The fight over whether Sonoma County’s civilian law enforcement watchdog can force sheriff’s employees to turn over records and testify is over. The watchdog won.
The California Supreme Court on Wednesday denied two petitions asking it to review a March appellate ruling that upheld the subpoena power of the Independent Office of Law Enforcement Review and Outreach, known countywide as IOLERO. “The petitions for review are denied,” the docket entry reads — one line ending a fight that ran through three courts and two years. One petition came from the Sheriff’s Office and Sheriff Eddie Engram, the other from the Sonoma County Deputy Sheriffs’ Association. The court had extended its own deadline to Aug. 3; it didn’t need the extra time.
The denial makes the 1st District Court of Appeal’s March 26 decision final. And because the heart of the opinion was certified for publication, it binds trial courts across California, not just in Sonoma County.
Six years from ballot box to courthouse
The county stood up IOLERO in 2016, after the 2013 shooting death of 13-year-old Andy Lopez by a sheriff’s deputy drove years of demands for civilian oversight. The original ordinance kept the office on a short leash: it could review the Sheriff’s Office’s own internal investigations, but it was flatly barred from running investigations of its own or compelling records and witnesses.
Voters cut the leash in November 2020, passing Measure P — the Evelyn Cheatham Effective IOLERO Ordinance — 166,483 votes to 90,689, just under 65%. The measure gave the office authority to act as a receiving and investigative agency for whistleblower complaints and to “independently subpoena records or testimony.”
Using the new powers proved harder than winning them. The deputies’ union fought Measure P at the state Public Employment Relations Board, which found the county should have bargained with its unions before putting the new powers on the ballot. The county and the union settled most of that fight in a June 2022 letter of agreement spelling out how IOLERO’s oversight of deputies would work.
Then in April 2024, IOLERO served subpoenas on two Sheriff’s Office employees, seeking records and testimony for its investigation of a whistleblower complaint — the office’s first real use of the Measure P powers. The employees didn’t comply. The Sheriff’s Office and the union argued the office has no subpoena power in whistleblower cases, and when IOLERO went to court that July to enforce the subpoenas, Sonoma County Superior Court Judge Bradford DeMeo sided with law enforcement.
What the appeals court said
The 1st District reversed. Justice Mark Simons, writing for a unanimous three-justice panel, held that Government Code section 25303.7 — added by Assembly Bill 1185, the 2020 state law that lets counties create sheriff oversight boards and inspectors general — carries subpoena power with it, and that IOLERO qualifies. “Section 25303.7 grants subpoena authority to sheriff oversight entities within the meaning of that statute,” Simons wrote. The statute’s reach is broad: any witness on any subject within the oversight body’s jurisdiction, and any county officer on the discharge of official duties.
The panel rejected the argument that the June 2022 labor agreement traded that power away, noting the statute was on the books long before the agreement was signed. A newer state law took care of the sheriff’s last objection — that the subpoenas reached confidential personnel files. The Legislature amended the oversight statute effective Jan. 1 to spell out that offices like IOLERO get access to peace officer personnel records, so long as they keep them confidential.
The ACLU of Northern California, the California Coalition for Sheriff Oversight and the Law Enforcement Action Partnership all backed IOLERO as friends of the court.
Beyond Sonoma County
Any California county that builds sheriff oversight on section 25303.7 now has a published decision saying the subpoena power is real. Marin County created its first inspector general post this spring and hired John Alden — IOLERO’s director since 2022 — to fill it. IOLERO is now run by interim director Matthew Chavez, a law enforcement auditor with the office since 2022 and an attorney of 30 years, who took over in mid-June.
The case goes back to Sonoma County Superior Court with instructions to order the two subpoenaed employees to comply. IOLERO gets its appeal costs too.
Voters approved the power in 2020. As of Wednesday, the county’s watchdog finally gets to use it.