John Mutz told the Windsor Democratic Club on Thursday, Feb. 22 that he believes the Sonoma County Sheriff’s Department needs to change its culture. He says law enforcement is rooted in a status quo that has negative impacts, not only on citizens but also on the officers themselves.
Mutz, the third in the club series of presentations by the candidates (the other two are Mark Essick and Ernesto Olivares), said that the impacts of the sheriff’s office on many other areas of our society are too important to ignore. By urging deputies to open themselves to training and assistance from outsiders, we can impact education, mental health issues, homelessness, domestic abuse and immigrants, to name just a few areas.
Mutz, who rose through the ranks of the Los Angeles Police Department to become station commander, says he was asked to implement his new form of policing after the Rodney King riots in 1992. He says he was successful in getting relations to improve between the police and the community they served, in mostly Latino and immigrant areas.
Unfortunately, a new police chief came in and told him that they needed to go back to the old ways, where quotas and numbers of arrests or how long they could extend sentences were the measure of success. So Mutz left the department, becoming a consultant nationwide. He and his family moved to Sonoma County six years ago, never intending that he would go back into law enforcement work directly.
After the Andy Lopez shooting and the retirement of Sheriff Freitas, many members of our community urged Mutz to run for office, knowing about his background in the theory and practice of quality police work.
Mutz believes that police officers and sheriff’s deputies are best served by openness and transparency. This allows them to become exposed to criticism and complaint, but it also allows them to grow as humans. Through actively soliciting input from the community, the sheriff’s department gets to change to meet the community’s needs. They also gradually increase trust within the community.
Currently, our sheriff’s department, like most other law enforcement agencies, relies on the status quo to protect the agency and close ranks. Failures become hidden. The system continues. Even the attempt by the county to establish an oversight agency could not use the word “oversight.” The sheriff opposed it so the county dropped it. The new agency became IOLERO which stands for Independent Office for Law Enforcement and Outreach.
Since our sheriff is independent of the county board of supervisors in everything except budget, he/she alone determines policy and procedures. The sheriff must welcome change. Otherwise it can’t take place. And the voters are the only ones who can hire and monitor the sheriff, unless he/she invites oversight in.
For more information about John Mutz and his campaign, go to johnmutzforsonomasheriff.com.
The next club speaker will be Maureen McSorley on immigration issues, on Thursday, March 22. For more information, see windsordemocrats.org.
Rick Massell is a member of the Windsor Democratic Club.
