Editor, Ceres Courier,

I am currently a reserve deputy sheriff for Stanislaus County. I retired as a sergeant in Adult Detention after almost 25 years. The public needs to be made aware of the underhanded things going on in the race for Sheriff.

After Juan Alanis got the endorsement from PORAC, the Sergeants Association and the Patrol Association got an attorney to try and block the endorsement. These two organizations have been nothing but dues payers and don't attend PORAC meetings and now they want to whine because of the endorsement. They are claiming that PORAC violated their own bylaws by not personally contacting those associations even though they have a long standing past practice of just posting notice by way of the minutes. So because they don't pay attention and properly represent their organization, they now want a revote?

I can imagine they got a pretty quick call from administration when the endorsement came out, so now they are scrambling to do something after the fact. Do you think the Juan Alanis for Sheriff campaign was notified before any of the Dirkse endorsements were made? No! They got as many as they could get handed over before all of the information was out. All this whining is coming from two groups that most likely violated their own bylaws regarding privacy in endorsement votes which caused many people to not vote at all to avoid repercussions.

It's sad to see things get ugly in the other camp when something doesn't go their way. I'm sure this is just the beginning of the underhanded stuff to come.

Mark Cardoza