🚀 go-pugleaf

This why you should not reelect incumbent Sheriff Charles Gillingham
in next Tuesday's election:

First, when you look at these endorsements in favor of Gillingham in
the local papers, from the Mercury News to Metro, the least that you
can say is they're rather tepid and lack enthusiam, and can be
summarized as follows:

   "Gillingham and Tiano are just as bad as one another. But since
we've had Gillingham for the last few years and no major catastrophy
happened during his tenure, we see no reason why we shouldn't
reelect him for yet another term [without catastrophy]."

In other words, the best that the media have to say in favor of
Gillingham is that there's nothing particularly bad that happened
while he was there. Some endorsement!

What the public doesn't know, and will never know because of the
news blackout exerted by Gillingham's people in the Sheriff
Department, is that Gillingham has been involved personally in the
past few months in a massive coverup of the Internal Affairs
scandal. "Nothing until after the elections," he kept repeating.

Remember the Watergate coverup, anyone? Nixon never condoned or
encouraged the Watergate break-in, he didn't even know about it. He
learned about it several weeks after the fact. Yet when he was asked
to help to cover up what his people had done, he did not hesitate to
help. You know the rest of the story...

When a citizen's complaint for embezzlement (see Penal Code section
832.5) was filed on January 3 against the Chief of Stanford Police
(Marvin Herrington), a unit of the Sheriff Dept., Gillingham didn't
know about it. When Lts. Donald Ziess and Ronald Clark of Internal
Affairs suppressed the investigation for over 3 months, Gillingham
still knew nothing about it.

But when Gillingham learned about it in the middle of April, that's
when he got involved big time into covering up the story, since the
fraud at Stanford involves the president of the university himself,
Gehrardt Kasper. Except that Gillingham is a lot smarter than his
Internal Affairs people, and he suppressed the investigation while
smarting pretending that it was going full speed ahead. 

The result is, after over five months, the fraud still has not been
investigated, the millions are gone, and Gillingham isn't going to
let Internal Affairs investigate until after the elections when it's
too late - Stanford has a lot of clout and he is not eager to upset
his powerful friends over there.

The result is, the public isn't going to learn anytime soon where
all the money went because the investigation was stopped by
Gillingham. "Nothing until after the elections!"

If you vote for Gillingham, you're voting to perpetuate a system
where investigations are suppressed and citizens' complaints covered
up. One day, there's going to be a big time, Rodney King-style
beating in Santa Clara County, and the Internal Affairs complaint
will be covered up as usual, and then there'll a riot and buildings
set on fire, and then you'll be wondering why you ever voted to
reelect Gillingham. 

Think about it Tuesday. Penal Code section 832.5 "citizens
complaints" requires a police agency to investigate such complaints,
precisely to weed out these few officers who abuse their powers and
give the police a bad name. It's these officers that Gillingham is
actively protecting when he covers up an Internal Affairs
investigation. He is the one who gives the police a bad name.