PR firm mounts campaign to support Sonoma County sergeant who fatally shot Andy Lopez

A group formed to support Erick Gelhaus, the Sonoma County sheriff’s sergeant who fatally shot 13-year-old Andy Lopez, is part of a campaign by a Southern California public relations firm whose founder said last week that he has been paid by Gelhaus for his services.

The new campaign, including a website, Facebook page and an online fundraising appeal, is the work of Robert Parry, an Army veteran who served in combat with Gelhaus in Iraq. His firm, Cop PRotect, specializes in representing law officers under public scrutiny for on-duty incidents.

Its work on behalf of Gelhaus, a 27-year Sheriff’s Office veteran, launched in late August under the slogan “Stand With Erick” as a response, Parry said, to protests by community activists riled by Gelhaus’ promotion from deputy to sergeant in May. The move, approved by Sheriff Steve Freitas, came less than three years after Lopez’s death in a shooting that exposed deep distrust in law enforcement within the local Latino community.

The public relations effort kicked off with an Aug. 27 op-ed column in The Press Democrat signed by Parry and Chris Chebahtah, who identified themselves as combat veterans and the founders of StandWithErick.org, an organization committed to “tell the truth” about Gelhaus and Oct. 22, 2013, shooting that claimed Lopez’s life on a Santa Rosa street near his home.

“We are friends, concerned citizens and colleagues of Erick who are unwilling to let a good man have his reputation, career and legacy of service destroyed by self-serving anti-police activists with the media’s full participation and omission of key facts,” the Stand With Eric website states.

In an interview Friday, Parry said that he and Gelhaus have a paid arrangement - a financial relationship that was not disclosed in the original op-ed, nor to newspapers’ opinion page editors. It is also not evident on the campaign’s online pages.

Gelhaus paid a fee to enroll in Cop PRotect, which says on its website it offers a “reputation defense system” for police officers involved in a “critical media-scrutinized incident,” Parry said.

Parry, a Monrovia-based public relations professional and former community newspaper publisher, declined to say what amount Gelhaus had paid for Cop PRotect’s services. The firm’s standard enrollment is $50 a year, according to the website. It’s going hourly rate for work that exceeds eight hours of time is $65, a fee the website described as “just 50 percent of our usual rate.”

Gelhaus did not respond to a request for comment Friday.

The public relations effort comes as race, gun violence and police tactics have swirled in an increasingly inflammatory national debate.

Since Lopez’s death, a vocal cadre of activists has criticized the Sheriff’s Office and the county and called for Gelhaus to be removed from street patrol while urging elected officials and law enforcement to pursue meaningful reforms in the way officers employ deadly force.

The debate has featured voices supportive of Gelhaus, including, at times, representatives of the Sheriff’s Office and the deputy sheriff’s employee union, as well as civilians.

Gelhaus, who was cleared of any criminal wrongdoing by the county District Attorney’s Office and the FBI, has declined to offer any public comment.

Freitas has been conspicuously silent on the subject, steering clear of questions about Gelhaus in interviews. Earlier this year, he called Lopez’s death a “huge event, a tragic event” for the community and his department.

Lopez’s parents have sued Gelhaus, the Sheriff’s Office and the county. The civil suit, which seeks monetary damages, alleges the shooting was unjustified and claims Gelhaus acted recklessly when he fired eight shots at the teenager.

Parry said his campaign is attempting to enlist greater public support for Gelhaus, who he described as a client. The Stand With Erick website is “within the scope of services for a client,” he said.

He said he added some “bells and whistles” to his work for Gelhaus because he is a friend and former member of an Army combat unit Parry led in Iraq in 2005.

Parry was a lieutenant and platoon leader in Delta Company of the 184th Infantry Regiment of the California National Guard, and both Gelhaus and Chebahtah were sergeants under his command.

In the Aug. 27 Press Democrat op-ed column, Parry and Chebahtah wrote: “We definitely know Erick Gelhaus. We served alongside him, followed him and led him during a year of bloody combat in Iraq. We have fought for our lives with him and cried with him over the fallen.”

Chebahtah, an Antelope Valley resident, is not part of Cop PRotect but is collaborating with Parry in his work for Gelhaus, Parry said.

