other deputy who followed the rules) as his basis for alleging that I was retaliating against him. And Rivero’s circle is complete. Or at least Rivero hopes it will be complete.
Anyone who reads the published court decision regarding the San Francisco Coroner’s Office lawsuit will see that the script Rivero followed there then is precisely the script that Rivero is using here now. The difference is that the men and women of the Lake County Sheriff’s Department have shown enormous restraint.
These local professionals have not retaliated against Rivero for any of his many false claims against them. Our staff did not respond in a way that would have completed Rivero’s profitable circle.
Professional crime fighters surround themselves with other professional crime fighters and they are truly concerned with the interests of law-abiding citizens they don’t even know.
Professional victims surround themselves with other professional victims and they are solely concerned with their own personal interests.
Rivero’s closest allies are former law enforcement officers who proved to be professional victims too.
Being a professional victim is one of the key reasons why Francisco received not one vote of support from any of his peers as sheriff’s department associations endorsed a candidate for sheriff.
The Lake County Sheriff’s Department employs 187 people. There was a secret ballot. Not one vote.
The men and women of the Lake County Sheriff’s Department are professional crime fighters who live up to our expectations to do selfless, challenging and often dangerous work on behalf of people they do not know.
And they do it all with a work ethic that says, “It’s not about me.” I have never been more proud of them.
Rodney Mitchell is in his fourth term as sheriff of Lake County and is seeking re-election. He lives in Lakeport.
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- Written by: Rodney Mitchell
On Thursday, May 13, the Clearlake City Council was forced to take some very drastic action in order to balance their budget so that they will continue to be able to pay their bills. The problem with the city of Clearlake’s finances is lack of adequate income. The cuts are major but would not have been nearly as severe if the Sierra Club had been willing to withdraw their lawsuit whose effect is to slow down, and perhaps eliminate, the Lowe’s project on the old airport property.
It is true the Sierra Club did not create the city’s current financial crises, but the lawsuit eliminates “the light at the end of the tunnel” that could have prevented many of the layoffs.
The future sales tax income – estimated by the Sierra Club’s own experts to be based on revenues of $38.2 million – of between $400,000 and $600,000 every year would have started in early 2012. The building of the project would have provided money for several city employees who would be working on the project thus making other general fund money available for the positions that had to be eliminated.
The airport property has been slated to be a business park since it was purchased by the city in 1996. The Clearlake Vision Task Force Report describes it as part of “the area which has the greatest potential to grow into an important source of employment and the retail center for the region.” The Lowe’s project fulfills this vision as the project also contains six additional retail business spaces.
It has taken time to find and negotiate a contract with a developer with an anchor tenant who would sign a contract and make the commitment to build the project. Lowe’s did this and the contractual obligations in the contract would have protected the city financially from building delays.
The Sierra Club lawsuit outlines a number of concerns, and states that a full environmental impact report (EIR) is required under the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA ). CEQA requires a full EIR only when substantial evidence exists that a project may result in significant impacts to the environment.
The studies done for this project that resulted in the negative declaration decision detail that significant impacts will either not occur or were mitigated within the project. Mitigating environmental effects is the purpose of CEQA. CEQA is not designed to stop a project; it is designed to protect the environment through mitigation of any significant environmental issues. In the case of the Lowe’s project the requirements under CEQA were satisfied.
The areas of the Sierra Club’s environmental concerns and the already accomplished resolutions are as follows:
Air quality: First, the Lake County Air Quality Management District agreed with the city’s assessment that the impacts on air quality by the Lowe’s project would be mitigated to less than significant. Second, the carbon monoxide (CO) emissions have decreased by 50 percent between 1990 and 2008. Additionally, an analysis meeting state requirements was done showing that greenhouse gasses would be decreased as much is possible. The Lowe’s store would actually exceed the state’s energy saving requirements by 20 percent. Greenhouse gasses also would be reduced when people shop locally instead of driving to Santa Rosa or Ukiah for building materials.
Traffic: A traffic study was completed by a registered traffic engineer and a total of $2.1 million in mitigation measures were required and built into the project to provide the improvements necessary to solve the traffic and circulation problems identified by the study. This is exactly what an environmental review is intended to accomplish – the mitigation of impacts.
Urban decay: The city of Clearlake is very aware of its status and actually has significantly more blight than urban decay. Blight is more severe than urban decay and the lawsuit will actually increase it because there is very likely to be an increase in crime with less police officers and more unabated public nuisance properties because of the elimination of the code enforcement program. Additionally, the elimination of the planning department will mean significant degradation of services to new businesses attempting to locate here. The city adequately addressed the potential for urban decay.
Although the above items are the ones listed in the lawsuit, another substantially different set of reasons is outlined in the Sierra Club’s position paper available at their Web site – http://redwood.sierraclub.org/lake.
Most of the items in the position paper are economic issues which would not be covered under CEQA and so would not be addressed in an EIR. Therefore the filing of a lawsuit requesting an EIR unnecessarily negates the time and effort that the city of Clearlake has devoted to creating a more livable city for its residents and begs the question – what is actually behind this lawsuit if it is not really environmental?
Susanne Scholz lives in the city of Clearlake.
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- Written by: Susanne Scholz
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