Program:  Christine Krolik introduced today’s speaker, Sheriff Christina Corpus, who was sworn in as the 26th Sheriff of San Mateo County in January 2023. Sheriff Corpus began her career with the San Mateo County Sheriff’s Office as a Correctional Officer in 2002 and worked her way up to Captain/Chief of Police before her election in 2022.

 

During her time with the Sheriff’s Office, she has overseen the Community Policing Unit, the School Resource Unit, the Field Training Unit, the K-9 Unit, the Motor Unit, and the Sheriff’s Activities League. She developed the first Women in Law Enforcement Boot Camp and Symposium to increase workforce diversity to mentor and train women seeking a career in law enforcement. She has a Bachelor of Science Degree in criminal justice and a Master of Science degree in law enforcement and public safety leadership. Sheriff Corpus is the first female Sheriff in San Mateo County since the founding of the San Mateo County Sheriff’s Office in 1856. She is also one of the first Latina Sheriffs in California.

 

Sheriff Corpus gave a little more information about her background. Her mom is from Nicaragua and her father from Mexico. She grew up on the Peninsula. When she was 16, she went to pick a friend up from a records store where the friend was working. As Sheriff Corpus was waiting for the friend in her car, someone stuck a gun against the window and tried to force his way into the car. She was able to fight and get away from him. After that incident, the law enforcement officers helped her navigate through what happened both at the scene and after the trial. She decided then that she wanted to give back through public service. She started in the District Attorney’s Office, then moved on to the Sheriff’s Office, where she was one of 300 people taking the application test. After a year-long process, she was hired!

 

On one of her first shifts, a tenured deputy pulled her aside and asked why she was there. He told her that she looked as if she belonged in the kitchen, barefoot and pregnant. She knew then that she had to “grow tough skin” and worked hard to prove herself. With education and determination, she rose to the rank of Captain and oversaw one of the largest bureaus in the department.

 

When she became the Chief in Millbrae (the Sheriff’s Office provides police services to Millbrae), she saw things she didn’t like in the organization, including a lot of inequity. She decided to take a chance and run for Sheriff against her boss. It was a year and a half of hell. No campaign consultants with San Mateo County experience wanted to help her. The campaign was a lot of hard work. Her opponent had $350K in his campaign fund and was the incumbent. But Sheriff Corpus knew she could knock on doors and reach people. As the election results started coming in on election day, seasoned politicians started calling to congratulate her. After the election was certified about a month and a half later, she had won by 14%.

 

On New Year’s Eve, just before being sworn in, she was in the Emergency Operations Center preparing for the storms. A few days later, there was a gang shooting on the coast, then an international child abduction shortly thereafter. On her 23^rd day in office, there was the mass shooting in Half Moon Bay. She didn’t have her team in place yet as they were still working for other agencies. Going to the scene and then the reunification center was very difficult.

 

Since that time, she’s opened a behavioral health unit in the jail. She’s been chipping away at the 100 vacancies in the Sheriff’s Office that she inherited. She’s been able to implement programs and change the culture of the Office. She implemented a women’s boot camp and taken the 30 by 30 pledge—have at least 30% female sworn officers by 2030. She also implemented a swim program because two years ago, two farmworkers drowned. 80 children of farmworkers on the coast have been taught to swim, and the parents are going through the program now.

 

She has secured a place for a childcare center for her staff that will be open from 6 a.m. to 7 p.m.  It’s a recruitment and retention benefit and also necessary for the staff.

 

The Office has partnered with other law enforcement agencies on the Peninsula to secure a $15 million grant to deal with retail theft.  She is working on information sharing among the law enforcement agencies on the Peninsula.

 

There is a group of about 250 people who want civilian oversight of the Sheriff’s Office that would include having an Inspector General with subpoena power and a Board that would also have subpoena power. They would use about $3.2 million of the Sheriff’s Office budget to do this. On Oct. 24, the Board of Supervisors is holding a study session on the proposal. There’s probably two Supervisors in favor and three against. If the proposal goes through, Sheriff Corpus is concerned about staff retention and thinks this effort is unnecessary, expensive, and ill-conceived. This type of oversight hasn’t worked in other areas. It won’t work here either.

 

Sheriff Corpus closed her talk by taking questions from the audience related to mental health, gang activity, community engagement, training, and the inequities she saw in the department prior to her election.