There’s more soap opera developments with the San Mateo County Sheriff’s Office, with two county judges sending a letter that deputies were sleeping or playing on their phones while watching prisoners, and allowed a rape while they weren’t looking.
There’s been a non-stop parade of bizarre developments with the San Mateo County Sheriff's Office since that stunning November day when the county’s board of supervisors released a report alleging that Sheriff Christina Corpus had hired her boyfriend to a high-level position and given him pay raises with fudged documentation, as well as using the n-word and homophobic slurs in the workplace. On that same crazy day, Corpus had the chief of the deputies’ union arrested for felony grand theft charges (the “grand theft” charges ended up being alleged timecard fraud, and a judge tossed out the charges, finding them flimsy).
The plot has only gotten nuttier since. Corpus’ alleged boyfriend was then accused of moonlighting as a real estate agent while on the Sheriff's Office payroll, and also accused of concealing rifles in the workplace. For her part, Corpus has sued the county for $10 million over making these allegations. Oh, and just today, the Bay Area News Group had the news that the FBI is investigating Corpus’s office.
All of this has led the county supervisors to set up a March 4, 2025 special election to remove Corpus from office. That election is in just 19 days.
So it may be more dirty tricks, or it may be a shocking revelation of neglect, that a new KGO investigation found that two San Mateo County judges sent Corpus a letter complaining that deputies were sleeping on the job or goofing off on their phones while they were supposed to be monitoring murder defendants in court rooms. The letter also alleges that a plainclothes murder defendant was allowed to wander unhandcuffed into the judges’ chambers, and most shockingly, that a woman prisoner was left unmonitored with three male prisoners, long enough for her to be raped twice.
These developments were actually originally reported six days ago by Palo Alto Online, which also obtained the letter from Judges Stephanie Garratt and Elizabeth Lee. "This is an inherent problem that appears to be getting worse rather than better," the letter says. "To say we are concerned is an understatement.”
Yet this week's report comes from KGO, which gave Corpus a fairly sympathetic interview when all of these controversies blew up. This interview was tougher for Corpus.
When the KGO I-Team’s Dan Noyes pressed Corpus on the deputy who allowed the rape incident behind his back, Corpus said, "We did release him immediately because of the egregiousness of, you know, his lapse in judgment."
But the two separate letters from two separate judges are also considered unusual. Noyes asked San Mateo County District Attorney Steve Wagstaffe if he’d ever seen even one such letter before, and Wagstaffe said, “"I've been here 50 years. It's the first time I ever heard of it."
And as far as the snoozing or mobile phone game-playing deputies are concerned, Corpus told KGO, "I took immediate action and went back to the lieutenant and the captain to work directly with the judge, open the lines of communication so there's no lapses.”
Noyes also checked with the Deputy Sheriffs Association for comment, but a representative told him “They don't want to get involved in this. Not worth it." That’s not surprising, the deputies’ union absolutely hates Christina Corpus ever since she, you know, had their union president arrested.
Image: Christina Corpus for San Mateo County Sheriff via Facebook
