We were disappointed but not surprised by the letter from Sheriff Bob Brooks in the April 22 Acorn . He has witnessed his handpicked candidate suffer a humiliating lack of endorsements from the county’s top law enforcement officers—except for internal department heads who are obliged to follow his orders. Leaders in the community, rank and file deputies, firefighters, elected officials in county government and former Ventura County Sheriff Larry Carpenter, who is Brooks’ former boss, all have publicly endorsed Geoff Dean.

One of the county civil service commissioners, who knows the facts behind Dean’s unjustified firing by Brooks, took public issue with comments in a letter published in a local daily newspaper from a department secretary who recently chose to have selective memory of what had transpired regarding an internal department incident that most people now view as a trivial matter.

Certainly it wasn’t a violation of law that justifies the sheriff’s attempted character assassination of Dean in his letter to the Acorn .

It appears that Sheriff Brooks was compelled to say something as damaging as possible about Cmdr. Dean, no matter how politically motivated it obviously was.

We hope that voters will reject this desperate attempt to further politicize the position of Ventura County Sheriff.

With due respect to Dep. Chief Dennis Carpenter, our community deserves an upstanding and forthright leader and has that opportunity. On June 8 join us and many fellow citizens, elected leaders and professional law enforcement officials and firefighters in voting for Geoff Dean.
Sharon and Michael Broggie
Thousand Oaks

Michael Broggie is a mem ber of the National Lodge of the Fraternal Order of Police, a former certified trainer with the Police Self-Defense Training Association and was a special deputy with the San Bernardino County Sheriff ’s Department.