The firm’s Aug. 29 press release said the group’s goal was to “organize Gelhaus’ supporters in the region and highlight important parts of his story that have been buried in the traditional Bay Area media.”

A GoFundMe fundraising page called “Tell The Truth About Erick Gelhaus” that Parry created Aug. 17 on Saturday listed $650 in donations from 17 people toward a $15,000 goal. Parry said all the money will go to the campaign for Gelhaus, including social media advertisements and costs of the website.

“I am absolutely all about representing my clients’ interests,” he said. “We’re here to tell Erick’s story in a way that’s easy for people to digest.”

He declined to comment on whether anyone else is paying for his services to Gelhaus.In his new position, Gelhaus supervises eight to 10 deputies patrolling central Sonoma County.

Parry said Cop PRotect, which he founded a year ago, has done work for three or four other police officers in the United States.

Gelhaus was promoted to sergeant in May following a competitive civil service process. A former field training officer and firearms instructor, Gelhaus, 51, was deemed “highly qualified,” a department spokesman said last month about his promotion.

The promotion prompted renewed complaints from community activists who have been critical of the Sheriff’s Office in the wake of Lopez’s death. The North Bay Organizing Project posted on Facebook that an “openly white supremacist cop” had been promoted and the group’s director, Susan Shaw, said the system failed to hold Gelhaus accountable for killing a Latino child.

“It’s an affront to our community,” Shaw said.

Parry expressed sympathy for Lopez’s parents and harsh criticism for Gelhaus’ detractors.

“I truly feel bad,” he said. “I can’t pretend to understand the depths of their grief.”

He also said that Lopez, an eighth-grader at Cook Middle School, “created the circumstances” that led to his death.

Lopez was carrying an airsoft BB gun resembling an AK-47 assault rifle as he walked along Moorland Avenue near his southwest Santa Rosa home.

Gelhaus said he mistook the replica for a real firearm and shot Lopez when the youth turned toward him with the barrel of the weapon rising. Gelhaus fired eight rounds, striking the boy seven times, investigators said.

A plastic orange tip identifying the gun as non-lethal had been removed. An investigation by the Sonoma County District Attorney’s Office and a review by the FBI concluded that Gelhaus’ decision to use lethal force was lawful.

In its 2014 report on the shooting, the District Attorney’s Office concluded that Gelhaus’ actions were reasonable because he feared for his life.

Parry cited those findings Friday.

“It’s not Erick’s fault that he thought he was defending his life against what he thought was a deadly weapon,” he said.

He accused critics of “just trying to smear a man who did no wrong.”

Omar Medina, president of the North Bay Organizing Project, rejected that assertion.

“There is no coordinated campaign to make him look bad,” Medina said of Gelhaus. “There are people sharing their stories and emotions based on how they feel.”

But lost in the heated back-and-forth over Gelhaus’ actions is a history of commendable service to the community, Parry said.

In 2004, Gelhaus was awarded the Sheriff Office’s Medal of Valor for pulling occupants of a burning vehicle to safety, and he was also honored for capturing a homicide suspect without firing a shot, Parry noted.

Gelhaus, before Lopez’s death, was a prolific contributor to magazines and online forums dealing with guns and police use of force. There, he was an advocate for a prepared, aggressive stance in law enforcement, a profession he described as a “calling” and likened to a “contact sport.”

Before the 2013 shooting, the only time he had fired his service weapon in the field, according to the Sheriff’s Office, was in a 1995 incident when he accidentally shot himself in the leg while holstering the gun to frisk a teen for weapons. The Cop PRotect website states that a “potent mix of omnipresent cellphone cameras and anti-cop activists” have altered the law enforcement environment.

Officers know they are “just a simple misunderstanding or short-sighted decision away from becoming political fodder in a national media circus - or worse.”

To benefit from the service the firm provides, officers are expected to enroll before they are involved in an incident. In exchange, the firm pledges to provide guidance in building a case for their defense in the court of public opinion.

“Just as you wear body armor for worst case violence, Cop PRotect is your armor for an assault on your good name,” the website says.

Staff Writer Derek Moore contributed reporting. You can reach Staff Writer Guy Kovner at 707-521-5457 or guy.kovner@pressdemocrat.com. On Twitter @guykovner.