Sheriff Mike Kanalakis doesn’t come across as a bully: He smiles, returns phone calls from the media, and clearly cares about protecting the county he grew up in. But it’s also clear that in his world, there’s room for only one sheriff in town – and his name is Mike Kanalakis.

For the last seven years, Kanalakis has commandeered the largest law enforcement body in the county, with a $77 million budget and a sworn staff of 313 responsible for patrolling 3,325 square miles, from Pajaro in the north end of the county to Bradley at the southern tip.

It’s not an easy job in an era of shrinking budgets and rising gang violence, but critics say he’s made a tough situation worse by treating dissent within the Sheriff’s Office, criticism from a civil rights group, and complaints from frustrated residents with an approach that seems heavy-handed, cavalier and even arrogant.

Taken separately, each misstep might be minor; taken together, they create a pattern.

Kanalakis’ handling of two recent incidents is a case in point. First, he suspended his political oppenent, Cmdr. Fred Garcia, for blasting his request to buy a helicopter in a letter to the Board of Supervisors. “It’s an act of retaliation,” Garcia says.

Then, in response to citizen complaints of excessive force submitted by the North Monterey County chapter of the League of United Latin American Citizens, Kanalakis authorized an antagonistic statement: “It almost seems that North County LULAC is more concerned with protecting gang members than with keeping our streets and schools safe.”

His ostensibly coincidental In-N-Out lunch with an inmate who was left in a court holding cell overnight hasn’t helped public relations either. And many residents in Big Sur and Cachagua haven’t forgotten what they call overly aggressive sheriff tactics during the 2008 Basin Complex Fire.

Kanalakis counters that he has improved the Sheriff’s Office, helping to establish the joint Gang Task Force and fighting to hire new deputies despite the recession. Garcia, the sheriff’s backers say, has made several wrong moves, including accessing confidential employee addresses to solicit campaign donations, and could justifiably be fired.

Kanalakis says he’s willing to work with LULAC, but faults what he sees as inflammatory statements: “They’ve tried to confuse legitimate law enforcement and anti-gang suppression with election-year politics.”

As for the fires, the sheriff says he’s made policy changes.

Cold warrior

Kanalakis bears a gift of Christmas chocolates while sitting in a wicker chair inside East Village Coffee Lounge in Monterey. He wears a long-sleeved white shirt and tie in an interview sandwiched between a Republican women’s luncheon and a funeral. The gray-haired, half-Greek, half-Panamanian sheriff recounts his stint in the Air Force, when he was mission combat crew commander for the Titan II nuclear missile in Arizona. “I was the guy with my hand on the switch,” he says. “I was responsible for babysitting a 9-ton nuclear warhead with a four-man team on 24-hour alert.”

After leaving the military, Kanalakis (whom underlings call Kano) joined the Sheriff’s Office in 1977, rising through the ranks from Coastal Station sergeant to SWAT Team commander, where he worked alongside Garcia.

“He was always upfront, honest and straightforward,” says former sheriff Norm Hicks, who supports Kanalakis’ reelection. “[When] he made a mistake, he admitted it.”

Ken Wright, a retired California Highway Patrol officer who was stationed in Big Sur from 1970 to 1990, has a different take: “I found him to be a poor deputy, and when he was a supervisor, I found him not willing to be bothered.”

In 2002, Kanalakis beat out seven candidates to ascend to the county’s top law enforcement position. Garcia says he convinced guys from the SWAT team to do a TV commercial for his campaign.

Kanalakis’ closest competitor was then-Cmdr. Lonnie Heffington. Heffington was reluctant to talk about the campaign, but did critique having an elected sheriff in general: “The person who has the most money and public influence will be elected to sheriff despite what qualifications or background goes into it.”

Heffington stayed with the Sheriff’s Office two years after Kanalakis took office. “It became obvious that I was not going to have anymore upward mobility in the department,” he says. “I didn’t have anything negative done to me, so I have no complaints about the way I was treated after the election.”

