Swept under the rug? 

Considering all its controversies over the years, you'd think the SLO County Sheriff's Office would be on its best behavior, but nah.

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Four months ago, 5-year-old Kyle Doan was swept away by floodwaters near San Miguel, and according to reporting in The Tribune, his parents—Brian and Lindsy Doan—believe the sheriff isn't doing enough to find their son. K-9 alerts in the San Marcos Creek area where Kyle's mother, Lindsy, was pulled from the floodwaters suggest he might be nearby. Why aren't they digging?

According to the Doans, instead of finding Kyle, the Sheriff's Office is making excuses, citing poor conditions for interfering with the search. The Doans have hired their own K-9 units and were given permission to search once, but they want to go again, and apparently the Sheriff's Office hasn't given them permission for a second time. It's not just local agencies that have become the target of the Doans' ire.

They also say Gov. Gavin Newsom was simply paying lip service rather than doing anything to help. According to Newsom during a May 2 news conference, local agencies requested that the state no longer participate in search efforts, which SLO Sheriff's Office Spokesman Tony Cipolla said isn't true.

Sounds like the state and the sheriff have a communication problem, which doesn't offer much comfort to the Doans, who claim Sheriff Ian Parkinson told them "like Kristin Smart's case, the Sheriff's Office is committed to supporting [them] with finding Kyle."

If Parkinson did say that, it's both deeply tone deaf and startlingly dumb since it took 25 years for Smart's killer to be brought to justice, and her body has never been recovered. Parkinson has nothing to be proud of regarding the Smart case. It wasn't like more investigation revealed a new suspect. Paul Flores was the focus right from the start. The locally produced podcast Your Own Backyard by Chris Lambert was more instrumental in bringing Flores to justice than the Sheriff's Office.

Frankly, it's a wonder Parkinson remains in power. I thought after jail inmate Andrew Holland died naked, strapped to a restraint chair for 46 hours, Parkinson would be ousted. The Holland tragedy and other instances led the U.S. Department of Justice to order the sheriff to improve conditions after uncovering evidence of substandard medical care and excessive use of force that violated the constitutional rights of detainees. And Holland definitely isn't the only inmate who's died in custody.

Look, finding Kyle may very well be impossible. The amount of water and debris in the Salinas River watershed at the time was unprecedented, and the river—the only one that flows north when it flows at all—could have carried the boy to Monterey. The Doans may be unfair in their expectations, especially with the Sheriff's Office, which is looking inept once again.

The most recent Sheriff's Office kerfuffle is over the dramatic in-school arrest of Mesa Middle School math teacher Sarah Watts, who was arrested in connection with felony child abuse causing injury after she forcibly took a hairbrush from a female student who wouldn't stop brushing her hair during a lesson. Watts also was alleged to have thrown paper at the girl, resulting in a paper cut to her temple. The girl is apparently the child of a sheriff's deputy, and multiple officers in tactical gear arrived to arrest and handcuff Watts.

The Lucia Mar Unified Teachers Association weighed in via email to its members: "First and foremost, the actions of the sheriff's department were egregious. This specific matter was being handled swiftly and appropriately by district administration prior to law enforcement's encroachment onto the school campus. Many in our school community and the community at large were left questioning why these drastic measures were taken, multiple officers, handcuffs, tactical gear? And while many believe this dramatic demonstration of power was exercised only because the accusing student was a child of a sheriff's deputy, we are horrified by the precedent it sets for our profession nationwide."

Not a good look, Parkinson! You can't rein in a deputy from abusing his power? And what kind of a law enforcement officer takes as gospel something his bratty middle school daughter tells him about her mean old math teacher?

There's one silver lining here. Usually, our biased, reactionary District Attorney Dan Dow falls into lockstep with law enforcement, but this time the DA had the good sense to not proceed with criminal charges against a harried teacher trying to maintain control of her classroom. His press release cited California Education Code 44807 that "prohibits criminal prosecution of a teacher who exercises the degree of physical control over a student that a parent is entitled to use."

Watts had every right to confiscate the kid's hairbrush, and "the allegation that Ms. Watts dropped or threw paperwork in the direction of the student resulting in a paper cut to her temple likewise does not warrant filing of criminal charges. The investigation substantiates that Ms. Watts did not intend the paperwork to hit the student when it was either dropped or thrown."

Aren't middle school teachers' jobs hard enough without this nonsense? How is Watts supposed to deal with her students seeing her cuffed and hauled away? Instead of holding her accountable, how about the sheriff's deputy who instigated this abuse of power? Δ

The Shredder requires anonymity for a reason! Protect its identity at [email protected].