Three vie for Sonoma County Sheriff

A three-person race for Sonoma County Sheriff is shaping up ahead of the June primary, marking the first hotly contested race for the county’s top law enforcement seat in more than a quarter century.

The candidates - Sheriff’s Office Captain Mark Essick, former Los Angeles Police Station Commander John Mutz and former Santa Rosa Police Lt. and current Councilman Ernesto Olivares - have recently sparred at candidate forums, offering contrasting views on past Sheriff’s Office decisions and visions for the future of the department.

The race has gelled since Sheriff Steve Freitas stepped down in August and Sheriff Rob Giordano, who was appointed, announced he would not seek election.

The next sheriff will take charge of the county’s largest law enforcement department, with 650 employees, a $159 million annual budget and responsibility for a patrol area spanning 1,550 square miles, the coroner’s division and two jails. The agency has struggled with a multi-year staffing shortage, caused in part by an atypically large departure of many veteran deputies and difficulty recruiting quality candidates to fill vacant positions.

Mutz, 69, moved from Southern California to Sonoma County several years ago with his family and has children attending school at Summerfield Waldorf in west Santa Rosa.

In 1991, Mutz was the LAPD commander in charge of the embattled Foothill division where Rodney King was beaten by four police officers. After he retired in 1999, Mutz, developed a mediation program for racial profiling cases for the Los Angeles Police Department, and he continues to work as a consultant.

Essick, 48, heads the Sheriff’s Office field services division, overseeing some of the agency’s core functions such as its patrol, dispatch, court and transportation divisions. He’s also in charge of the cities that contract with the department for policing services - Windsor and Sonoma.

He has worked for the Sheriff’s Office for 24 years and is backed by the Sonoma County Deputy Sheriff Association and Sheriff Giordano. A Cloverdale resident, he lives with his wife, and the couple has two grown children.

Olivares, 60, who has served on the Santa Rosa City Council since 2008, is the only one in the group with significant political experience. Born in Mexico, he came to the U.S. at age 2 and moved to Sonoma County in 1979, where he began a 30-year career in the Santa Rosa Police Department. He and his wife have three grown daughters.

Underpinning the race is the Sheriff’s Office’s handling of the 2013 fatal shooting of Andy Lopez, a 13-year-old carrying an airsoft rifle that resembled an assault weapon, by Deputy Erick Gelhaus southwest of Santa Rosa. The shooting sparked protests and resulted in the creation of the Independent Office of Law Enforcement Review and Outreach. After several investigations, Gelhaus was cleared of wrongdoing and eventually returned to patrol duties.

Mutz said the Sheriff’s Office was too defensive in its response to the shooting.

“They could have owned the mistake,” he said. “The killing of Andy Lopez was a horrific error. The only thing you can do in these situations is to own it.”

Essick acknowledged that the department made mistakes in its handling of the shooting and the aftermath, but he said putting Gelhaus back on patrol was the right decision, noting that county, state and federal investigators found he did not violate department policy.

“Our reaction to (the shooting) was not good,” he said. “We had some very frank conversations with our sheriff. The main this is transparency, engaging with our community. If we screw up, say we screwed up.”

Olivares said the sheriff has long taken a reactionary approach, and said his own background as an elected official suits him to fostering the kind of relationships that won’t lead to community backlash like the county witnessed after the shooting.

“The missing piece was this historical engagement,” he said. “Now you had a sheriff trying to build relationships during a crisis. That’s not the time to build relationships. The lack of coordination and leadership, these are things that need to change.”

Mutz said he would bring a community-oriented approach to law enforcement and said the Sheriff’s Office has too much of a “warrior command and control” mentality. He said helped bring community-oriented policing techniques to the LAPD in the 1990s, and he said he would forge those same community partnerships here if elected.

“The sheriff has to be highly visible within the community,” he said. “You have to be the sole advocate for the things that build the fabric of the community. ... It’s time to go with an outsider.”

Essick said the department is currently operating on a community-oriented model, and said he would take steps to strengthen those partnerships if elected. He also pledged more diversity in hiring staff and more transparency.

“I don’t think there’s anything wrong with the Sheriff’s Office culture,” he said. “Community-oriented policing is not something you just do once. You have to keep asking the community what it wants.”

Olivares, a member of the Sonoma County Hispanic Chamber of Commerce, said he would prioritize hiring a diverse work force.

“We have to get specific with our diversity needs,” he said. “We have to make sure our recruitment team is diverse as well. We have to understand the different communities in the county. The big thing I can provide is partnering with the community to build a force for 21st century policing.”

The primary is June 5. If no candidate receives 50 percent of the vote, there will be a runoff in November.

(Contact Matt Brown at matt.brown@arguscourier.com.)