Clockwise from Top Left: Linda Ortiz, Adan Mendoza, Manuel Anaya and Leonard Romero.
Candidates running to be Santa Fe County's next sheriff will carry out duties that have remained mostly consistent since 1846, when provisional governor Charles Bent installed a sheriff for the newly created Santa Fe County as part of the United States' colonization of this region.
Like sheriffs in Medieval England and, later, the American colonies, the Santa Fe County sheriff's office enforces law and court orders in non-urban areas. The county encompasses 1,911 square miles, from Española city limits in the north to the town of Edgewood in the south.
Deputies enforce civil actions by the district court, including orders to enforce the legal outcomes of civil disputes and writs allowing deputies to seize property and remove people from homes. Several deputies also patrol the district and magistrate courts.
The four Democratic sheriff candidates running in the June primary to succeed incumbent Robert Garcia tell SFR deputies should take more action in non-punitive areas like mental health and opioid abuse, and should build intelligence relationships with people in remote areas of the county.
Three out of four also want more deputies, but offered no empirical evidence why they're needed.
Campaign finance records show that Adan Mendoza, who retired with the rank of major from the sheriff's office in 2016, is far ahead of the other three candidates in electoral contributions, reaching $15,636 as of an April 9 report. Mendoza has received small donations from former City Councilor Ron Trujillo and his wife Amber, as well as current Sheriff Robert Garcia and wife Christina, and current Undersheriff Ron Madrid.
In February, Mendoza also posted a $5,000 combined contribution from his parents, Gloria and Samuel Mendoza. Last year, Gloria Mendoza became the face of a politically conservative group in Santa Fe whose public reputation was ruined after she and others posted racist and abrasive things online.
In an interview, Mendoza says he wants the sheriff's department to take a greater role in stemming opioid abuse, and wants to start a version of the city's Law Enforcement Assisted Diversion program in the county. Deputies began to carry the anti-overdose medication naloxone in 2014 at his urging.
"I'm proud of that accomplishment because the sheriff's office did something that was not enforcement-based," Mendoza tells SFR.
He also wants to ask the county for an additional 20-30 deputies to saturate rural areas, but acknowledges no objective study has been done to determine whether more are actually needed.
FBI statistics show there were 111 violent crimes in 2016, higher than 57 in 2014 but nearer to 94 and 95 in 2012 and 2010, respectively. Data from the sheriff's office shows burglary crimes fell by almost 40 percent over the last nine years.
Manuel Anaya says he has taken a leave of absence from his job as investigator for the Public Regulation Commission to run for sheriff. A former Santa Fe city police officer as well as a former sheriff's deputy, Anaya says he's a proponent of officers introducing themselves to residents in their downtime. He's recorded $2,712.42 in contributions so far.
"If there's no calls for service, then stop by at a residence and introduce yourself," Anaya says of his approach. "I did it for so many years. And that's probably why a lot of people know me."
On opioids, Anaya says he would model a new program off the Safe Passage program in Lee County, Illinois, which encourages people seeking treatment to bring drugs and drug paraphernalia to the sheriff's office for disposal.
Leonardo Romero says if he's elected to the job, he would also want the county to hire several dozen new sheriff's deputies so there would be more of them "interact[ing] with the public as much as possible and hopefully portray a very positive image to the youth."
Romero, a former sheriff's deputy whose career also includes a decades-long stint as an SFPD officer and a year and a half with Pojoaque Tribal Police, sees young people as both an educational frontline against opioids and a recruiting pool for future deputies. He recorded $1,400 in contributions.
Concerning education on drug use, Romero says, "I think we need to emphasize [it] a little more, perhaps branch into the schools. Because a lot of school kids now are getting involved in opioids, cocaine, stuff like that."
As for how he envisions his deputies interacting with the community, he suggests that for "one day a week, [deputies] interact with public and businesses and find out what's going on in that particular area of the county."
Linda Ortiz, who ran for sheriff in 2006, also believes deputies should have more of a presence throughout the county. The retired sheriff's deputy has raised $4,195.12 for the race.
"If the community can help us out by being our eyes and ears out there, we'd be able to handle calls a lot quicker, our officers need to get out in rural areas and associate with our community," Ortiz says.
In addition to asking the county for more deputies, Ortiz says she wants to create a mental health division that would provide "across-the-board training for the entire department to manage [a] person with mental health issues" and designate two deputies per shift to respond to service calls involving mental crises.
With no Republican seeking the office in the November general election, the winner of the June 5 primary is the presumptive sheriff-elect.
Democratic Party of Santa Fe County Sheriff Candidate Forum
6 pm Wednesday April 18. Free.
Center for Progress and Justice,
1420 Cerrillos Road,
467-8514.
Editor's note: This story originally stated that the Democratic primary race for county sheriff was June 8. In fact, it is June 5. We regret this error.
