California sheriff charged with voter fraud, perjury in vacation rental address dispute

Less than six months after he took the job, the sheriff of Del Norte County was charged Wednesday with felony voter fraud — the latest scandal for the small North Coast department whose previous sheriff resigned amid a flurry of staff departures and internal dysfunction.

District Attorney Katherine Micks charged Sheriff Randall Waltz with perjury and filing false voter registration and nomination papers, court records show. Prosecutors say he knowingly listed an address that was not his permanent residence, a violation of election laws, and thus did not meet the requirements to run for sheriff.

The address that he gave, which is listed in the documents, is for a short-term rental suite along Highway 101, a half-mile south of the Oregon border in Del Norte. Reached by phone Thursday, the property owners told The Sacramento Bee that Waltz turned in a security deposit last month, moved in shortly after that and has been living there ever since.

The owners were unaware that Waltz had been charged with a crime related to the rental.

“He said he’s going to live here for a long, long, long time,” said Younan Dawood, who owns the property with his wife. “He liked the place and he said, ‘I will be here two years or maybe three years.’ ”

“He’s living here now.”

Micks declined to comment on the pending charges. Waltz declined to comment. Reached by phone Thursday, he said he was looking to hire an attorney.

The Board of Supervisors in September appointed then-Undersheriff Waltz as sheriff to fill out the term of Sheriff Erik Apperson who had unexpectedly resigned. On Feb. 14, Waltz filed candidacy papers to run in the June election, said Alissia Northrup, the county’s clerk and recorder. Court documents allege Waltz listed Dawood’s place as his official residence on voter registration forms less than a week earlier.

“From the board’s perspective, we’re hugely disappointed,” said Gerry Hemmingsen, who chairs the Board of Supervisors. “We feel like we’ve been lied to, duped a little bit if you will.”

While Hemmingsen stressed that Waltz was innocent until proven guilty, he said that the board could be forced to oust the sheriff, depending on what evidence comes to light.

“The whole world’s gone crazy,” he said Friday. “This is certainly a situation that nobody wants to be placed in.”

Waltz’s charges in Del Norte County come at a turbulent time for the 60-person sheriff’s office in California’s remote northwestern corner. In October, The Bee published an investigation that uncovered recent allegations of excessive force, misconduct and personal and professional feuds that had upended the law enforcement community.

Several employees told The Bee that the dysfunction was so bad, they sought employment elsewhere.

Waltz, 62, who was hired as undersheriff in 2020, previously worked for the Tulare County Sheriff’s Office and the Fresno County District Attorney’s Office as an investigator.

His last residence is listed as a home in Fresno, according to public records, though the property isn’t registered under his name.

In cases similar to Waltz’s, where a person may not have plans to stay at their voting address permanently, Fredric Woocher, a Los Angeles attorney who served as special counsel to former California Attorney General John Van de Kamp, said there are key factors in whether they broke election law. For example, are they spending the bulk of their time in the community they’re seeking to represent? Does the person genuinely intend to reside in the area for the long term?

“You have to have intent to stay in the jurisdiction,” Woocher said.

The law also allows discretion on what counts as a voter’s permanent home. For instance, a homeless person has every right to declare even a city park as his or her residence for voting purposes, so long as they do actually reside there, said Woocher, who has represented politician clients in similar residency cases.

Waltz involved in hiring dispute

When former Sheriff Apperson hired Waltz as his undersheriff in 2020, Waltz had recently been told by another prospective employer that his “previous performance does not measure up to the Department’s high standards of timeliness and completeness for investigation reporting.”

In 2020, Waltz sued Glenn County after the county rescinded its offer for him to be chief investigator for the district attorney.

Waltz claimed in court papers that he’d already quit his job in Fresno in 2019 and secured a lot to park his motorhome as temporary housing in Willows. Then Glenn County District Attorney Dwayne Stewart suddenly pulled back his job offer.

Waltz said in his lawsuit that Stewart told him over the phone he’d gotten the job, but then later sent him a letter telling Waltz his “previous performance does not measure up” to the DA’s standards. Stewart declined to comment.

Del Norte County hired Waltz in June 2020 with his suit against Glenn County still pending.

Waltz dropped his suit against Glenn County once he was hired in Del Norte. He declined Thursday to discuss his dispute with Glenn County. In court documents, Waltz wrote that he had “good to excellent performance evaluations for the entire time of his employment with Fresno County.”

