Ex-Sheriff Gore Serving on the Ethics Board is Like Having a Fox Guarding the Hen House

On Friday Mayor Todd Gloria announced his appointment of former County Sheriff William Gore to the city’s mostly dormant ethics board. This nomination (yet to be approved by the City Council) has got insider/follow-the-money politics written all over it.

Either Todd Gloria has joined the (as described by Politico) “seismic shift to the right”, as indicated by San Francisco Mayor London Breed’s recently announced plan* to drug test all recipients of county-funded welfare. or he’s being blackmailed by some element of the law enforcement industrial complex.

 *(A simple Google search would have told her that states who’ve instituted such policies have found them expensive and ineffective, in addition to raising ethical questions. I don’t think she actually cares.)

No matter how you look at it, the choice of William Gore is a bad one.

Were it not for the all-too-frequent lapses in carrying out his duties to protect the public and his record as an ideologue, Gore’s appointment could maybe be considered a political move in response to recent negative media coverage about the ethics board. You know, something-something about the mayor being even-handed…blah,blah.

But you simply can’t ignore Gore’s track record, starting with the smarmy process putting him in charge of the County’s law enforcement agency. In 2009, then-Sheriff Bill Kolender announced his retirement due to the illness of his wife, and the then-morbid County Supervisors appointed Gore –a former FBI agent with three years as undersheriff– to the position.

Via 2010 election coverage on KPBS:

• If there is an establishment candidate, it is Gore, who has raised more than twice as much money as either Duffy or La Suer. Gore has the endorsement of Bill Kolender and a majority of the county board. But Gore's opponents in the race say he doesn't have the background for the job. La Suer and Duffy say they understand the day-to-day needs of the department because they worked their way up the ranks. La Suer also cites Gore's lack of experience running a jail.

• "Ask yourself if this man is qualified to be Sheriff of this county. The answer has to be no," said La Suer.

• La Suer goes on to call Gore's appointment to the office of sheriff a backroom deal based on personal relationships. Gore's father and Bill Kolender were close associates when they both worked for the San Diego Police Department. Gore responds by saying the board of supervisors appointed him sheriff, not Bill Kolender. 

Sheriff Gore ran the office for 12 years, resigning just prior to the release of a California State Auditor’s report painting an ugly picture of his management of San Diego jails. 

Here’s a snip from the Auditor’s cover letter:

• From 2006 through 2020, 185 people died in San Diego County’s jails—one of the highest totals among counties in the State. The high rate of deaths in San Diego County’s jails compared to other counties raises concerns about underlying systemic issues with the Sheriff’s Department’s policies and practices. In fact, our review identified deficiencies with how the Sheriff’s Department provides care for and protects incarcerated individuals, which likely contributed to in‑custody deaths. These deficiencies related to its provision of medical and mental health care and its performance of visual checks to ensure the safety and health of individuals in its custody.

• Furthermore, the Sheriff’s Department has not consistently taken meaningful action when such deaths have occurred. The department’s reviews of in‑custody deaths have been insufficient and have not consistently led to significant corrective action. In addition, the Citizens’ Law Enforcement Review Board (CLERB)—a citizen‑governed board approved by San Diego County voters to restore public confidence in county law enforcement—has failed to provide effective, independent oversight of in‑custody deaths. CLERB also failed to investigate nearly one‑third of the deaths of incarcerated individuals in the past 15 years, which means that dozens of deaths have not been subject to a key form of review outside of the Sheriff’s Department.

There were other what-should-have-been scandals along the way, starting with (then-undersheriff) Gore’s leadership of an investigation into a Sheriff’s Department raid on a fundraiser for Democratic congressional candidate Francine Busby. (It is likely in retrospect that the raid was precipitated by noise complaint by a neighbor who’d earlier yelled anti-gay slurs at the attendees.)

Via the Union-Tribune:

• Neighbors on three sides of the house said yesterday there wasn't much noise from the party. One man said he slept through it.

• “We didn't hear anything until the sheriff came, with eight patrol cars and a helicopter,” said Natasha Cortina, 43, who said she and her two children were home with the windows open.

• Hugh Elliott, 53, who lives closest to the house, said he heard a deputy's radio, then arguing, coughing, crying and finally everyone spilling outside as the smell of pepper spray drifted over his back fence.

County District Attorney Bonnie Dumanis declined to file charges, throwing the Sheriff’s Department a bone by unilaterally declaring the two people arrested were guilty of interfering with a police officer. 

During the COVID-caused eviction moratorium Gore had a neighbor evicted, then refused to open up an investigation.

Once in office, Sheriff Gore’s tenure was marred with scandals, the most disturbing of which was the high jail mortality rate. Journalist Kelly Davis (and later, Jeff McDonald) kept a close eye on the jail, and their reporting on neglect and brutality was largely confirmed by the State Auditor.

Here’s Davis, writing on other items in Gore’s reign at Bolt Magazine:

• He staunchly defended a sheriff’s captain who was investigated for illegal gun sales and later sent to prison. Under Gore, multiple deputies were convicted of sexual misconduct; one of them, Richard Fischer, was also involved in the suffocation death of a young father whose family won an $85 million jury verdict in March. 

• Another deputy, Jaylen Fleer, pleaded guilty to sexually assaulting four underage girls. Last October, a jury found deputy Earle Yamamoto guilty of rape and child molestation. And, last fall, Gore was featured in a controversial video that claimed a deputy had overdosed on fentanyl after touching the drug—something that experts say is impossible. 

Local and national media initially fell for Gore’s attempt to portray his officer as a victim of dangerous drugs. He later admitted that the officer had not been tested for exposure. Medical experts refuted his claims.

Other law enforcement agencies repeating this performative pity story have become so common that the Justice Department has produced a training video seeking to dispel notions about fentanyl exposure.

My point here is that former-Sheriff Bill Gore’s personal ethics and past association with questionable practices should make him an unlikely choice to serve on an ethics board. 

If you think about his conduct for a moment, you’ll realize it fits in nicely with the blind-eye-to-corruption and connection with misleading narratives prevalent throughout the administration and campaign staff of former Donald Trump.

Gore’s conduct speaks to the real moral stench threatening to undermine our standards of rule of law and by extension, our democracy. Why in hell is the mayor playing along with the Trumpanista traitors?