The San Mateo County Board of Supervisors on Aug. 16 requested the state attorney general for an inquiry into the prison investigation and prosecution of an Indiana businessman who makes 1966-era Batmobiles on the behest of an Atherton resident.
The request to investigate each San Mateo County Sheriff Carlos Bolanos and the San Mateo County District Attorney’s Office comes virtually one month after Mark Racop’s enterprise in Logansport, Indiana, was raided by county deputy sheriffs on the behest of Bolanos with help from the Cass County sheriff, who offered one deputy of his personal to function a liaison.
Last week, journalist Dan Noyes of ABC7 reported that the Board of Supervisors deliberate to ask the California Attorney General Rob Bonta to investigate the sheriff’s workplace’s actions within the Batmobile raid. The board’s letter, despatched to the Attorney General on Aug. 16, calls on Bonta to use his authority to investigate each the sheriff’s and the District Attorney’s workplaces.
In the letter, the Board of Supervisors point out that the raid, which has acquired quite a lot of public consideration and scrutiny, falls beneath the purview Bonta’s oversight authority beneath the California Constitution. Section 13 of the state structure grants the AG authority over the state’s “county sheriffs and district attorneys in matters pertaining to the duties of their respective offices,” wrote Mike Callagy, county government, within the letter to Bonta.
On July 19, 4 San Mateo County deputies from the Vehicle Theft Task Force together with one deputy from Cass County, Indiana, raided Racop’s enterprise, Fiberglass Freaks with the intent to arrest and extradite him again to California, in accordance to Bolanos. Deputies searched Racop’s storage and seized two file folders. They then took Racop again to the Cass County Sheriff’s Office facility. According to Bolanos, Racop was not handcuffed, nor was he ever incarcerated, due to his well being.
In an inner four-page memo, Bolanos gave his workers an in depth account of what led up to the raid of Racop’s enterprise. He additionally describes the raid itself, how his deputies acquired the search warrants, what they seized and the extent of involvement of the Cass County Sheriff’s Office.
In the memo, Bolanos stated his deputies “did nothing wrong, and I stand with them and support them.”
“While it is true that I asked that this case be investigated, and I am acquainted with the victim as I am with many residents of San Mateo County, I would make the same request of our investigators whenever a potential crime of this nature came to my attention,” Bolanos stated within the memo.
Asked in regards to the supervisors’ letter to Bonta, Bolanos stated: “I stand by my comments in my memorandum attached to the letter to the attorney general’s office. The sheriff’s office properly investigated, concurrently with the district attorney’s office, a major financial crime reported by a resident of the county.”
In an interview, District Attorney Stephen Wagstaffe stated he wouldn’t touch upon any current updates or findings within the case, saying that he hoped to have all of the information and make a closing determination about whether or not to pursue the case by the top of August or early September.
He additionally declined to touch upon whether or not he felt his prosecutor had made the precise name — and whether or not, had he been the one to resolve, he would have filed the preliminary fees.
“Great question, not a chance I’d answer it,” he stated, including, “I will be a professor with her when this is done, to say the least, and do a little bit of educating.”
Wagstaffe stated he first heard in regards to the Batmobile case a few 12 months in the past, when the Atherton Police Department got here to his division on a criticism from Sam Anagnostou. Anagnostou, an Atherton resident, accused Racop of “theft by false pretense” after the $210,000 Batmobile that he ordered was delayed. The carmaker has stated that Anagnostou didn’t full a fee and stopped speaking for a number of months.
Wagstaffe’s workplace, nevertheless, declined to prosecute, saying the matter was finest suited to civil courtroom. Anagnostou did sue Racop, however that case was dismissed on a technicality, in accordance to Racop.
Anagnostou, who performed in an grownup basketball league that Wagstaffe refereed, straight made contact with Wagstaffe, who then requested his secretary to refer the criticism to his shopper fraud unit. The division in the end declined to take the case, and Wagstaffe stated that was the final he heard of it for the following few months.
Anagnostou’s realty company additionally made a one-time donation of $1,000 to Wagstaffe’s reelection marketing campaign final summer time, although Wagstaffe stated he did not find out about it then.
