OPINION: A history of Rio Arriba County sheriffs

Rio Arriba County has always lived and died by its politics. We insist on electing unqualified, borderline felonious (sometimes not so borderline) people to serve in positions from school board, to city council, county positions and sheriff.

Voters are notorious for voting for friends and neighbors, ignoring candidates’ lack of skills, education, morals and scruples. No race exhibits this more than county sheriff. To be a police chief requires qualifications, a good record and convincing an elected body to hire you. To be a sheriff you just need convince a majority of unsavvy voters.

Arguably the worst sheriff the county has suffered has to be Emilio Naranjo. A dose of reasonable doubt on Dec. 6, 1976 resulted in Moises Morales being found not guilty of pot possession, a serious crime at the time. The jury heard enough testimony regarding then-Sheriff Naranjo allegedly planting the pot in Morales’ truck to not convict.

Morales received two settlements in civil court, one for $10,000, the other for $70,000, knocked down from his $100,000 demand. Naranjo went on to face trial on perjury charges in Morales’ trial and a separate trial for felonious election violations.

More recently county voters were offered a laundry list of candidates in June 2010 when Tommy Rodella won the sheriff’s race with a whopping 27% of the vote. Six other Rio Arribans vied for the job. Rodella was coming back from obscurity after being removed as magistrate judge in 2008. The state Supreme Court in May 2008 ruled that Rodella should be removed from that post for misconduct and that he shouldn’t be allowed to run for a judicial office again.

That decision was the result of Rodella’s questionable handling of a drunk driving case. Then-Gov. Bill Richardson got involved and Rodella didn’t win the wrestling match. Depending on who you ask, he either resigned or was asked to resign.

The 2010 election had a list of questionable candidates.

• Donald Valdez was involved in a bar fight at the age of 18 and was arrested for but not convicted of drunken diving at the age of 21.
• Freddie Trujillo resigned from State Police, “pending termination for stealing money from evidence,” the Rio Grande SUN reported in May 2010, citing personnel documents.
• Soon-to-be sheriff but then deputy James Lujan, a former Santa Fe police officer, was convicted on state tax evasion charges.
• Manuel Valdez was fired from the Española Police Department in 1990 because of “unprofessional conduct of a police officer on and off duty.” He and co-candidate and 1990s sheriff Nelson Cordova later were investigated, and exonerated, concerning allegations that they had instructed another deputy not to show up to court for a drunken-driving case.
• State corrections officer Wilfred Romero was accused of leading a prison beating of political activist Antonio “Ikey” DeVargas in the 1970s.

Those of us who worked at the SUN during Rodella’s reign were surprised he went down for a road rage incident. We were following a lot of money at the time being collected by Rodella and his deputies for a mysterious college fund. He and his mouthpiece Jake Arnold claimed the money being collected in lieu of fines was going to a college fund for some lucky local student. No one knows where that money went.

His legal but strange use of excess military equipment turned the sheriff’s department into a pseudo National Guard yard.

Then of course there’s James Lujan — elected in 2014 — one of Rodella’s deputies and another guy who let the title and office go to his head. His son allegedly chased a Mexican national down the Chama Highway, threatening and berating him for having a Mexican flag on his truck. The driver was told it was illegal and the flag was confiscated. The elder Lujan later went to the man’s house and apologized and returned the flag.

A former school board member hated Lujan’s use of property across from the man’s home as a makeshift shooting range to qualify deputies for duty instead of a proper range.

Lujan truly lost it toward the end of his reign. His showing up very drunk at his friend Phil Chacon’s house trying to take over as police were attempting to execute a search warrant was outrageous.

He received justice after two trials on charges of bribery of a witness and harboring or aiding a felon, the second replete with a conviction and deputies cooking burgers outside the courthouse.

One of his deputies, Billy Merrifield, was appointed Dec. 27, 2021, after Lujan was found guilty of felony convictions of harboring a felon and intimidating a witness. Lujan was sentenced to three years in prison and 18 months probation. He was released in 2023 after serving 18 months.

Merrifield — who died April 20 from “toxic effects of fentanyl and ethanol,” according to the Office of the Medical Investigator — came with little baggage. A look through district court filings reveal some restraining orders against him and he’s butted heads with Santa Fe County.

My brief time working with Merrifield was without drama. His communications contact was then-Maj. Lorenzo Aguilar. He’s now the latest sheriff. The only time I questioned Merrifield’s character was when a woman came into my office, quite distraught, crying and insisting Merrifield had pulled her over several times in Hernandez for no reason, harassing her. I pursued it.

I asked Aguilar for the lapel and dash cam footage of the most recent stop the woman referenced. Instead of his prompt, friendly response, I had to chase him down and was met with the old fall-back of “ask for it in writing.” Then Aguilar waited the 15 days allowed by state law and then insisted he wouldn’t give me a thumb drive. I had to go to the sheriff’s office to review the recording there.

He foolishly thought putting two deputies behind me would intimidate me. The three of us argued several times about what I could and couldn’t do with a recording. It turned out the wind going past Merrifield’s microphone made the conversation mostly unintelligible. Aguilar’s and Merrifield’s actions told my gut there was clearly something there, I just couldn’t prove it.

So we’re on to our next sheriff now. I won’t predict Aguilar’s success or failure. I will predict with certainty, when Rio Arribans go to the polls in June 2026 there will be many candidates, none of them will be a good choice and one of them will be our next sheriff.

Albuquerque Community Council member Bob Trapp ran and owned a family newspaper in Española for many years.