Sonoma County Sheriff watchdog search narrowed to three

The hunt for a director to launch Sonoma County’s first law enforcement watchdog agency so far is on pace for county supervisors to select a top candidate sometime in January to undergo the extensive background investigation the job requires.

Christina Cramer, the county’s human resources director, said Wednesday that three candidates are still in the running out of a pool of 41 people who applied. The recruitment process is confidential and candidate names were not public, she said.

The two men and one woman all are attorneys with applicable experience, although none has previously worked for a civilian law enforcement oversight agency. Two of the candidates are from Sonoma County, and the third is from outside California.

“All have transferable and relevant experience,” Cramer said. “They are not in this actual industry right now because this is a fairly new field, so there aren’t a lot of them out there.”

The director will be in charge of building what’s initially being called the Independent Office of Law Enforcement Review and Outreach, a program borne out of a nearly two-year process evaluating the community’s relationship with law enforcement after a white deputy shot and killed a 13-year-old Latino boy in 2013.

The boy, Andy Lopez, was carrying a BB gun designed to resemble an assault rifle while walking in a working-class neighborhood on Santa Rosa’s outskirts. He did not drop the gun when the deputy ordered him to do so. The shooting led to a series of public protests in which students, activists and others took to the streets to express fury over the shooting.

Supervisors established the Community and Local Law Enforcement Task Force, and the group spent a year developing a broad set of ideas about how law enforcement could improve its relationship with the community, particularly Latino residents. The watchdog program was the group’s most ambitious proposal.

The office initially would review only matters pertaining to the Sheriff’s Office, which serves unincorporated areas and runs the county jail. Sheriff Steve Freitas has said that he is willing to dedicate staff to cooperate with the office. The supervisors voted to fund certain Sheriff’s Office positions to work with the program.

The law enforcement review office would create a neutral place for people to file administrative complaints against Sheriff’s Office personnel. Its staff would review internal affairs investigations into those complaints and administrative reviews of deputy shootings, as well as analyze trends, conduct community outreach and make recommendations to the Sheriff’s Office about its practices and procedures.

As currently planned, the office would not field any complaints involving the six police departments in Sonoma County or local CHP officers unless those cities and agencies opt to join the program.

Although the selection process is confidential, the county brought in a dozen members of the public, including members of the task force that developed the concept, to sit on an interview panel that met with six candidates Dec. 16.

That group and a second, nine-person panel, made up of three county staff members and six experts in the law enforcement oversight field brought in to help vet the candidates, provided feedback used to narrow the candidate field to three.

On Dec. 17, the remaining candidates met with Sonoma County Sheriff Steve Freitas, District Attorney Jill Ravitch, Probation Chief Bob Ochs and Santa Rosa Police Chief Hank Schreeder.

Then, on Dec. 18, the candidates individually met with the complete panel of supervisors - Susan Gorin, David Rabbitt, Shirlee Zane, Efren Carrillo and James Gore - during a special closed session.

Cramer, the county’s human resources director, said that the current goal is to select one candidate in the first half of January to undergo an extensive background process akin to the type done for law enforcement officers, which can take about three months. The background process would not involve all the same steps as for law enforcement; however, Cramer said she did not yet know an estimated timeline.

County staff in October said they hoped the board would be able to appoint a director in February or March.

You can reach Staff Writer Julie Johnson at 521-5220 or julie.johnson@pressdemocrat.com. On Twitter @jjpressdem.