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Lake County deputies allege bias, racial profiling
Published: Saturday, November 21, 2009 at 3:00 a.m.
Last Modified: Saturday, November 21, 2009 at 11:03 p.m.
One current and two former Lake County sheriff’s deputies are accusing the department of allowing racial profiling and workplace discrimination.
The three men, who filed complaints with the county in March, made the accusations public last week in a TV interview.
Sheriff Rod Mitchell has posted detailed rebuttals to the accusations on the department’s Web site www.lakesheriff.com. They include internal memos and videotaped interviews with the accusers, giving the public a rare glimpse into the internal workings of a law enforcement department.
The responses “will show the allegations are spurious,” Mitchell said. The Lake County Deputy Sheriff’s Association, the union that represents about 65 deputies, also has blasted the allegations and plans to release its own rebuttals.
The accusers say Mitchell’s responses are edited, out-of-context versions of events that skirt the most serious allegation: racial profiling.
“I have seen it. I have been told to pull over Mexicans on Highway 20 during pot season,” said Lake County Sheriff’s Deputy Francisco Rivero, who has launched a campaign to replace Mitchell in the June election.
The accusations are being leveled by Rivero and former Lake County deputy Brian Lande and former Sgt. Kip Ringen.
Lande said he was instructed to find legitimate reasons to pull over Latino drivers within the first few weeks of working in the department.
Latinos commonly are referred to as “Joses,” the men said. There also have been cases of unnecessary physical abuse, Lande said.
The men filed complaints with the county in March but didn’t make the accusations public until a TV interview broadcast last week on KGO-TV. Rivero additionally submitted complaints to the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission and the U.S. Department of Justice.
Mitchell said he does not tolerate discrimination in the department. The accusers never brought their concerns to him before filing their March 27 complaints with the county, he noted.
The department investigated the accusations and found most were false or misrepresentative of what happened, he said. Mitchell said he did not launch a counterattack until after the men took their complaints to the media, which freed him to divulge otherwise unreleasable information in defense of the department.
“This is a professional organization. We’re not going to allow people to undermine the credibility of this organization,” he said.
Rivero, hired in 2007, is the only one of the three accusers who still works in the sheriff’s department.
Ringen, a 27-year veteran, was forced out in April. Rivero said it was at least in part because he complained about discrimination but Ringen, a union leader, already was in trouble with management.
According to the Sheriff’s Web site, Ringen had been under investigation prior to his departure.
Lande quit the department in April, after less than two years on the job, to join a Bay Area law enforcement department “because of the endemic bigotry and misconduct I observed while employed at the LCSO,” he wrote in his complaint.
Rivero, Lande and Ringen also claim that inappropriate comments related to race, sexual orientation and physical disabilities are prevalent within the department.
Rivero, a Cuban immigrant, said he was called a “wetback” on several occasions.
But he never complained to his bosses. When Ringen reported it to higher officials, Rivero denied they were a problem and refused to file a complaint, saying the comments were made in jest, according to a taped interview posted online.
Rivero said he found the comments unprofessional but did not report them because he is thick skinned and did not want to hurt his future by making waves.
On Wednesday, he said he was handed a work evaluation with an unsatisfactory score. He’d previously been praised by Mitchell for his work.
Ringen was placed on administrative leave shortly after reporting the slurs, Rivero said. Mitchell said Ringen was placed on leave because he refused to document the complaint in writing and already had been reprimanded for failing to finish an internal investigation report.
Mitchell said he takes all allegations of discrimination and mistreatment seriously and wants them reported immediately.
“It is inappropriate in a modern workplace and we don’t tolerate it,” he said.
Discrimination complaints against law enforcement agencies are not uncommon.
“We know it is a problem and a large problem,” said Diana Tate Vermeire, the racial justice project director for the American Civil Liberties Union.
The ACLU has a pending lawsuit against the Sonoma County Sheriff’s Department that alleges unlawful detentions and racial profiling of Latinos suspected of being undocumented immigrants.
Racial profiling and other types of discrimination not only are unjust, they erode the public’s trust in law enforcement agencies, Vermeire said. Discriminatory slurs, even if made in jest, can be harmful both within and without a department, she said.
Racial profiling and slurs “have no place in a police department or sheriff’s department,” Vermeire said.
You can reach Staff Writer Glenda Anderson at 462-6473 or glenda.anderson@pressdemocrat.com.
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