Citizen’s Complaints

Note that the below items are new as of 26feb02 and are not presented here as elegantly as is desired. The below page links may give you the images in a new browser window, but you may need to save the image and reformat the page to get it to print properly on your individual printer. Sorry, we will continue to work with it. Time is rather short.

26 February 2002 - the following letter was sent to various of the local media (if time allows, it will get a larger distribution).

Event #1: The Sheriff's Department, under Bill Kolender , has refused to investigate an official citizen's complaint ...Page 1... Page 2... Page 3... Page 4... Page 5... Page 6... Page 7... where deputies assaulted a citizen for no reason (for you and I as average citizens, this would probably be called felony assault) and California Penal Code (PC832.5)requires them to investigate.

The reason: they decided to fabricate charges against this citizen simply to cover for the deputies' assault as a means to prevent the progress of a lawsuit against the Sheriff for this attack. An honest internal investigation would reveal some embarrassing facts and evidence so they refused to investigate. Pure elegance in simplicity: refuse to investigate and you do not need to deal with the results of an investigation.

This is a well-documented story that includes DA criminal misconduct, also reported, also ignored (see the prosecutor/DA and Grand Jury sections of this site).

Event #2: The Sheriff's Department, under Bill Kolender, after being served with a Subpoena in a federal lawsuit against the San Diego Police Department, acknowledged in documents sworn to be true and filed in U.S. District Court San Diego (Page 1) (Page 2) (Page 3) that they had the evidence material for over 3 weeks after receiving the subpoena then destroyed it apparently because it showed the Sheriff's Department and SDPD in bad light. A citizen's complaint was filed. The Sheriff refused to investigate, making objections to the subpoena that were not previously raised.

Lets see, if this argument flies, there is no case against the Enron and Arthur Anderson employees/executives for destroying evidence by shredding documents. There was no subpoena even issued when that destruction was taking place. Knowledge that the material is of interest as evidence, then destroying it, makes it a crime. Of course, if you are police/prosecutor you claim that nothing you do is a crime (gee, sounds like typical criminal activity: deny, deny, deny).

So, this citizen's personal experience shows Sheriff Kolender's department is 2 out of 2 in refusing to investigate valid complaints of criminal misconduct.

I do not think we need a Sheriff who condones cover-ups of criminal misconduct in his/her department.

Portions of these events have been reported to mainstream news media, but you of course have not seen them in print.

Sheriff’s, a rather unique situation

Facts

Operationally, in California, the Sheriffs as well as the district attorneys work for the Attorney General.

The only County control by the Boards of Supervisors is through the budget which, as most of us realize, is considerable if there is some degree of backbone and motivation (very rare).

Real World

The San Diego County Sheriff, on receiving an official Citizen's Complaint on their own form regarding the felony attack by one of their Deputies on a citizen simply refused to investigate. You just gotta love the simplicity of this: refuse to investigate and you do not need to deal with the embarrassing results of an investigation.

There is a lot to this case, some has been added above on 27feb02, more will be added as time allows.

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