It’s about time that someone in political leadership took on our
out-of-control district attorney.
It’s about time that someone in political leadership took on our out-of-control district attorney.
On Friday, San Benito County Board of Supervisors Chairman Reb Monaco told the Free Lance that he is fed up with District Attorney John Sarsfield’s antics.
“I’ve had it with him. He’s made accusations that I’m in Los Valientes and threatened me with a subpoena so that I’ve had to get outside counsel,” Monaco told Free Lance reporter Erin Musgrave. Monaco also stood by the statements he made to a Los Angeles legal newspaper last week saying that he’s lost confidence in Sarsfield and that the beleaguered district attorney has lost his support base.
Monaco says he’s speaking as a citizen, but his position as supervisor adds weight to his words. It’s the type of leadership the board has been lacking on this issue. The rest of the supervisors – who, with the exception of Jaime De La Cruz, have been reluctant to criticize Sarsfield – should follow Monaco’s lead.
The full board should place a vote of no confidence in the district attorney and call for his resignation. If he does not resign, they should endorse the recall effort against the prosecutor.
Sarsfield must go, and if a majority of the board leads the charge, there is a good chance he will be ousted in November if the attempted recall makes the ballot. The people of San Benito County deserve no less.
Nothing about our case against the district attorney has changed since we called for him to resign in February. In fact, recent events only strengthen our conviction that Sarsfield is not fit for office.
On Monday, the ballyhooed grand jury indictment of Los Valientes attorney Mike Pekin was tossed out by a judge, adding more proof to the obvious fact that Sarsfield is abusing the justice system to further his own political agenda.
A secret criminal grand jury – led by Sarsfield’s designated prosecutor John Picone – indicted Pekin on five felony counts including obstructing justice, attempting to elicit perjury and filing frivolous lawsuits. All were tossed out Monday by Judge Alan Hedegard.
This is not the first time Sarsfield has headed down a vindictive path to nowhere:
In March, Judge Tom Breen tossed out a felony charge brought by Sarsfield against Maria Guadalupe Araujo, who mistakenly voted twice in the March 2004 District 5 election. Breen said there was no intent to defraud the voting system. What got Araujo, a 37-year-old mother of two, in trouble with the district attorney? She was seen as a supporter of De La Cruz
In December, Sarsfield filed charges against De La Cruz to put him in jail for five years and possibly banning him from political office for life because the supervisor stated he gathered three signatures on nomination papers that he did not. Sarsfield offered to drop the charges if De La Cruz resigned from the board. De La Cruz rightly refused the deal and ended up with a misdemeanor slap on the wrist. It was an obvious politically-motivated attempt by Sarsfield to use the power of his office to subvert an election and keep a perceived “enemy” off the board
And, let’s not forget that an outside investigator, hired to look into sexual harassment allegations leveled against Sarsfield by two women within the district attorney’s office, found that the prosecutor took adverse actions against four of his employees because he thought they had connections to the prior district attorney, according to a pre-mediation brief shown to the Board of Supervisors in October and made public by the Free Lance. Settling the case out of court cost the county $35,000.
Is it any wonder that Monaco’s fed up? We only wonder why the rest of the board – excluding De La Cruz – is willing to tolerate this blatant abuse of authority. The district attorney is a powerful man, but there comes a time when doing what is right must outweigh political considerations.
Clearly, Sarsfield cannot and should not be trusted with the power of his office. His vindictive political agenda should no longer taint San Benito County.
