CA Sheriff Who Ran As A Reformer Now Facing Removal From Office

Failures

from the oh-the-sort-of-reform-that's-just-a-different-kind-of-bad dept

Sheriff Christina Corpus is on the cusp of being an ex-sheriff and the first sheriff removed from office in San Mateo County via a county board vote. But her term as sheriff started a lot more promisingly. Running as a reformer, Corpus won the primary and the job, defeating Carlos Bolanos, who had definitely done little to earn the public’s trust during his extended term in office.

Her opponent, then-Sheriff Carlos Bolanos, had his years in office bookended by scandal. In 2007, when he was the undersheriff of San Mateo County, he and former Sheriff Greg Munks were briefly detained by police in a raid at a Las Vegas brothel. The raids were dubbed “Operation Dollhouse.” Five people were arrested, but Munks and Bolanos were not among them. 

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Fifteen years later, in one of his final acts in 2022, Bolanos sent four sheriff’s office employees to Indiana to raid a production facility that makes $210,000 Batmobiles, complete with flamethrowers to simulate the superhero vehicle’s jet turbine exhaust. The reason: A constituent complained that his car delivery had been delayed over a missed payment. Attorney General Rob Bonta declined to investigate Bolanos. 

That is some wild stuff, even in terms of stuff sheriffs do because the office gives them so much power and almost zero accountability to the public. Sheriffs are pretty much kings in most parts of the nation. And Bolanos certainly seemed to believe he was above the laws he swore to enforce.

Maybe it’s the office that does this to people. Sheriff Corpus seemed like an improvement, but that illusion was shattered late last year and led directly to the multiple legal problems the sheriff is facing now.

Here’s part of what led to Sheriff Christina Corpus having the county vote to remove her from office last week. SFist’s reporting last November details what was found in a extremely long report that had absolutely nothing good to say about Sheriff Corpus.

The San Mateo County Board of Supervisors released a 400-page report based on the sworn testimony of 40 current and former employees of that county’s sheriff’s department detailing patterns of alleged abuse by Sheriff Christina Corpus. The Chronicle describes “that Corpus used slurs, including ‘n—,’” as well as referring to a lesbian city council member as “fuzz bumper,” and that she “engaged in retaliation and intimidation tactics.”

And that was the mild stuff. The report also alleges that Corpus created a new full-time department job for her alleged romantic partner Victor Aenlle at $246,000 a year. The report says Aenlle moonlights as real estate agent, and had conflicts of interest in picking properties and contractors for the department. It also accuses Corpus of approving Aenlle’s pay raises with requests submitted under other employees’ names.

Power corrupts, even if it isn’t absolute. These are allegations, of course, but they’re backed by 400 pages of findings, which suggests something far more solid than just some former employee firing off an angry, drunken email at 3 in the morning.

Sheriff Corpus said this in her defense during a press conference following the release of the report:

“I am shocked by the outright slander by two members of the Board of Supervisors this afternoon. No one will call me a racist or a homophobe. … Anyone who knows me knows I would not use racist words. I am not capable of that,” she said Tuesday night. “This is a hatchet job of an inquiry which was commissioned with a predetermined outcome in mind, and it was filled with lies.”

Ah, but they did call you a racist and homophobe. And pretty much anyone is capable of anything, even people who don’t consider themselves racist but still engage in racist behavior. Maybe Sheriff Corpus doesn’t think she’s either of the things she’s accused of being, but now she’s on the side of things rarely seen by most law enforcement officers: the “your word against mine” scenario, but this time it’s not the law enforcement officer who has the upper hand.

And this detail certainly doesn’t help Corpus on the corruption side of things, even if it’s completely free of racist and/or homophobic statements:

After she took office in January 2023, Corpus rehired Aenlle as a contractor making $92 an hour. She then created a full-time job of director of administration and hired him for the job that paid $246,000 a year. The job opening was not publicized, and there were no other applicants other than Aenlle. 

Following this bombshell, the county actually offered a whole lot of money to the sheriff to walk away voluntarily. But Corpus refused the $1 million payout, along with a second offer that was even larger.

Now, it could be that Corpus is actually innocent and refused to take the buyout on principle. But it also might mean the power of the office is worth more than the San Mateo government was willing to pay. And it also might mean Corpus didn’t need the money because being sheriff was profitable enough already, especially if your alleged boyfriend is raking in a quarter-million a year.

Innocent or not, the sheriff probably should have taken the payout. Rather than walking away with a fat wad of taxpayer cash, Christina Corpus has been voted out of office by the Board of Supervisors.

The County of San Mateo Board of Supervisors voted 5-0 today to accept a recommendation to proceed with removing Sheriff Christina Corpus from office.

In accordance with the removal procedures adopted by the Board, John Keene, the County’s Chief Probation Officer, conducted a pre-removal conference, which the sheriff attended with her counsel at their offices. During this pre-removal conference, Chief Keene afforded the sheriff and her counsel the opportunity to respond to the allegations contained in the Notice of Intent to Remove, which was approved by the Board at its meeting on June 5, 2025 and provided to the sheriff.

Yikes. Though, that doesn’t actually remove her from office, as she has a series of appeals she can go through, though so far, the courts haven’t helped her.

And, once again, it might have behooved the likely soon-to-be ex-sheriff to walk away as quickly as possible from the office many people — including law officers working for her — felt she wasn’t fit to serve. On top of being removed from office by a process other than an election, Corpus is also facing possible damages stemming from a civil grand jury investigation. And, last Monday, the grand jury returned its accusation.

District Attorney Steve Wagstaffe’s office said the grand jury on Friday returned an accusation against Corpus that includes one count of conflict of interest in violation of the County Charter. The conflict of interest allegation stems from the hiring of Victor Aenlle, whom she allegedly had a close personal relationship with.

The grand jury also accused Corpus of three counts of retaliation over the termination of Assistant Sheriff Ryan Monaghan, the transfer of Capt. Brian Phillip and the arrest of Deputy Carlos Tapia, who is the president of the Deputy Sheriff’s Association.

Grand juries can indict ham sandwiches, as the saying goes. But they very rarely go after law enforcement officers, much less elected law enforcement officials. If this is a “hatchet job” conspiracy against Sheriff Corpus as she claims, it’s a very concerted effort that has managed to rope in plenty of her employees, the board of supervisors, a bunch of grand jury members, and multiple law enforcement officials and representatives who have already expressed their displeasure with the sheriff’s leadership, or lack thereof.

Sheriff Corpus isn’t unique. We’ve seen this elsewhere. Reformers claim they’re riding to rescue but end up just being bad in ways their immediate predecessors weren’t. Being uniquely corrupt or incompetent or whatever doesn’t make you better than the person you replaced. It just makes you a slightly different iteration of the person you replaced.

Law enforcement, for the most part, is an occupation that caters to self-selection. People who like power but dislike accountability tend to gravitate towards law enforcement because it gives them all the stuff they want and none of the stuff they don’t. Consequently, it becomes filled with the sort of people who can’t work anywhere else because no one in the private sector would put up with this sort of bullshit. Unfortunately for all of us, we still have to pay the salaries and deal with the repercussions of years of mildly varying inertia.

Correction: the original version of this article referred to the civil grand jury “accusation” as an “indictment” which would be what a criminal grand jury does. We’ve updated the language for accuracy and regret the error.

Filed Under: christina corpus, corruption, san mateo county sheriff, sheriff