The sheriff says he has promoted people that supported his opponents and would not retaliate based on political allegiances.

Kanalakis’ first-term accomplishments include starting the Monterey County Bomb Squad and Agricultural Crime Task Force, conducting open houses, and establishing an anti-racial profiling policy.

In 2006 he faced two challengers: Deputy Sheriff Vincent Earland and then-Sgt. Robert Oen. Despite Kanalakis having more experience, the Deputy Sheriffs Association endorsed him by only one vote. Oen says the sheriff treated him fairly after the election; Earland didn’t return the Weekly’s calls.

“THE PURPOSE OF THE SHERIFF IS NOT TO ENTER THE HOUSE TO TELL ME HOW TO CATCH A BAD GUY. THE ROLE OF THE SHERIFF IS TO GO BEG THE BOARD OF SUPERVISORS FOR MONEY.”

Although Kanalakis was easily re-elected, with nearly 75 percent of the vote, complaints of a top-heavy department and an understaffed jail persisted. Garcia says Kanalakis became increasingly self-important, putting his name on every vehicle and looking to fund pet projects that didn’t do much to benefit day-to-day police work. He gripes that Kanalakis became too far removed from the department.

“Your leader has to be out there,” Garcia says. “When I’m sheriff, I’ll sit down and talk to you. Unless you hear it from the employees, how do you know what’s wrong?”

Defenders say that isn’t necessarily Kanalakis’ job: “If you get right down to it, the purpose of the sheriff is not to enter the house to tell me how to catch a bad guy,” says a Sheriff’s Office employee, who wishes to remain anonymous. “The role of the sheriff is to go beg the Board of Supervisors for money for their department.”

“Only one head of the house”

But the sheriff hasn’t been grabbing headlines lately for his fiscal prowess; instead, he’s been criticized for mishandling an internal power struggle.

In August, Garcia was placed under investigation for making a copy of an employee roster and then sending campaign mailers to certain employees. Garcia says the roster was not confidential, and no different than Kanalakis using the list to send out birthday cards.

Kanalakis won’t discuss the case because it’s a personnel matter, but the Sheriff’s Office has a policy that forbids office members to “permit the misuse of any official document or information for either personal purposes or that of another person.”

“WHEN I’M SHERIFF, I’LL SIT DOWN AND TALK TO YOU. UNLESS YOU HEAR IT FROM THE EMPLOYEES, HOW DO YOU KNOW WHAT’S WRONG?”

“Had I had somebody do that, I would have fired him, that simple,” Hicks says.

But Kanalakis didn’t fire Garcia – at least not yet. Instead, he took the case to District Attorney Dean Flippo, says David Cariaga, business representative for Operating Engineers Local No. 3, which represents Garcia. Chief Assistant D.A. Terry Spitz won’t name the complainant or the specific allegation against Garcia, but the D.A. dropped the case Sept. 30.

Although the deputy chiefs didn’t hand down punishment for the first incident, Garcia’s troubles had just begun. On July 15, when he announced his candidacy, he harped on Kanalakis’ desire to get the R-44 helicopter, which is owned by business leader Don Chapin, back in the air. Three months later, he sent a two-page letter to the Board of Supervisors, saying that making the department shoulder the operational costs of the chopper wasn’t a wise budget move and the Sheriff’s Office has more urgent priorities. “Forensic Evidence Technician positions are down 50 percent from when the Sheriff first took office, and we now have a three-month backlog of processing evidence,” Garcia wrote.

Although the letter struck some as a wonky critique/campaign pitch, Garcia may have crossed the thin blue line of law enforcement: Thou shall not publicly dis the sheriff or his policies. “If that were to happen over here in my county, I’d terminate the employee,” says San Benito County Sheriff Curtis Hill. “As a member of a command staff, they have a responsibility to support the sheriff.”

