Letter: LTN off the mark with DCSO endorsement

To the community,

Regarding your editorial, “Keep Pierini as Douglas County Sheriff”, you say that DCSO candidate Dave Brady’s character has been questioned. That’s an odd use of the passive voice coming from a presumably professional journalist on such an important matter. Who questioned his character, and on what basis? Not including that in your editorial makes that sentence nothing more than an unsubstantiated slur.

During the sheriff’s candidate forum last week at CVIC hall in Minden, (Ron) Pierini blabbed the name of his gang task force officer to the crowd for the sake of puffing up his campaign. If you know enough to editorialize about who should be running DCSO, you would know that the Norteños – the primary gang presence in Gardnerville – targets gang officers and their families. Pierini recklessly put this officer’s life, and his family’s lives, in danger out of selfish vanity. Would that meet your criteria for questioning someone’s character?

As to editorial credibility, you might have asked Sheriff Pierini why his budget has gone up fivefold in 28 years — from $3 million to over $16 million, yet he fields the same number of patrol cars now as then, as he confirmed to the Record Courier in May 2013.

Sheriff Pierini’s experience, education, and training have proven to be the perfect qualifications for running the Douglas County Sheriff’s Department in 1992. Now, not so much. He and his very well paid command staff have no idea how to manage a budget. Given that it’s not their money and no one is looking over their shoulders, they have no incentive to learn.

Dave Brady has far more street-level law enforcement experience than Pierini, plus the education and experience to fix what’s wrong in DCSO. Brady should be elected sheriff.

Lynn Muzzy, Minden