Fryhoff prepares to take sheriff’s seat

When Jim Fryhoff takes office as Ventura County sheriff on Jan. 2, a new addition to deputy uniforms will signal the change in leadership.

“Cowboy hats will be authorized day one,” he said.

Fryhoff, a 32-year veteran of the Ventura County Sheriff's Office who bested first-term Sheriff Bill Ayub by 14 percentage points in the June primary, said the cowboy hats are practical for weather protection and also pay homage to Ventura County’s agricultural and ranching culture.

Once he takes the helm of the county’s largest law enforcement agency, deputies will also have the option of wearing load-bearing vests, also known as tactical vests, instead of belts with their uniforms. The incoming sheriff said the vests distribute weight differently than the belts and will help prevent unnecessary back and hip injuries.

Fryhoff’s tenure will also be distinct for its length. While sheriffs are typically elected to four-year terms, Fryhoff will serve as Ventura County sheriff for six years due to Assembly Bill 759 signed into law by Gov. Gavin Newsom in September. It temporarily extends the terms of district attorneys, sheriffs and tax assessors to six years in order to align elections for those offices with presidential elections.

Fryhoff will lead the agency, which has 1,300 employees and a $300 million budget, through the end of 2028.

“I didn’t know that going into this,” he said. “I’m excited to have two additional years.”

Transition of power

Fryhoff and Ayub met for several hours on Dec. 20, just two weeks prior to the handoff, to discuss the transition of power.

When Fryhoff was elected in June, Ayub announced he would finish the remainder of his term rather than step down early. Nick Odenath, president of the Ventura County Deputy Sheriff's Association, said communication between the administrations during the intervening months was “minimal.”

Odenath said because of the lack of communication, Fryhoff’s team has gone out of its way to better understand the issues by seeking the answers themselves.

“It’s taken them more time to get that information and more energy,” he said. “But they’ve done that, and they’re continuing to do it.”

John Reilly, who will serve as in the No. 2 role as undersheriff, said communication about the transition has improved, “but it’s still not where we hoped it would be.” Following the election, Reilly said the current administration declined to honor several requests by Fryhoff’s team, like beginning the background check process on incoming appointments. That’s postponed action until Fryhoff takes office.

“They haven’t done anything deliberately to thwart it, but they just haven’t been very helpful either,” said Reilly, currently a commander in charge of the agency’s Forensic Sciences Laboratory.

Fryhoff said only that Assistant Sheriff Rob Davidson, who oversees detention services, has “bent over backwards to ensure our success in the custody realm.”

“I’m not going to say anything bad about the sheriff,” Fryhoff said. “I’m confident that this was not easy for the sheriff to have an internal candidate run against him. Bill and I used to golf together. This wasn’t a personal attack on him at all. This was something that I felt we needed to do for the betterment of the agency and the county.”

Priorities and changes

Fryhoff said open communication with the community will be a top priority.

One change residents can expect is the creation of community councils, which will be comprised of a diverse group of community members who will meet quarterly with the local the police chiefs of the five cities that contract with the sheriff’s office to address concerns. The agency provides service to Camarillo, Fillmore, Moorpark, Ojai, Thousand Oaks and the county’s unincorporated areas.

Each sheriff’s station will also have its own social media page so local law enforcement chiefs will be able to communicate directly with the public they serve, Fryhoff said.

He said his other priorities will include addressing homelessness, fentanyl, catalytic converter thefts and “theft tourism,” crime sprees stemming from South American groups.

During the campaign, Fryhoff ran on a platform of moving away from what he called statistic-driven policing. The incoming sheriff said he wants his deputies to focus less on arrests or tickets and more on what they’re doing to make the community safer, whether that means speaking to local business owners, playing basketball with kids or walking a neighborhood.

“Those are the things I want them to do, to get engaged so people can freely talk to them about what their concerns are so we can take a more holistic approach to what is causing the problem,” he said.

Fryhoff said deputy performance will also be measured by the number of referrals for service so deputies are encouraged to use tools other than handcuffs to affect change.

