Sonoma County’s new law enforcement watchdog seeks to expand role

For most people, a cinder-block wall is an unlikely source for childhood memories.

But for Karlene Navarro, Sonoma County’s new law enforcement auditor, the memory of the 6-foot-tall barrier that surrounded her childhood Santa Ana home serves just that mnemonic purpose.

She recalls scaling the wall with her younger siblings as kids. Her father diligently locked a wrought iron fence that connected two ends of the structure before leaving the home, located off a main street in a high-crime area, Navarro said.

The barrier was also the site of regular police contacts, where authorities would stop and question teenage boys who met along the street side. Sometimes her parents were stopped there by officers, too, Navarro, 43, said.

“I think one of the feelings that … became very much a part of my core from that experience was this feeling of indignity for your family and for the people who grew up around me,” Navarro said. “They weren’t assumed to be good citizens.”

That experience, paired with her background as a public defender and criminal defense attorney, is a driving force in her new role, which she started two months ago after being appointed by the Sonoma County Board of Supervisors.

She leads the two-person office tasked with reviewing Sheriff’s Office internal investigations into certain misconduct allegations against employees. Misconduct allegations can also be brought directly to her office, which are then forwarded to the Sheriff’s Office and reviewed by her as well.

Navarro can make recommendations about the agency’s policies and procedures if she finds changes are needed, and her office is required to do community outreach, such as the booth she staffed Sunday at the Cinco de Mayo celebration in Roseland.

“I’m going around meeting with all these different groups and people and I like it,” Navarro said. “Before I was in court all day litigating or writing motions. This is very different from that.”

Her office was created in the wake of the 2013 death of 13-year-old Andy Lopez, who was shot by a Sonoma County sheriff’s deputy after he spotted the teen holding an airsoft BB gun that resembled an assault rifle.

Jerry Threet, the first director of the Independent Office of Law Enforcement Review and Outreach, announced he would retire from the post last year amid mounting tensions with the Sheriff’s Office over the audit process.

Since her start, Navarro has focused the majority of her energy on meeting different stakeholders, including Sonoma County Sheriff Mark Essick, jail staff and each member of the Community Advisory Council, a civilian board that operates under her office.

Her conversations have led to an expansion of the type of cases the sheriff’s department must automatically forward to her office, she said. Now, those cases also include allegations of sexual assault on a member of the public, attempted or otherwise by sheriff’s personnel, and dishonesty, she said. Previously, the Sheriff’s Office was only mandated to send her internal affairs investigations into cases with allegations of use of force, deadly force, biased policing and unlawful stops and seizures.

“It’s something that stuck out to me and I thought they should be automatic triggering allegations,” Navarro said. “I met with the Sheriff’s Office and they agreed.”

The watchdog office can also accept and review allegations about county law enforcement on its own.

Navarro also hopes to expand her office’s reach within the jail’s walls to better inform inmates about her work, though that idea is in its initial stages, she said.

She’s currently developing a case management system with the county’s information systems department that will allow her to better track information about the types of cases that come to her office, and potentially pick up on trends, she said.

She’ll also rely more heavily on members of the Community Advisory Council to help with regular outreach efforts, and plans to expand their monthly meetings to areas outside of Santa Rosa, where they are typically held.

This month’s meeting was held at the Windsor Grange on Monday and the Sonoma Springs Community Hall is slated as the venue for the next gathering, Navarro said.

Jim Duffy, a member of the council, said he was most interested to see how Navarro’s appointment will affect the work that he and other council members have already started, particularly in relation to policy review of the Sheriff’s Office. Though the council has been crafting a set of recommendations about the Sheriff’s Office use-of-force policy, they need more time to complete the work, and Navarro will be the one to decide how to forward the recommendations to the agency, if at all.

Rick Brown, the council’s vice president, said he recognized the difficult job Navarro has undertaken, an independent office that reports to the Board of Supervisors and monitors the county’s largest law enforcement agency, headed by an elected sheriff.

“There’s no other role in county government that works with that dynamic,” he said.

You can reach Staff Writer Nashelly Chavez at 707-521-5203.