Candidates blast sheriff for ‘unethical’ snatching of tape
SAN JOSE >> Candidates vying to unseat Santa Clara County Sheriff Laurie Smith blasted the longtime incumbent on Monday for bursting into the office’s Internal Affairs unit 25 years ago in the middle of an investigation implicating her and seizing a tape recording of a key interview.
Smith’s interference in the investigation was the subject of a story published Sunday by this news organization. Experts said the seizure of the tape, which Smith admits, raises questions about her ethics. The tape was part of a complaint by a deputy who claimed Smith yanked him off a plum assignment because of his gender and later said he be- lieved she did it to get even with him for cutting short an alleged sexual encounter.
Now, one of the candidates running against her in the June primary is calling for her to step down, while two others and a retired judge say Smith’s conduct is all voters need to know to vote her out of office after 20 years.
“It was really an outrageous abuse of power,’’ said retired Undersheriff John Hirokawa, one of the five candidates who have challenged Smith’s bid for a sixth term. “Just unethical and wrong.’’
Another candidate, retired Sgt. Jose Salcido, called on Smith to drop out of the race. A third challenger, Joe La Jeunesse, said Smith’s 20-year reign “evinces an arrogance of power that borders on outright corruption.’’
Her conduct also gave even some of her supporters pause.
San Mateo County Sheriff Carlos G. Bolanos declined to comment directly on Smith’s interference. But he said his office takes steps to safeguard investigations.
“In San Mateo County, if you are party to a citizens complaint or Internal Affairs investigation, you are removed from the process,’’ Bolanos said.
Smith refused to be interviewed for the story. But her political consultant, Rich Robinson, has defended Smith’s actions as “procedurally appropriate.” He called the claims against her a dirty political stunt originally peddled two decades ago by opponents trying to upend
her quest to become California’s first female sheriff, and perpetuated by union bosses frustrated that their complaints about her leadership have gone nowhere.
On Monday, Robinson issued a brief statement indicating he will not comment on a “fictitious story.”
But LaDoris Cordell, a retired judge and San Jose’s former independent police auditor, also called for Smith to step down immediately. Cordell, a longtime Smith critic, chaired a blue ribbon commission appointed by the county Board of Supervisors to evaluate the jails after a mentally ill inmate was beaten to death in late 2015 by three jail guards who have been convicted of murder and sentenced to 15 years to life in prison.
“That Laurie Smith would brazenly remove evidence in an active Internal Affairs investigation of which she is the subject,
and then without a trace of shame, admit to doing so, is stunning,” Cordell said. “Anyone trained in law enforcement knows that such conduct is unethical and likely criminal. This is yet another reason why she has no business leading the Sheriff’s Department. She should resign immediately.”
Smith was one of three up-and-coming assistant sheriffs when the incident involving the tape occurred in 1992, nearly six years before she was elected as sheriff in November 1998.
Gary Brady, the retired sergeant whose complaints implicating Smith led to two Internal Affairs investigations, first complained in 1992 to investigators that Smith yanked him off a plum assignment because of his gender. About four years later, he sketched a more troubling picture, saying he
believed she wanted to get even with him for cutting short a sexual encounter he claims she initiated in an unmarked police car, at a time when she was his supervisor.
Robinson has said Smith never had a sexual encounter of any kind with Brady.
No findings of wrongdoing ever emerged from the investigations, but Brady and two key figures in the case have come forward for the first time to support key parts of Brady’s account — Ron Clark, the retired Internal Affairs sergeant who investigated one of the complaints, and Pat Verzosa, the civilian secretary who wrote a memo about the then-assistant sheriff’s demand that she hand over the tape of Brady’s interview.
On Monday, members of the county board of supervisors, which oversees the sheriff’s budget, didn’t immediately respond to requests for comment. The union that represents sheriff’s deputies criticized the board, saying in a written statement that “the silence of other elected officials serves only to condone her abuse of power.’’
But Larry Gerston, a retired political science professor at San Jose State, said the board has spoken — through its actions.
“They’ve made a comment by taking away some of her power over the jails,’’ Gerston said, referring among other steps to the board’s decision to establish an Office of Correction and Law Enforcement monitoring to keep an eye on the sheriff’s office. “If a person is doing a good job, you leave them alone. That tells me the board feels uncomfortable with the way she’s managing the jails and her capabilities.’’