“Instead of making an arrest, which may retraumatize somebody or retraumatize their family, are there resources we could get them in lieu of that that would help them so we can meet the goal of keeping our community safe instead?” he said. “You’re not making the arrest because it’s going to help you at the end of the year or get a promotion. You’re making the arrest because it’s the right thing to do.”

Recruitment and morale

Recruitment will be a major focus of Fryhoff’s administration, he said.

The sheriff’s office has 770 positions for sworn deputies, and Fryhoff said the agency currently needs to fill 50 of those positions. With attrition, retirement and injuries, the agency loses up to 40 deputies a year.

The agency does not currently have a recruitment budget, and Fryhoff said he will talk to county leadership about investing in efforts to draw more applicants though he said it was premature to discuss numbers.

Odenath said the union discussed staffing levels with the incoming sheriff to ensure that deputies no longer have to work “insane” amounts of overtime to meet minimum staffing levels.

Fryhoff is optimistic about recruitment efforts because Ventura County is an attractive option for those pursuing careers in policing as the community is supportive of law enforcement.

“This was not a community that wanted to defund the police. This was not a community that had violent protests,” he said.

The need for more recruits will not lower the agency’s hiring standards, he said, and the agency will still insist on highly trained deputies that possess professionalism and empathy.

Fryhoff said by 2024 the agency will also look at running more than two academies a year so when new recruits are hired, they don’t have to worry about losing them to another agency while they wait up to six months to begin training.

Union politics were a major focus of the election and the sheriff’s association spent $200,000 to defeat Ayub, citing dissatisfaction with his leadership, including a lack of communication with rank-and-file members of the department. Odenath said Fryhoff and his leadership team have been visiting stations to understand the issues deputies face.

“As a whole, that’s creating an atmosphere of hope,” Odenath said.

Leadership team

When Fryhoff takes office, he will install a new executive leadership team anchored by Reilly, a 27-year veteran of the agency. A public information officer under Ayub’s predecessor Sheriff Geoff Dean, Reilly said the public can expect more open lines of communication, including the release of helpful information that may not be required by law.

“It builds trust and transparency,” Reilly said. “Within the last few years since the George Floyd incident, I think you need to be transparent now more than ever.”

Moorpark Chief Victor Fazio and Camarillo Assistant Chief Shane Matthews will be appointed as assistant sheriffs.

Fryhoff has also tapped recently retired Port Hueneme Police Chief Andrew Salinas to join the agency as an assistant sheriff. The decision has raised concerns stemming from a September 2021 email Salinas sent from his work account.

“If I haven’t shared with you yet, my plan is to move to the sheriff’s department but that will only happen if I help get Jim Fryhoff elected. I was originally going to run for sheriff but decided to join forces with Jim Fryhoff. I will most certainly be doing my part,” the email says.

Fryhoff said when he was planning to run for sheriff, he met with Salinas who said he would support Fryhoff if he received the union’s endorsement.

“I was very upfront with him and said I can’t make you any promises about anything. Like, if you want to support me, it’s because that’s the right thing to do,” the incoming sheriff said. “Obviously, if we both run, all we’re doing is competing with votes for each other. And we’re going to guarantee that both of us are going to lose.

“So if you’re going to support me then I will take your support. And that was it.”

Fryhoff said Salinas would love to come over at the sheriff’s office, and had he not won it’s unlikely the current administration would have hired the Port Hueneme chief.

The incoming sheriff said as an outsider, Salinas will bring a “completely different lens,” which could provide better results. Fryhoff said he made no explicit promise to Salinas of work in exchange for political support.

Salinas said in an email to the Star that “no position has been promised in any form.” He said he had planned to move to the sheriff’s office in order to earn benefits under the county retirement system after earning full state retirement benefits.

Fryhoff said Salinas’ hiring is contingent on a background investigation.

