Desert Sun endorsement: Michael Lujan for sheriff, and no second term for Chad Bianco

When considering any role in life you’ve held for four years — say a job, a marriage or parenthood — there’s probably something you wish you could do over.

Not Chad Bianco.

When asked, Riverside County’s sheriff told the Editorial Board there’s more he wants to do if re-elected, but he couldn’t think of anything he’d have done differently since he was elected in 2018.

Bianco has consistently displayed that kind of arrogance, just as he’s seemingly reveled in contempt for the media and elected leaders he disagrees with. Elected to a theoretically nonpartisan position of public trust, Bianco has instead politicized the office. He’s promoted disrespect for the law through his divisive comments about mask mandates and other public health initiatives during the pandemic.

Instead of rewarding that approach, voters should elect as our next sheriff Michael Lujan, a retired Riverside County sheriff’s captain with 31 years of experience.

He’s well qualified and has good ideas on how the sheriff’s department can build community trust and respond to growing calls for police reform.

Lujan supports creating a civilian oversight commission that could review allegations of misconduct made against deputies. That shows an openness to reform that Bianco lacks.

The choice before voters is a crucial one. The sheriff oversees an office with almost 5,000 employees and a budget of $900 million. Deputies protect most of a county of over 7,200 square miles, including vast unincorporated areas and 17 cities that contract with the sheriff for police services.

We have agreed with Bianco on some things, like his push to open and staff more of the new county jail in Indio, something county supervisors have not funded.

But we don’t believe he’s the best person to lead the agency going forward.

Cities protected by sheriff’s deputies are paying more for the services year after year, though Bianco promised to bring those costs under control. He says the increases are largely beyond his control since deputies’ pay is set by the county after union negotiations. If so, Bianco should not have made promises he could not keep.

With Bianco as sheriff, fatal shootings by deputies are up, though he said the overall number of people they shot was down.

Homicides have gone up: 43 people were killed in territory protected by the sheriff in 2020, the most since 1995, according to statistics reported to the FBI. Overall violent crime had not been as high since 2010.

To be sure, rising crime is not unique to Riverside County; crime is up statewide and nationally.

Yet amid all these challenges, Bianco spends too much time making political statements, such as his proclamation in September that vaccine mandates for government employees are “tyrannical.”

Why would voters continue with that leadership when a well-qualified alternative is on the ballot?

Pandemic posturing

Lujan told us Bianco’s public comments during the pandemic squandered an opportunity to promote public safety and health. We agree.

“The sheriff’s words matter,” Lujan said, adding that Bianco’s confrontational stance undermined what local and state officials were doing to save lives. Lujan said he would work to restore partnerships with public health agencies.

Bianco, meanwhile, continued to spread misleading statements about the state’s pandemic response. Asked about his refusal to enforce a since-lifted mask order, he told us it was “a mandate, not a law.”

That echoed May 2020, weeks into the pandemic, when Bianco got his 15 minutes of fame on Fox News after announcing he’d refuse to enforce stay-at-home orders, which he called unconstitutional.

All the bombast ignores the fact state law gives state health officials the authority to take serious steps in an emergency, including requiring people to isolate temporarily to stop the spread of new contagious diseases. Pandemic orders by Gov. Gavin Newsom and the state public health officer spelled out the laws on which they were based. (See for yourself at Gov.CA.gov/category/executive-orders.)

Previously, Bianco has acknowledged the mask mandate was valid and legal, saying he simply did not believe using deputies to enforce it was a wise use of resources. That is reasonable. But his rhetoric suggests otherwise. By making people feel empowered to ignore public-health guidance, that can literally cost lives.

Building trust or division

The candidates’ attitudes on how to respond to calls for police reform are a striking example of their different approaches.

In addition to his support for civilian oversight, Lujan said it’s important to talk to people and groups that criticize the sheriff’s department, including those that don’t trust law enforcement, to understand their concerns.

Compare that to Bianco, who has dismissed the century-old and influential American Civil Liberties Union as “completely anti-law enforcement.” That kind of attitude only hardens mistrust.

Bianco told us “not one thing” he’s done in office has been because of politics. Judge for yourself.

Lujan said deputies can do a better job of de-escalating some conflicts, which can mean temporarily backing away from people who have, for example, a baseball bat. That creates time to try to resolve the situation with talk or “less-than-lethal” weapons. He said talking to an agitated suspect, instead of immediately confronting them, often pays off.

Bianco, on the other hand, said there’s already plenty of de-escalation training, given that peace officers receive more in California than anywhere else.

Although he said, “We do absolutely everything we can to de-escalate,” he also added in response to Lujan’s comments: “You don’t call us to run away. You don’t call us to retreat.”

Bianco said mistrust of law enforcement exists not because of anything officers or deputies do, not because of failures by leaders like him — but because of misleading media “spin” about police shootings.

Asked about the media’s difficulty getting information from his agency, Bianco said it’s likely the reporters’ fault and said he’s the most transparent sheriff in California because he answers emails “constantly” and has three Facebook pages.

Why are fatal shootings by deputies on the rise, with 10 people killed last year? That’s right: not because deputies did anything wrong. Bianco has said previously that the “confrontational attitude of suspects” is greater than at any time in his memory.

Why have some crimes gone up, including homicide? He blames soft-on-crime laws.

We believe Lujan offers a better choice. We do not think he would be easy on criminals, having spent 31 years in law enforcement.  Unlike the incumbent, he seems willing to listen to concerns about the sheriff’s department’s practices and willing to change his mind.

No more elected sheriffs

This race is a reminder of why we should not elect sheriffs to begin with. The practice is a relic of colonial and frontier times that makes no sense in a modern democracy.

Cities, like large counties in some states, don’t elect police chiefs. They’re appointed either by city managers (themselves accountable to elected council members) or by elected mayors and councils.

The theory is that electing sheriffs — and judges and district attorneys — makes them accountable directly to the people.

The problem is it makes the job of enforcing the law highly political. It creates an agency full of people with badges, guns and arrest powers — with no real civilian oversight. There’s a reason the president, not a general or admiral, is the commander-in-chief.

An elected sheriff removes the checks and balances of other systems. An appointed police chief can be fired, but a sheriff generally can’t be removed for four years.

That’s not going to change without a state constitutional amendment: As it stands, all sheriffs have to be elected, no ifs, ands or buts.

An experienced leader

In the meantime, Lujan is the clear choice.

Even his opponent agrees he’s worthy of a position of trust. In 2019, Bianco promoted Lujan to captain and named him to lead the Lake Elsinore station, which protects almost 200,000 people in a broad swath of southwest Riverside County.

Although Bianco is running for re-election, he barely expressed any disagreements with Lujan during their meeting with the Editorial Board. Instead, the incumbent mostly suggested he was already doing the things Lujan is calling for, such as community policing and increasing availability of less-than-lethal weapons.

Lujan’s resume is at least as impressive as that of Bianco, who had achieved a lower rank, lieutenant, when he ran for sheriff.

Though we endorse him, we wish Lujan had run a stronger campaign so more people had gotten to know about him.

His campaign website is barebones, including only a standard-issue biography and family photo, with no endorsements or specific policy proposals. It links to a Twitter account that has never tweeted and has 26 followers.

Based on public comments, Lujan seems to have thin support from rank-and-file deputies and local political figures. That raises a question about how effective he would be in implementing changes he wants to make.

But he deserves the chance.

He has the experience to step in and be ready to lead on Day 1, and his style and willingness to listen would be a welcome change.

This article originally appeared on Palm Springs Desert Sun: Riverside County Sheriff endorsement Michael Lujan, no to Chad Bianco