More Poor Choices by Sheriff Salazar
We just put out a post about Sheriff Salazar’s poor ethical decisions, first with the latents person who lied on a sworn statement, and secondly when he hired his campaign manager at the Sheriff’s Office. Now we’re finding out even more. The KSAT Defenders are doing an excellent job at exposing Sheriff Salazar’s special deals.
In their latest article about the sheriff they found that he has been helping an ex-deputy who was terminated in 2011 for falsifying at least six confidential informant payment vouchers. Deputy Armando Lopez made $2,200 of tax payer money disappear but no charges were filed against him. This has not been unusual under any sheriff. The County has functioned under the idea that it is better to get someone out with a ‘resign or be fired and face charges’ offer. It’s probably the cheaper route for tax payers but it leaves the problem unresolved.
And that was not Lopez’s first incident. According to the Defenders he has had to reimburse the County for lost equipment, to the tune of $4,200 back in 2005. The lost equipment included one Glock handgun and three magazines. So why did Sheriff Salazar hire this disgraced deputy as a reserve deputy? Could it be the $4,000 that Lopez gave to the Salazar campaign? Sheriff Salazar claims to have not known anything about Lopez’s past. He blames the hiring of Lopez on ex-Chief Deputy Don Tijerina.
We have some questions. Salazar always blames someone else when the media finds out about his poor decisions. He’s in his third year as sheriff. When is he going to finally take responsibility for his actions? And another question, why does Salazar keep ending up being surrounded by people who do things like lie under oath or who use their power to destroy other people’s businesses or who steal from tax payers?
Deputy Armando Lopez was hired in December, just in time to allow Lucy Adame-Clark to hire him as her number two in charge when she took over at the County Clerk’s Office. Mrs. Adame-Clark is the person that Salazar and LaHood helped, who had lied under oath. She was also highly active in both of their campaigns. Six days after a request for his personnel file by the Defenders, Lopez resigned from the Sheriff’s Office. The thing is, the article says he resigned but it doesn’t say if the Sheriff’s Office followed through and dropped Lopez’s commission. Under normal conditions, that would be a given but with all the back-scratching that appears to be going on, we have to wonder.
We highly recommend everyone read the KSAT Defenders article. They shine a very bright light on Salazar. A light that seems to be making Salazar very uncomfortable.