Sheriffs have the authority to waive standards during the hiring process. Fryhoff said he has particular latitude in hiring Salinas because he does not have a preexisting position within the department. Fryhoff said if he removed a preexisting employee as an appointee, he would have to offer them the position they last held.

Salinas has about 29 years experience in law enforcement, starting as a reserve officer at the Los Angeles Police Department in 1993 before serving 22 years with Oxnard Police and the last five as chief of Port Hueneme Police. He was twice disqualified to be an LAPD officer, court records from a 2005 federal civil suit show.

Salinas refused a phone interview but said in an email that he did not pass a psychological exam when he was 20 years old. He said he successfully passed subsequent examinations for the cities of Oxnard and Port Hueneme.

“As you may or may not know, I am one of the most open and transparent police chiefs in Ventura County,” Salinas said in an email.

Ayub’s administration denied Fryhoff’s request to start the background process on Salinas so that process will start Jan. 2, Fryhoff said. Ayub said he would not consider hiring Salinas.

“He doesn’t know anything about the sheriff’s office. Working as a municipal police chief for a tiny agency doesn’t equate to competency running a division of the sheriff’s office,” the sheriff said.

Odenath said he had no concerns over Salinas joining the agency.

“I’ve had a chance to get to know him over the last year, and he’s one of the hardest working individuals I’ve met,” Odenath said. “He’s only going to make that management team better.”

In January, Fryhoff said he will ask the Ventura County Board of Supervisors to restore a fourth assistant sheriff position eliminated under Dean. Fryhoff said he has a candidate in mind if that position is approved.

Response to commander evaluations

Fryhoff ran for sheriff as a commander, a rank he achieved in 2020. He had previously applied for the post in 2016. During the application process, Dean, then sheriff, asked the commanders to assess applicants, then mistakenly emailed those assessments to all command staff.

A copy of those assessments shows that commanders said Fryhoff was overly emotional, involved in a number of unhealthy conflicts and had a temper when faced with opposing views or when dealing with personnel issues.

Fryhoff said those assessments stem from an incident where he “yelled” at a former assistant sheriff, though at the time they were both the same rank. Fryhoff said he was sticking up for two officers who had been involved in a critical incident.

“And they used that against me repetitively for years,” he said. “It didn’t have to be addressed in the manner I did it. But I was sticking up for our officers. And so I’ve been very mindful of my manner, and I have addressed those issues, so that I don’t make that mistake in the future.”

Looking ahead

Reilly said that looking ahead, there were both reasons for excitement and caution. He said there is “a lot of energy” around the new administration, and he and Fryhoff are both open-minded to change.

“That will definitely be the positive,” Reilly said.

But the unknowns are “the scariest thing.”

“Look back at what’s happened in the last four to five years. I think of the Borderline shooting, when my friend Ron Helus got killed. I think of the fires. That was all within four or five years, and so much has changed,” Reilly said.

Fryhoff said whatever his six-year term brings, the Simi Valley father of two plans to keep “Ventura County as safe as it can be.” While his executive team has been planning for months, Fryhoff said they will be “doing a measured pace of rollouts” to give the rest of the agency time to get on board.

Fryhoff said he is excited about fostering positive energy within the organization by expressing gratitude and support for deputies “as long as they’re doing the right thing.”

He also said he is dedicated to developing the next generation of local law enforcement leaders, including his own replacement.

“There is somebody at some rank within my organization who is going to be sheriff next,” Fryhoff said. “Whether they run against me or I retire and they become sheriff, I need to make sure that the organization is well suited with a lot of well trained people with the diversity of experience, diversity of assignment and diversity, period, to make sure that we represent our communities, and that we can do the best by Ventura County.”

Dawn Megli is an investigative and watchdog reporter for the Ventura County Star. Reach her at dawn.megli@vcstar.com or @ReporterDawn. This story was made possible by a grant from the Ventura County Community Foundation’s Fund to Support Local Journalism.

This article originally appeared on Ventura County Star: Jim Fryhoff prepares to take the Ventura County sheriff’s seat