Deputy: Merced College president pushed him to arrest board member, investigate staff

The sheriff’s sergeant at the center of a fight between Merced College and the Merced County Sheriff’s Office said President Susan Walsh pressured him to arrest a school board member and also to investigate college faculty members.

Merced County sheriff’s Sgt. Vince Gallagher, who is the campus’s police chief, said Walsh and other staff wanted his department to collect fingerprints from nine copies of an anonymous letter addressed to members of the Merced College Board of Trustees and others on the night in February when the board appointed Walsh as acting president.

When he refused, Gallagher said, Walsh considered hiring a private investigator to identify the letter’s author and specifically to find whether any college staff members were connected to it.

Gallagher spoke with the Sun-Star in an interview Wednesday. Walsh declined to speak to the Sun-Star on Wednesday through college spokesman Robin Shepard. She also has refused two other Sun-Star requests for interviews this week.

The letter in question, Gallagher said, demanded that the board reinstate former President Ron Taylor, who retired in January after being placed on leave, and not place Vice President Chris Vitelli in the acting president role. Gallagher said he investigated the letter for about a week and consulted other law enforcement officials before deciding no crime had been committed.

“(Walsh) was pretty forthright on pressuring me,” he said. “She informed me that there was no bigger issue for the board.”

Gallagher said he told Walsh there was no cause to collect fingerprints, noting the letter was anonymous, inaccurate and not seen by the board members until after they had voted on the fate of Taylor. “It was a moot point,” he said.

Gallagher said Walsh accused him of not taking the incident seriously. Administrators named some faculty members they believed may have authored the letter, Gallagher said.

“The disturbing aspect of this that is concerning to me is the fact that Dr. Walsh told me she was willing to hire a private investigator to lift fingerprints from college office space,” he said.

Gallagher said he didn’t know if school leaders have hired an investigator but said a campus administrator asked one of the campus police officers for a recommendation.

The letter incident wouldn’t be the last time the deputy would tell Walsh “no,” he said.

After an April board meeting in Los Banos, Gallagher said, Walsh told him to arrest Trustee Cindy Lashbrook, who was thought to have recorded a closed session meeting’s audio. Lashbrook told the Sun-Star this week she did not record the meeting.

Gallagher said he spoke to Harold Nutt, Merced County chief deputy district attorney, about the incident and determined there was no reason to arrest Lashbrook. Nutt confirmed the conversation in a telephone interview this week.

“(Walsh) doesn’t understand it’s really in the best interest of the campus for me to be able to tell her ‘no,’ ” Gallagher said.

The college and sheriff’s office are in the midst of a contract dispute over the campus police, which are overseen by the office. The college pays $174,000 to have a sergeant on campus to run the department of four sworn officers charged with maintaining security at the 267-acre campus, which had nearly 4,200 full-time students enrolled as of last fall.

Walsh requested on June 21 to have Gallagher removed from his position, a request that’s never been made by any college president in the 16 years of the sheriff’s contract, according to the sheriff’s office.

Sheriff Vern Warnke has said Walsh’s attempts to make demands of the campus police were tantamount to using law enforcement as a “political tool.” He told the Sun-Star that Gallagher’s “integrity is above reproach.”

The money the college pays to the office comes with more than a sergeant, law enforcement officials have said. Along with the training, equipment and investigations provided by the office, Gallagher said he oversees parking-related issues and has made changes to the lot that have saved the school money.

Gallagher has 25 years of experience with law enforcement, including the last 18 months he’s been head of campus police.

“We did not bring this issue to the Sun-Star, but I’ll also say at this point in time, speaking for myself and the sheriff, we will answer any questions about what took place to the best of our ability,” he said. “And, it goes without saying, 100 percent honestly.”

This story was originally published June 29, 2016 at 6:18 PM with the headline "Deputy: Merced College president pushed him to arrest board member, investigate staff."