Sheriff candidate Francisco Rivero’s position concerning the marijuana problem in Lake County is disturbing. To a small crowd in Upper Lake on April 20, Rivero said, “I believe that the sheriff’s department should back away from 99.9 percent of the enforcement of marijuana inside this county.”

What does this 99.9 percent mean in real terms? In 2009 alone it meant well over one million marijuana plants worth at least $5 billion tax-free dollars protected by more than 100 heavily armed gangsters.

Criminal marijuana is big business and it directly impacts tax-paying, law-abiding citizens:

• Our local National Forest properties are made dangerous by heavily armed criminals.

• Large, criminal marijuana grows wreak havoc on vital Lake County habitats and pollute our public waterways.

• Rural and isolated property owners are at risk from heavily armed predators seeking privacy for criminal grow sites – grow sites worth millions in tax-free dollars.

• Recently, our communities’ public streets have become the scenes of reprisals and threatening behavior toward those who oppose Lake County’s predatory criminal growers.

With his position statement, Francisco Rivero has effectively drawn a line in the sand – with those who chose to obey the laws and pay their taxes on one side and the criminal tax evaders on the other. On which side does Rivero’s 99.9 percent have him standing?

The Rivero for Sheriff Web site proudly displays the endorsements of people who are under federal indictment for marijuana cultivation and tax evasion. Other endorsers are listed who face state charges for being armed while transporting marijuana. I am thankful that Sheriff Mitchell doesn’t seem to get the felony drug crowd vote.

The issue at hand does not concern medical marijuana. Our problem is not a couple of privately owned plants in somebody’s backyard. This is about big money and the violence needed to keep it and there have been multiple murders committed by career criminals – right here in Lake County to prove it.

Here’s the good news – in 2009, we arrested dozens of armed criminals and halted the distribution of large amounts of foreign chemicals into our waterways. We’ve hit the criminal growers hard, and repeatedly.

Let me be candid with you, Sheriff Mitchell doesn’t ask deputies to get cats out of trees or increase revenue with traffic tickets. He requires us to take the fight to those who would criminally and violently destroy our way of life. If you’ve lived in our county since the 1980s, you’ll see we’ve done a good job of it.

Unfortunately, as long as there’s illicit money to be made in drugs, desperate groups will try to plant marijuana in rural Lake County. None of that is news.

What is disappointingly noteworthy is a sheriff’s candidate who shares the position of organized crime. The brave members of our department do not.

As long as Sheriff Mitchell runs our department, this will be a bad place to be a criminal.

Steve Brooks is a detective with the Lake County Sheriff’s Office. He lives in Kelseyville.