Chief Deputy Announces Intention to Seek Sheriff’s Post

It’s been six months since Ventura County Sheriff Larry Carpenter publicly said he would retire at the end of his term in 1998, and the man Carpenter has pushed to succeed him officially announced Thursday his intention to seek the job.

Chief Deputy Robert Brooks, 46, said he would make the announcement during a rally next week in front of the Ventura County Government Center while flanked by Carpenter and other supporters.

Although Carpenter told The Times in September he was not ruling out running for reelection if someone mounted a serious challenge to Brooks, he said Thursday that would probably not happen.

“That possibility is obviously much smaller since the last time we spoke,” Carpenter said from his Fillmore home. “Bob has done things to firm up his campaign. He has gotten a lot of endorsements, a lot of quality endorsements and no one has surfaced to mount a challenge.”

So far, no one else has come forward, and Brooks--who now runs the sheriff’s East County Police Services Division--has already lined up several key endorsements.

“It would be very difficult to mount a serious challenge,” Carpenter said. “I think Bob has really come into his own in campaigning . . . and I’m sure he is both pleased and humbled by his endorsements.”

Along with Carpenter, Dist. Atty. Michael D. Bradbury has also come in to support Brooks.

“I think Bob Brooks is a fine man and would make a fine Sheriff,” Bradbury said in a prepared statement released Thursday.

Brooks said his early campaign strategy has been to meet and talk with representatives from various members of the criminal justice community.

“I’ve been going at it in a sort of low-key approach,” the 23-year department veteran said. “I’ve been fairly secure with the decision since probably August, but I’ve gone out testing the strength of support and to find out if I’ve got a solid footing to run.”

While quietly meeting top officials within the district attorney’s office, public defender’s office and the union representing sheriff’s deputies, Brooks said he also has not heard of any potential challengers.

The deputies’ union voted to endorse Brooks more than a month ago, said Sgt. Dave Williams, president of the 740-member Ventura County Deputy Sheriff’s Assn.

Williams, who said he has known and worked with Brooks for more than 18 years, said the union decided to make the endorsement early because it respected the way Carpenter had run the department and thought Brooks would continue that approach.

“I have immense admiration for the sheriff and I would like to see him stay, but if we have to lose someone like [Carpenter] I think Bob is the right person to take his place,” Williams said.

Last September, Carpenter made his first public statements about retiring at the end of his term in 1998, when he will be 52. And in almost the same breath he said he was mobilizing his political resources to push for Brooks to take over his job.

Carpenter assumed his current post in 1992, inheriting the job when former Sheriff John V. Gillespie retired.

Gillespie had brokered a deal to have the Board of Supervisors appoint then-Undersheriff Carpenter to finish the remainder of his term.

Carpenter, who won election in 1994 to an additional four years in office, has worked for the Sheriff’s Department for more than 30 years.

Carpenter said last fall that while he would place his full support behind Brooks, he would finish his term and let the voters ultimately make the decision on who succeeds him.

Brooks has set up a campaign committee, but campaign laws prevent it from raising money until next year, he said.

“We’re going to have to continue the sort of low-key campaign that we’ve been doing,” Brooks said.

Brooks, who has lived in Thousand Oaks since 1961, said if elected as sheriff he would help usher the department into the new millennium by pushing for new technology and more efficient ways of policing.

Brooks married his high school sweetheart, Debbie, who works part time as the children’s ministry director at Sonrise Christian Fellowship, an evangelical Christian Church in Simi Valley. He has two sons, Jeff, 21, who manages a computer business in Orange County, and Brian, a 17-year-old high school student.

Brooks joined the department at 23 and quickly rose through the ranks. He now supervises the East County Sheriff’s Station, overseeing 212 people and about half the county’s street patrols.