Two days after the supervisors sent the helicopter proposal back to committee, the Sheriff’s Office put Garcia on paid leave and opened another investigation. Cmdr. Mike Richards, who is handling the case, declined to discuss it.

Garcia says he was exercising his free speech as a private citizen running for office, but Kanalakis has armed himself for a legal showdown: He hired Martin Mayer as special counsel. Mayer’s law firm, Jones & Mayer, was co-counsel when a federal judge tossed out a First Amendment lawsuit filed by former Orange County sheriff’s Lt. Bill Hunt against ex-sheriff Mike Carona. The judge ruled that since Hunt was a “policy-maker” for the Sheriff’s Department, he had limited free speech protection and could be fired or demoted for publicly criticizing Carona during the campaign.

“If an individual working for an elected official is in [what] would be considered a ‘policy-maker’ position, the First Amendment does not protect that individual from adverse actions by that elected official,” Mayer says, pointing to the case of William Fazio vs. City and County of San Francisco, in which District Attorney Arlo Smith fired former assistant district attorney Fazio, who was running against him for D.A. The United States Ninth Circuit court sided with the county and Smith.

Garcia is in an awkward spot, since he was overseeing the sheriff’s Homeland Security Division, which the helicopter program falls under. Cariaga says Garcia shed light on an issue of public concern on his off-time. Although Mayer wouldn’t discuss Garcia specifically, he says an off-the-clock argument is irrelevant: “You have a duty and responsibility as a public employee to carry out the will of the public office. If you don’t like what the public office is doing you can quit, but you can’t undermine.”

“I’ve always carried out the policies of the department, whether I agreed with them or not,” Garcia responds.

Even if there were valid grounds for the suspension, many say the move was politically foolish. “The sheriff, by putting Fred Garcia on administrative leave and getting his name in the paper and all that, really made an inadvertent contribution to his challenger’s campaign,” says Supervisor Jane Parker.

Although Kanalakis says he tries to keep politics out of the workplace, some Sheriff’s Office employees believe they can kiss their careers goodbye if they openly support Garcia. Certainly, jockeying for promotion is not unique to this race. But Garcia’s two investigations and extended suspension has had a chilling effect, employees say.

Color clash continues

Kanalakis is also trading arguments with LULAC leadership. Back in 2007, LULAC officials accused the Sheriff’s Office of racial profiling young Latinos in the largest urban area county deputies patrol.

Tensions calmed after Kanalakis assigned a full-time deputy to Castroville and opened a field office on the artichoke capital’s main strip. But the fragile truce was crushed in June when deputies and Gang Task Force members rounded up known gang members and parolees in a controversial series of sweeps and arrests called “Operation Disrupt.” Sheriff officials credit the 13 arrests with bringing a quick halt to gang-related shootings, but LULAC members say the operation terrorized innocent bystanders, including accounts of a SWAT team holding captive an 80-year-old woman’s family, and authorities exposing a 19-month-old child to excessive force. “We are talking about innocent citizens who were humiliated and harassed,” says Martha Padilla Chavarria, LULAC’s vice president.

Kanalakis offers no apologies: “What do they expect us to do? Go out and knock on doors and ask gang members to voluntarily turn themselves in? These are violent criminals.”

Led by LULAC President Diana Jimenez, the civil rights group filed three complaints alleging excessive force. But the group doesn’t expect a fair vetting at the Sheriff’s Office and delivered the complaints and previous allegations of police abuse to the Department of Justice, state Attorney General and county Grand Jury. They organized a Dec. 26 press conference with NAACP President Ben Jealous, Civil Rights Coalition Chairman Mel Mason, and Assemblyman Bill Monning, among other dignitaries, to levy the charges.

The Sheriff’s Office fired back, saying it “takes all complaints against its personnel seriously,” but criticizing LULAC for not showing concern for the victims of street violence.

