Just when is the sad day for O.C. law enforcement?

Who said the following in September 2004?

“I am deeply disappointed that someone I placed in a position of trust may have misused their position and is now accused of serious crimes. If these allegations are true, it is a sad day for law enforcement.”

None other than Orange County Sheriff Mike Carona, talking about his then-No. 2 man, George Jaramillo.

Assuming there was an ounce of sincerity in those words, maybe Carona understands how we feel about him. Especially now that he’s decided to return to his job Monday after taking two months off to do who knows what. Ponder his fate? Rally his deputies? Work the public?

Representing the face of local law enforcement while facing federal corruption charges is unseemly enough. But drawing a paycheck on top of it ($200,000 a year) strikes me as giving the public the middle finger.

I hear you: Carona is innocent until proven guilty.

I agree completely.

I’ll go you one better. I hope he’s innocent. The only downside to that would be that our federal prosecutors are either incompetent or downright reckless when it comes to asking for indictments. To the contrary, though, I assume they’re pretty careful before asking grand juries to return a seven-count felony indictment against a sitting sheriff, charging him with using his office for financial gain and witness-tampering.

But, in an odd way, it’d be refreshing to learn that the sheriff isn’t a crook.

As I’ve argued since the day the indictments came down last October, Carona should resign as a show of respect for the office he’s held since 1999. Then he can try to clear his name.

Instead, he thumbs his nose at us. As if he’d let any of his top brass stay on the job if they were indicted. Come to think of it, isn’t this the same guy who wanted to bust in rank a lieutenant who had the audacity to run against him in 2006 and suggest that Carona’s administration had been scandal-plagued?

What makes Carona’s defiance all the more unwelcome is that calls for him to step down -- or, at minimum, remain on leave of absence -- have come from inside and outside the Sheriff’s Department, including some from people who have supported him in the past. In other words, there’s no political conspiracy here.

Carona and his supporters have argued that he shouldn’t resign because he was elected and is innocent. Even they would have to concede, however, he wasn’t elected while under federal indictment.

How quickly could we throw together a “vote of no confidence” election?

I speculated a couple months ago that Carona would have copped a plea by now. In hindsight, that was dumb, given that such things usually depend on lots of factors that outsiders don’t know anything about. Such as, how long does it take his attorneys to acquire and sift through the evidence against him? How strong are the witnesses? Will the two others charged in the indictment (Carona’s wife and his former mistress) also hang tough, or will they start looking for deals in exchange for testimony? What kind of plea offers, if any, will remain in play?

Those things can take time. For now, Carona is facing a June trial.

With his knack for working an audience, maybe he thinks he can win over members of a jury. Or, at least, some of them.

But as the calendar pages fall away and the U.S. attorney’s office shows increasing impatience, defendants typically throw in the towel. Especially when they’re looking at significant prison time, as Carona would be.

If this case makes it to trial, it would be a major upset. But superb theater.

As potentially bleak as Carona’s future may be, he at least had a chance to be noble and step aside.

I wonder what it would be like to be a deputy in a department where my boss was charged with federal crimes. Not exactly a morale-booster.

And the thing is, only a select number of people know if Mike Carona violated our trust or not.

He’s obviously one of them. And if he knows that he was corrupted but is still hanging on to his office, he deserves to have his own words thrown back in his face:

It is a sad day for law enforcement.

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Dana Parsons’ column appears Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays. He can be reached at (714) 966-7821 or at dana.parsons@latimes.com. An archive of his recent columns is at www.latimes.com/parsons.