In the spring, when Anagnostou referred to as Bolanos to ask him to investigate the case, the sheriff assigned his workforce to investigate Racop. They searched financial institution information and electronic mail correspondence. One of Wagstaffe’s prosecutors determined there was sufficient possible trigger to pursue the case and issued an arrest warrant.
“We’ve had three judges look at it. Two judges looked at the search warrant and said, ‘Yep, there is probable cause to believe that a crime has been committed, and these records would be evidence of it,'” he stated. A 3rd choose reviewed and accredited the fees and issued an arrest warrant.
Wagstaffe himself stated he had solely heard “a little bit” in regards to the case earlier than leaving for trip on the finish of July.
“I got back involved in it when I got back, two weeks ago … It sort of had exploded by then,” he stated. “When I got back two Thursdays ago, I sat my prosecutor down with myself and my chief deputy, and said, ‘I want an A to Z. Tell me what this case is about.'”
Supervisor Warren Slocum expressed concern over the dealing with of the case — and its implications for the way justice is carried out in San Mateo County.
“The bottom line — I have a lot of questions that I’ve been asking myself, especially after reading the sheriff’s explanation to us as to the facts of the case,” he stated.
Slocum stated that the board was within the strategy of hiring a retired choose to conduct an unbiased investigation into the matter. He declined to title the choose however stated they hoped to finalize the contract within the subsequent day or two.
Addressing issues raised that Anagnostou was given particular remedy by each the county sheriff’s and the district attorney’s workplaces, Wagstaffe was fast to defend his prosecutors.
“I do respect that concern,” he stated. “But in terms of my office, I know, whatever decision was made, right or wrong, it wasn’t done because of who the victim was.
“Everybody deserves to be handled the identical,” he added. “That’s what we try for right here. And I’m sorry there’s a picture on the market with the general public that that hasn’t occurred.”
Slocum said he “respectfully disagreed” with Wagstaffe that anyone would have received the same legal treatment by the District Attorney’s Office.
“It looks like — and I haven’t got all of the details — there are two techniques of justice right here: one for a rich related individual,” he said, and one for everyone else. “If you are a small individual struggling in North Fair Oaks you get one other model of that (justice system).”
In light of recent events, Slocum mentioned the possibility of establishing a civilian oversight committee, something he said the county Board of Supervisors planned to discuss and vote on in September. Though he doubted that oversight of the sheriff’s office would have prevented the Batmobile investigation, he wondered whether future incidents might be avoided “by advantage of getting a proactive have a look at insurance policies and procedures.”
“These newest occasions form of cemented the significance of doing this work,” he added.
Nancy Goodban, executive director of Fixin’ San Mateo County, said that if a civilian oversight committee had been in place, the Batmobile raid would definitely be under investigation. Fixin’ San Mateo County is a local grassroots organization whose goal is to create civilian oversight of the sheriff’s office and establish a county inspector general.
“It’s the sort of incident that calls out for oversight and exhibits how vital civilian oversight could be and provides the Board of Supervisors an additional set of ears and eyes,” Goodban said. “Right now the Board of Supervisors has requested the attorney general, which can be unbiased, and in any other case you are coping with the interior sheriff’s division. So having unbiased oversight would actually assist the county, would assist the Board of Supervisors, residents and taxpayers get a greater understanding of independently what is going on on.”
The Board of Supervisors first became aware of the Batmobile incident after several residents spoke out during public comment at the Aug. 2 meeting. Residents asked the board to investigate both sheriff’s and the district attorney’s actions. Board President Don Horsley asked Callagy to look into it and report back.
“I simply need to make it clear that investigative priorities and prosecutorial selections are usually not actually the purview of the Board of Supervisors,” Horsley said during the meeting. “If that have been the case, we might be accused of political prosecutions or political investigations, and in order that’s why there is a distinct separation of powers. And so the powers to do investigative priorities or set investigative priorities actually rests with the sheriff. And prosecutorial selections clearly rests with the district attorney.”