Parker called Kanalakis, raising concerns about him being antagonistic toward the longstanding community organization. “No matter how you feel or what you may know,” she says, “it’s important to demonstrate your willingness to work together.”

Kanalakis says the press conference was “political theater in an election year,” and says he only has issues with North County LULAC, not the other minority and civil rights groups at the conference. He stands by the statement: “I’ve never been a fan of inflammatory rhetoric, but I’m not going to stand by and listen to this kind of stance being critical of my deputies.”

The sheriff says he sent a letter to LULAC, inviting members to discuss the complaints. Jimenez claims the sheriff hasn’t done enough to reach out to the Castroville community, where two gang-related shootings recently struck.

Fire in the hole

Kanalakis concedes mistakes were made during the 2008 fires. Residents say they were under martial law when the Sheriff’s Office enforced mandatory evacuation orders in Big Sur and Cachagua, having to sneak around deputies to protect their property and deliver supplies to neighbors.

Wright, the retired CHP officer, says he tried to talk with Kanalakis before the fire situation really got heated, but the sheriff made it clear he wasn’t going to work with the Big Sur community and made residents stay on their land if they stayed behind.

“It virtually made all of us hostages to our property for those who chose to be there,” he says, adding that Kanalakis’ my-way-or-the-highway leadership style trickles down to the deputies. “If your boss is always right, takes offense to everything and can be arrogant and overbearing, then you and your deputies can interpret that as a way of doing business.”

Kanalakis admits the fire “was not a good moment for the Sheriff’s Office,” but points out that nobody died or reported property theft thanks in part to his agency’s efforts. “We’ve reviewed and changed our procedures as a result,” he says. “There is more discretion at the command level at the scene to be more flexible with regard to these kinds of evacuations. There is better control and access to evacuation areas.”

He also goes down to Big Sur twice a year for meetings with members of the Fire Brigade, Coast Property Owners Association and the area’s Community Emergency Response Team.

Dick Ravich, vice president of CPOA, says that by working with CERT members there should be better communication next time. “The sheriff does not foresee the need to have a mandatory evacuation,” Ravich says.

In Cachagua, Michael Jones, the outspoken chef and owner of the General Store, says even the area’s fire brigade wasn’t allowed through a roadblock during the fire, which made it difficult to get food and medicine to people stranded on their property. “At the time it was completely irritating,” Jones says. “In hindsight: It’s silly.”

“We are not perfect,” Kanalakis responds. “A lot of that had to do with poor communication and lack of personnel. How do you enforce an evacuation zone 50 miles long with limited personnel?”

But the chef says he’s met the sheriff enough times to conclude he’s a nice guy. “I just think he’s not a very good administrator,” Jones says, adding that instead of having a deputy assigned to Cachagua, they rotate in and out. John Russo, president of the Cachagua Community Task Force, says Kanalakis hasn’t reached out to Cachagua’s CERT team and doesn’t expect different treatment in another disaster.

Then again, the Sheriff’s Office is hampered with more than 40 vacancies and Kanalakis says he directed patrol to go to 12-hour shifts on Jan. 16, reducing overtime costs and putting more deputies on the street.

The political fallout from the current campaign continues.

Garcia may be fired, and a protracted legal process would likely drag on for months – Garcia’s camp says they’ll appeal any demotion or firing and want the sheriff to send the matter outside the department.

LULAC and Kanalakis will probably never see eye to eye – the two sides could argue perpetually about law enforcement tactics, and both seem set in their ways. While it may take another tragic fire to test whether the Sheriff’s Office has settled down its confrontational policing, at least Kanalakis is trying to heal that sore spot in Big Sur.

At this point, Kanalakis, who at the end of June had raised more than $36,000 compared to Garcia, whose nascent campaign only showed a $20,000 loan, is the heavy favorite, once again.

But for Kanalakis, there’s room for only one lawman in the land. It remains to be seen whether he’s learned from his mistakes enough to be the right sheriff for Monterey County.