Then, barely a year into Waltz’s new job in Del Norte County, Waltz’s boss, Apperson, abruptly announced he was resigning his post with more than a year left in the term. He tapped Waltz to take his place.

Waltz said in a recent radio interview he hesitated before accepting the job.

“What I had told him,” Waltz said at the time, “was that I was willing to give him three to five years and work on bringing the level of training up and improve the level of professionalism of our staff and work on some hiring and recruitment practices and try to move that in a positive direction.”

Not everyone was convinced Waltz should be appointed so quickly, though.

Del Norte County Supervisor Valerie Starkey raised concerns about rushing the process to appoint Waltz as sheriff last fall. She wanted to slow things down and open it up to more applicants, allowing for a deeper vetting before appointing someone as the county’s top cop.

“I would assume that undersheriff Waltz is qualified and he may very well be the very best person for this job,” Starkey said at the Sept. 28 meeting. “But we’re just kind of throwing some blind trust out there not doing our own homework to make sure that we’ve followed through to verify it for ourselves that he’s qualified.”

“There’s just a gamut of things that I think we need to consider.”

The board did not delay putting Waltz in the post, with members saying they needed consistency in the sheriff’s office and to fill the role quickly. Starkey was the lone vote opposed.

It’s unclear what level of background check was completed and what, if anything, it turned up, Starkey said in an interview Thursday. She said she still wanted to know more about his history, especially the lawsuit in Glenn County and his previous employment history.

“The process needs to take its course,” Starkey said of Wednesday’s charges and the ongoing investigation. “And whatever ends up happening because of that, we definitely want to assure the citizens that the board of supervisors is making sure the services are not interrupted in this chaotic time.”

Dawood, the owner of the property Waltz is renting, said two investigators came to his door recently to ask about Waltz’s residency. Dawood said he showed them financial records about Waltz’s lease. It wasn’t until he was speaking with a reporter for this story that he realized what they must have been looking into.

He said it sounds like “dirty politics.”

Confused about what was going on or who the investigators were, Dawood said he told Waltz about the visit.

“He told me, ‘Don’t worry about it because the truth will prevail.‘ ”

A court date is scheduled for March 29.

Dysfunction north of the Klamath River

Last summer, The Bee spoke with 10 former employees of the Del Norte County Sheriff’s Office and other current and former law enforcement officers in the region, all of whom described some level of dysfunction and questionable behavior among deputies and their supervisors.

The Bee’s investigation revealed:

At least two dozen sheriff’s office employees had left the department since January 2020, an average of more than one a month. It’s a disproportionate number for the department that currently employs just 60 people.

A longtime sheriff’s sergeant in charge of the armory nearly shot a deputy in the face when the deputy went to turn in his duty weapon on the last day of the job in 2018.

The sergeant, who has since retired, was not disciplined. In another incident, a correctional officer in the jail allegedly deployed so much pepper spray into the cell of a mentally ill woman that employees in another section of the building began to cough and tear up. As the woman thrashed around, she opened up a head wound. An employee told The Bee it was disturbing to see her naked body and the cell soaked in blood.

That corrections officer was never fired. Instead, he resigned in 2020 after he was cited in nearby Brookings, Oregon, on suspicion of impersonating an officer.

And last summer, a sergeant and his lawyer threatened to sue former colleagues over allegations that he had a sexual relationship with a minor while he was in charge of a leadership program for high school students.

The sergeant, who was cleared in an investigation, adamantly denied an improper relationship.

Apperson, the former sheriff, told The Bee last year that he took appropriate disciplinary action in each case and that turnover had improved. Apperson accepted a job as a consultant at the state Commission on Peace Officer Standards and Training, the group that oversees law enforcement training.

Even still, the controversies have put morale in the department at “rock bottom,” said Sgt. Joe Ourjanian, president of the Del Norte County Sheriff’s Employees Association. He said people are slammed with overtime and trying to pick up the slack.

“I just want everybody to know that,” he said Friday. “People should know that we’re doing our best to keep them protected.”

The upheaval at the sheriff’s office came just a few years after scandals rocked the local district attorney’s office. In 2014, the former district attorney, Jon Alexander, who was recovering from methamphetamine addiction, was removed from office by the Board of Supervisors after he was disbarred.

A judge ruled he “clearly and convincingly committed acts involving moral turpitude, dishonesty and corruption.” The disbarment proceedings followed a Sacramento Bee investigation into Alexander’s alleged misconduct.

This story was originally published March 11, 2022 at 5:00 AM.