The investigation into possible prior misconduct within the
county’s district attorney’s office during the past office-holder’s
tenure will include the reported disappearance of an estimated
$10,000 in furniture and equipment.
In addition to possibly reopening as many as 60 felony
convictions dating back to 1984, San Benito County District
Attorney John Sarsfield is asking Sheriff Curtis Hill to
investigate the missing furniture and computer equipment.
The investigation into possible prior misconduct within the county’s district attorney’s office during the past office-holder’s tenure will include the reported disappearance of an estimated $10,000 in furniture and equipment.
In addition to possibly reopening as many as 60 felony convictions dating back to 1984, San Benito County District Attorney John Sarsfield is asking Sheriff Curtis Hill to investigate the missing furniture and computer equipment.
He is also calling into question a number of missing records and other documents.
“The sheriff’s office, at my request, is conducting a criminal investigation into the disappearance of approximately 10 years worth of financial records pertaining to a bad check restitution program that was run out of the DA’s office from roughly 1990 to 2000,” Sarsfield said.
The district attorney’s bad check program offers businesses a way of recouping money owed to them by people who write checks without the money to back them up.
Bad-check writers were placed on probation instead of being sent to jail in exchange for making complete restitution to the businesses that had been defrauded.
Former district attorney Harry Damkar said many of Sarsfield concerns about the missing furniture could have been explained when he took office in January, saying he offered to meet with Sarsfield.
“The majority of the items he discussed in his letter to me were items that were disposed of after our office fire,” Damkar said.
In 1996, the old district attorney’s office, which stood in the same place as the current building, was gutted by fire after an arsonist firebombed the one-story building. For several years, the district attorney’s office was located in the former Wells Fargo Bank building at the corner of Sixth and Monterey streets.
When Damkar and his staff moved into the current district attorney’s office, he said a number of the singed and smoke damaged furniture and equipment that his department had been using were discarded.
“Many of these items had been surplused because they were no longer necessary, such as bookshelves, which we no longer needed because we had an electronic law library,” Damkar said. “We also disposed of the law books, and we also got rid of a lot of filing cabinets because we got a whole new file room.”
Damkar said all of these actions were taken with the knowledge and approval of the San Benito County Board of Supervisors.
He said as computer technology improved, his office updated to keep pace and to streamline operations.
“We got a whole new computer system in 2002, and all the old computers were removed from our office by a computer person,” Damkar said. “We had other equipment that had been damaged and broken over the years. If those didn’t make it onto an inventory somehow, then that was an error on our part. But there was never anything to my knowledge that was stolen or taken from our office.”
