Sheriff Curtis Hill has sent a letter to the Board of
Supervisors denying criminal accusations related to his department
in a private investigative report alleging corruption in San Benito
County.
Hill’s county memorandum to the Board of Supervisors
– dated Tuesday, Nov. 4 – responds to recent comments by
Autoworks owner Don Kelley and other assertions in the
investigative report. The report alleges work conducted by San
Benito Tire for county vehicle maintenance was severely
negligent.
Sheriff Curtis Hill has sent a letter to the Board of Supervisors denying criminal accusations related to his department in a private investigative report alleging corruption in San Benito County.
Hill’s county memorandum to the Board of Supervisors – dated Tuesday, Nov. 4 – responds to recent comments by Autoworks owner Don Kelley and other assertions in the investigative report. The report alleges work conducted by San Benito Tire for county vehicle maintenance was severely negligent.
In the memo, a copy of which was given to the Free Lance, Hill stated the Sheriff’s Department cars never endangered officers’ lives; no parts were ever taken into evidence; Supervisor Richard Scagliotti’s influence did not prevent an investigation of the vehicle service; and no officers have complained about the work since August 2002.
But a source close to the investigation pointed out several contradictions in the letter – deviations from proof of collected evidence and statements by Sheriff’s employees.
Attorney Harry Damkar, who represents San Benito Tire owner Bob Cain, attended Tuesday’s Board meeting to defend his client during the public comment period.
Damkar said he did not solicit the letter from Hill, who has declined public comment on the matter since the issue arose three weeks ago. After the Board meeting, Damkar said, a supervisor directed him to obtain a copy of the letter.
“My client (Cain) has kept silent for the first couple weeks when this information was first being bantered about in front of the Board,” Damkar said. “It’s important to his professional reputation to clear the record.”
On Wednesday, Hill did not return several phone calls to the Free Lance.
Kelley and his lawyer Michael Pekin, who also represents the anonymous group financing the investigation, have been denied two requests that the Board consider revoking the contract with San Benito Tire.
Regardless, even though it was not on the agenda, Kelley and Pekin attended a meeting Oct. 28 and spoke during public comment.
“Suddenly on Nov. 4, the matter is not agendized, but a department head (Hill) addresses the Board in a way that cannot be examined by anybody,” Pekin said. “What does that say for Sheriff Hill’s credibility?”
Kelley responded to the letter: “Once again, we get left out in the dark.”
Kelley worked on the Sheriff’s Department vehicles during several interim months between the two most recent contracts with San Benito Tire.
While Kelley alleges the cars were carelessly repaired, the investigative report also alleges Cain’s business relationship with Scagliotti led to the county awarding the three-year contract to San Benito Tire in August 2002.
The four-term supervisor and Cain had been negotiating to move the shop to a Scagliotti-owned property in Hollister, according to city records. Scagliotti did not abstain from voting and motioned for the approval, according to meeting minutes from Aug. 27.
Furthermore, Pekin and Kelley said the Sheriff’s letter skirted the truth. Hill, Pekin argues, acknowledged a potential problem by transferring service for the department’s 22-vehicle fleet to Kelley.
While Hill’s letter asserts the department never took car parts into storage as potential evidence, Kelley pointed out reactions expressed by several Sheriff’s officers who witnessed allegedly defective parts taken off vehicles.
Damkar, meanwhile, has not seen the investigative report, and he has not interviewed the three officers, he said.
“I don’t think you could print what they were saying,” Kelley said, referring to Lt. Mike Covell, Sgt. Scott Becker and Officer Genene Proffitt. “They were pretty upset and appalled.”
The investigative report includes six cases of alleged corruption in county government. Released in mid-October, it was commissioned by residents calling themselves Los Valientes and mostly focuses on Scagliotti. His alleged influence on the San Benito Tire contract is one of the six cases.
Hill’s memo came three weeks after District Attorney John Sarsfield announced the allegations included in the report did not warrant criminal prosecution.
The source, however, pointed out invoices showing Kelley conducted work on Sheriff’s department vehicles – repairs that were billed by San Benito Tire shortly before Autoworks’ involvement. The invoices are included in the report and show the two shops charging the county for the same work on identical cars.
During four years in the 1990s when Kelley had the county contract, he never saw parts labeled, photographed and taken into storage by law enforcement employees, he said.
“Do you think if you went to the (California) Highway Patrol,” Pekin said, “they would have parts stored somewhere?”
The CHP bureau in Gilroy, incidentally, does not store parts, according to Terry Mayes, a public affairs officer. Neither does the Santa Clara Sheriff’s Department, according Lt. Larry Lopez of the San Martin branch.
Damkar said Cain wishes he could have seen the parts placed at the San Benito County Sheriff’s Department – “to determine whether or not something was defective.”
But as Proffitt said in a previous interview with the Free Lance, the department disposed the parts during a cleaning out period – an action Hill defended in his letter as, “the normal course of business.”
“It would have been nice to have seen the parts,” Damkar said.
