Email withheld by Santa Rosa officials reveals Eddie Alvarez’s behind-the-scenes frustrations following search warrant

Two days after Santa Rosa police descended on Vice Mayor Eddie Alvarez with a search warrant in front of two of his city council colleagues, he aired his frustrations in an email to then-Police Chief Ray Navarro and three other city officials.

Alvarez, a Latino business owner and the first person directly elected to represent the majority-Latino Roseland area, pulled few punches as he told Navarro, the city’s first Latino police chief, that the department’s treatment of him would affect both his ability to represent his constituents and community perception of the department.

“In the future if you’re going to need me for anything I’d prefer you drag me out of my car, break into my home,” Alvarez wrote in the Jan. 13 email. “I’d prefer that 1 million times compared to what transpired. At least then my ability to be effective amongst my peers isn’t hindered.”

City officials have refused to release the email, which The Press Democrat first requested in February under the California Public Records Act. The newspaper has made several subsequent requests, all of which have been denied.

In a June 22 email reply to The Press Democrat, SRPD administrative technician Carrie Behler said the police department, in consultation with the city attorney’s office, considered the email connected to an ongoing investigation.

She also cited the “official information privilege,” which, broadly speaking, allows government agencies to withhold records that are not in the public’s interest to release.

The Press Democrat has independently obtained a copy of the seven-month old, 17-paragraph email, however, and an examination shows there was very little that pertained to the investigation that sparked the search warrant.

In fact, the email contains no information that was not already publicly known about the police investigation into the shooting.

In addition, an attorney who represents the newspaper in its ongoing court fight to have the Alvarez search warrant unsealed, said the city overstepped its authority by refusing to release the email and that it does not meet the standards for either Public Records Act exemption.

“The City’s decision to withhold these records is part of a pattern of keeping secret information the public is entitled to,” attorney Sarah Burns said, adding that it “undermines the public’s trust that the City is withholding only that information that could actually compromise law enforcement interests.”

Richard A. Green, executive editor at The Press Democrat, said it seems city officials “are playing fast and loose” with California’s public records law.

“We remain unconvinced there’s a valid reason for city officials to withhold this record,” he said. “At a time when taxpayers, constituents and our readers demand transparency from Santa Rosa’s police department, the senseless disregard of releasing public information only undermines its credibility and relationship with the residents it’s charged to serve.”

Police served the warrant on Alvarez and seized three cellphones on Jan. 11 as he left a council meeting. The warrant was connected to their investigation of a Sept. 25, 2021, homicide in front of the Whiskey Tip Bar in Santa Rosa. A police spokesperson has said Alvarez is not a suspect, but officials have declined to say what grounds detectives had to search his phones.

In his email, sent two days after the search warrant was served, Alvarez asks Navarro to inform him when he will receive his cellphones, saying his lack of two phones — one personal and one city owned — affected his ability to run his business and communicate with his family and his constituents.

Much of the rest of the message focuses on his concerns over how the warrant will affect public perception of Roseland’s representative and criticisms of the department’s choice to serve the warrant at city hall.

“I really don’t think you understand the obstacles a person of color deals with,” he wrote, arguing the episode undermined his efforts to build bridges with other council members and city department heads.

City officials on Thursday declined to comment further on its reasons for withholding the email. “The City will not comment on privileged information or ongoing litigation,” spokesperson Alexa Popplewell said in an email.

Reached for comment Thursday, Alvarez declined to discuss the email but said he was glad “it’s coming to light.”

“Truth always rises to the top!” he wrote in a subsequent text message to The Press Democrat.

A judge has also so far declined to make the underlying warrant records public, despite a motion filed by The Press Democrat arguing state law around warrants necessitates its release.

Sonoma County Superior Court Judge Christopher Honigsberg ordered the release of very limited warrant documents following a closed-door hearing in May, where he met with a prosecutor and SRPD attorney.

Two men, Fogatia Fuiava and Ednie Afamasaga, were arrested within three days of the killing of 27-year-old Kenneth McDaniel outside the bar. Police have indicated video evidence led them to the suspects, who are in jail awaiting trial on homicide charges. Police served the warrant on Alvarez more than three months after the arrests.

Honigsberg had indicated he would consider releasing more warrant records, which should include an affidavit showing what grounds investigators gave a judge to get the warrant, following the preliminary hearing.

But Fuiava and Afamasaga’s preliminary hearing was moved to September after a COVID-19 outbreak in the county jail interfered with a June date. He rescheduled a hearing on The Press Democrat’s motion to unseal the warrant records to Sept. 19.

Seven months after the warrant service, the public still does not know what grounds police cited when they asked a judge to search an elected official’s cellphones. Alvarez is also in the dark, he says, and dogged by a perception that he may have had something to do with a murder.

That frustration, aired publicly after The Press Democrat first reported on the warrant service March 23, permeates the email to Navarro.

“For God’s sake I have been invited into our colleague’s homes, trust given, met their families, and the thought that they may see me in another light kills me, Chief,” Alvarez wrote.

Alvarez stated in the email he did not want the warrant to be served publicly. He said he knew a Press Democrat reporter was present at the council meeting but wanted “nothing to do with him.”

A reporter was covering the council meeting that night but did not witness the warrant service.

“I do not want to be the cause of distraction … nor was it I that caused the distraction,” Alvarez wrote.

Alvarez was at the Whiskey Tip, a bar near his home, for a rap concert, he told The Press Democrat in the days after the shooting, but left before the violence. Alvarez emailed Navarro two days after the shooting to tell him he was at the bar and had spoken to a police sergeant investigating the crime, according to a Sept. 27, 2021, email The Press Democrat received from the city in response to a public records request last year.

Alvarez also told Navarro he knew the dead man through a break-in at Alvarez’s business, a cannabis dispensary on Rogers Avenue, the year before. Court records indicate McDaniel was charged along with three other men in the June 2020 break-in.

In his January email to Navarro, Alvarez urged him not to link the earlier crime against him to McDaniel’s murder.

“I’m simply a victim of a burglary and vandalism who years later attended an event a few hundred yards from my house,” Alvarez wrote.

“Please don’t see me as anything else.”

You can reach Staff Writer Andrew Graham at 707-526-8667 or andrew.graham@pressdemocrat.com. On Twitter @AndrewGraham88