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<\/p>\nMarin County Sheriff Robert Doyle vividly recalls the day when he realized how much was at stake as a law enforcement officer.<\/p>\n
It was the summer of 1970 and Doyle was working as a bailiff overseeing courtroom nine when he and other deputies received orders to lock down the court.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe didn\u2019t know what was going on,\u201d said Doyle, who had joined the sheriff\u2019s office just eight months earlier. \u201cThe interesting fact is in those days bailiffs did not carry guns in the courtroom.\u201d<\/p>\n
What Doyle and the other bailiffs didn\u2019t know was that Jonathan Peter Jackson, the 17-year-old brother of George Jackson, a Black activist serving time in San Quentin State Prison for the armed robbery of a gas station in 1961, had smuggled guns into courtroom three.<\/p>\n
The younger Jackson, joined by three inmates in the courtroom, took Judge Harold Haley, Deputy District Attorney Gary Thomas and three female jurors hostage and attempted to make their escape.<\/p>\n
When Jackson and the other kidnappers tried to escape with their hostages in a van, police and prison guards opened fire on the van. Jackson, two of his accomplices and Judge Haley were killed. Thomas and the third inmate were seriously injured.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe stark reality of danger struck me when we had the shootout,\u201d Doyle said. \u201cThat was a real wakeup call.\u201d<\/p>\n
Doyle has a lot to reflect on as wraps up a 53-year career with the sheriff\u2019s office this week. The veteran lawman is set to retire Thursday.<\/p>\n
The son of a seamstress and a U.S. Navy jet mechanic who worked at the Alameda Naval Air Station, Doyle grew up Daly City.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen I graduated high school, I attended College of San Mateo for a couple of semesters and then I decided it wasn\u2019t for me at the time, and I joined the military,\u201d Doyle said.<\/p>\n
It was 1966 so Doyle knew that once he lost his college deferment it would be only a matter of time before he was drafted if he didn\u2019t enlist. He served in the United States Army from 1966 to 1969 in California, Oklahoma, Germany and Vietnam.<\/p>\n
While in Vietnam, Doyle worked as a radar operator in the demilitarized zone, which separated North and South Vietnam.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt got interesting very often,\u201d Doyle said, \u201cbut I was 21-years-old and thought nothing bad was ever going to happen to me.\u201d<\/p>\n
As it turned out, nothing bad did happen to Doyle in Vietnam.<\/p>\n
\u201cI got out of the military psychologically and physically fine,\u201d Doyle said, \u201cand really didn\u2019t pay attention to the anti-war demonstrations. I\u2019ve always tried to block out the outside noise and encourage other people to do the same thing.\u201d<\/p>\n
Doyle initially sought work as a police officer because he needed money to go back to school. He would eventually earn his bachelor\u2019s degree with an emphasis in criminal justice from Sonoma State University.<\/p>\n
Doyle ended up in Marin because other police departments in the Bay Area had height and weight requirements that he couldn\u2019t meet.<\/p>\n
\u201cFor my height, I was supposed to weigh 170 pounds,\u201d said Doyle, who is 5 feet, 11 inches tall. \u201dI weighed 145 pounds when I got out of the military.\u201d<\/p>\n
Doyle worked his way up through the ranks, serving as a deputy sheriff, sergeant, lieutenant and captain before being appointed undersheriff by then- sheriff Charles Prandi in 1988. Over those years, Doyle served in the patrol, custody, and court divisions. He has commanded both the southern Marin patrol station and the Marin County Jail.<\/p>\n
Farhad Mansourian, who served both as Marin\u2019s director of public works and general manager of Sonoma-Marin Area Rail Transit before retiring, said he has been Doyle\u2019s friend for 40 years. Mansourian said he first met Doyle when he was an engineer working for the county.<\/p>\n
To save money, the county needed to turn off a third of the county\u2019s street lights. Mansourian was given the job of working with local communities, but he was soon confronted by Doyle, who at the time was commander of the sheriff office\u2019s Marin City substation.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe basically told me you ain\u2019t going to turn off any lights in Marin City. This is public safety,\u201d Mansourian recalled.<\/p>\n
As a result of Doyle\u2019s advocacy, the lights stayed on in Marin City.<\/p>\n
When Prandi retired in March 1996, he appointed Doyle to be his successor. Doyle was re-elected in June 1998 and five times after that, most recently in June 2018. Doyle\u2019s undersheriff, Jamie Scardina, ran unopposed and was election to succeed Doyle on June 7.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe\u2019s extremely knowledgeable, a historian of the county,\u201d Scardina said of Doyle. \u201cHe was progressive in law enforcement before the word progressive got its current meaning. As a boss, he gave me a tremendous amount of autonomy. People want to work for this organization because of his leadership.\u201d<\/p>\n
The only time Doyle faced a challenger in an election was when the county decided to eliminate its coroner\u2019s office and shift its responsibilities to the sheriff\u2019s office. Rather than retire as expected, the coroner, Ken Holmes, decided to run against Doyle for the job of sheriff in the June 8, 2010 election. Doyle won the contest with over 60% of the vote.<\/p>\n
Doyle is a registered Democrat, a rarity among his fellow members of the California Sheriffs\u2019 Association, where he served as president from 2004 to 2005.<\/p>\n
\u201cRight now there might be two or three,\u201d Doyle said. \u201cIf you talk to my colleagues, I was always viewed as being left of center.\u201d<\/p>\n
Nevertheless, Doyle has taken criticism in recent years from some who think he should do more to distance the sheriff\u2019s office from efforts to deport undocumented immigrants and activists who assert that his deputies are overpolicing Black residents in Marin City.<\/p>\n
At the request of the San-Rafael based nonprofit Canal Alliance, Doyle has significantly scaled back his cooperation with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). In 2020, he supplied ICE with release information for 14 inmates, compared with 68 in 2017 and 72 in 2018.<\/p>\n
Doyle now only notifies ICE of the release dates of Marin inmates who have been convicted of serious or violent crimes or have open charges involving serious or violent crimes.<\/p>\n
At Tuesday\u2019s Board of Supervisors meeting, Supervisor Judy Arnold noted that 29% of the sheriff\u2019s sworn staff are women and 20% are people of color. She said of the last 30 deputies hired, 12 were women or people of color.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think Sheriff Bob Doyle has done an exemplary job for us, and I want to thank him for his hard work,\u201d said Arnold, the only supervisor to comment.<\/p>\n
Doyle hasn\u2019t forgotten how the supervisors reacted during budget hearings in 2020 when activists called for defunding the police and maligned the sheriff\u2019s office and its deputies via online teleconferencing by referring to them as Nazis and racists. The supervisors reduced the sheriff\u2019s budget that year by $1.7 million, the equivalent of eight sworn officers.<\/p>\n
\u201cTo me that time was very disturbing, and it didn\u2019t go unnoticed by the men and women of the organization that not one board member stood up for them,\u201d Doyle said.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis points out exactly why the office of sheriff is independently elected, because it shouldn\u2019t be influenced by politics.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
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