Sheriff’s Fumbling Mars the Image He Tried to Save--His

Brad Gates sells himself to the public as the quintessential lawman, and somehow it works. Despite a decidedly mixed bag of successes and failures, he’s been sheriff since 1974.

For my tastes, that’s way too long for one person to have dominion over local law enforcement, but then, maybe I’ve been reading too many J. Edgar Hoover stories.

What you worry about when someone has power for that long is arrogance. What you hope for when someone has power that long is increased competence.

In the aftermath of the Christmas Day shooting of Sheriff’s Deputy Darryn Robins, however, Gates has managed to create the worst-case scenario by appearing both arrogant and incompetent.

You’d almost have to stay up nights thinking of ways to mishandle a situation as badly as Gates has this one. Perhaps disoriented over the years by the counsel of his phalanx of yes-men and big-money political supporters, Gates apparently doesn’t understand why it matters.

Let us try to explain.

First, the background (although I’m almost compelled to beg your indulgence on details, since the information from the Sheriff’s Department seems to change with the frequency of patrol shifts):

What has come out in dribs and drabs is that Robins, a field-training officer, was shot by another field-training officer while they were showing a trainee how to handle a traffic stop. They held the demonstration in mid-afternoon Christmas Day in a secluded setting behind a theater in Lake Forest. Robins was shot as he sat in the driver’s seat. The Sheriff’s Department is calling it an accident and has followed the standard procedure of referring the matter to the district attorney’s office.

There’s no need to dwell on the obvious first question of why on earth a loaded gun would be used in such a situation. Although he owed it to the public to comment, Gates ran from it. But that was just one of several blunders.

The early information given The Times by one Sheriff’s Department spokesman was that Robins was shot accidentally with his own gun and that no one else was involved. The next day, Sunday, Gates told The Times that the bullet actually had come from another deputy’s weapon. But he wouldn’t give any other details. The department’s press release still didn’t openly acknowledge that another deputy had fired the shot or how the shooting occurred, although it certainly must have had information on both.

Given that we now know there were at least two other deputies present at the time of the shooting, where did the erroneous information come from? Did the deputies give false information? Or, if they accurately described what happened, why did the department release the different version?

Not until Monday night did the Sheriff’s Department officially confirm--after the information leaked out from elsewhere in the ranks--that Deputy Brian Scanlan was the officer who fired the fatal shot.

Adding the final touch to their sloppiness is that the Sheriff’s Department misspelled the names of both Robins and Scanlan in its initial mention of them.

So, why does any of this matter? Here’s a partial list of reasons: Deputies have badges. They have guns. They come into contact with huge sums of money from all sorts of illegal enterprises. They can use physical force against us. They can put us in jail. They can shoot people. They fill out crime reports.

We give them that kind of awesome power in exchange for an implicit promise that we can trust them.

Gates may be rationalizing that he’s protecting his officers. What he’s probably trying to do is protect himself.

Here’s a guy who asks the Board of Supervisors every year for millions of dollars to run a department, fighting every suggestion to trim his operation. Here’s a guy whose department acts as the police force for several Orange County cities. Here’s a guy who occasionally purports to speak out with some moral authority.

So now, all of a sudden, he has to explain why his officers are pulling loaded guns on each other at shopping malls.

Gates panicked. Instead of coming out with the essential details, his instinct was to come out with zero disclosure. Contrast that with incidents involving anonymous citizens, in which law enforcement agencies swiftly and routinely provide at least a working scenario of what happened. For something being described as an accident, the sheriff has raised more suspicion than the clumsiest criminal.

The debate over the department’s policy on training maneuvers will no doubt mushroom in the days ahead, but a more troubling issue is Gates’s credibility.

From the start, he’s acted like the president of a private corporation worried about image--his image--instead of like the manager of a public trust.

Credibility, sheriff.

Even after 19 years in an office you may think you own, it’s all you’ve got.

Dana Parsons’ column appears Wednesday, Friday and Sunday. Readers may reach Parsons by writing to him at The Times Orange County Edition, 1375 Sunflower Ave., Costa Mesa, Calif. 92626, or calling (714) 966-7821.