Rod Pacheco

Pacheco is credited with developing and pushing a plan to create a gang task force designated to cover all of Riverside County. After gathering a coalition of law enforcement officials, Riverside County developed a countywide regional strategy for combating the increased gang activity occurring in Riverside County communities. The Riverside County Gang Task Force (GTF) was created in late 2006 and fully staffed with roughly 70 sworn law enforcement officers from 22 different law enforcement agencies by early 2007. The GTF strategy is to combine resources from local, state and federal law enforcement agencies to create eight (8) separate gang task force units across the county. The strategy involves a three-prong approach involving prevention, intervention and suppression.

Pacheco issued the first ever gang injunction in Riverside County history in August 2007 against the largest Riverside County criminal street gang, East Side Riva. In response, an East Side Riva gang member who was an employee of the Press-Enterprise newspaper threatened to kill Pacheco. The newspaper employee took out a classified advertisement in the Press-Enterprise newspaper with the threat, and Pacheco's personal address and cellular phone number, which was obtained through the Pacheco's newspaper subscription records. The employee, Chandler W. Cardwell, was prosecuted by the California Attorney General and convicted of threatening a public official.

Pacheco announced a second gang injunction against the Barrio Dream Homes criminal street gang in Cathedral City, CA on June 12, 2008.

The third and fourth gang injunctions were announced in accordance with Operation Falling Sun on March 27, 2009 in the city of Desert Hot Springs against the True Crime Boys and West Drive Locos criminal street gangs.

Beginning in December 2009, there were numerous attempts to kill gang task force law enforcement officers in the city of Hemet. On July 7, 2010, Pacheco announced the filing of charges against two men involved in those attacks. Nicholas John Smit, 39, of Hemet was charged with nine counts while co-conspirator Steven William Hansen, 36, of Homeland was charged with three counts involving attempted murder of a peace officer.

Pacheco is credited with coming up with the idea for the Riverside County Sexual Assault Felony Enforcement (SAFE) task force. The team was created in November 2006. When the team was created, it was estimated that 25% of all registered sex offenders were out of compliance with the terms of their registration under California penal code 290. As of May 2010, the non-compliance rate for sex offenders was at 3%.

The Riverside County SAFE Task Force is a multi-agency Task Force that uses the combined expertise and resources of various law enforcement agencies to create five regional teams throughout Riverside County. The five regional teams are the Indio Region, Corona Region, Cabazon Region, Temecula Region, and Riverside and Moreno Valley Region.

The mission of the Sexual Assault Felony Enforcement (SAFE) Task Force, through the collaborative effort of multi-disciplined Riverside County law enforcement agencies, is to increase public awareness of sexual predators and significantly decrease sexually motivated crimes in the County of Riverside through monitoring, investigating, and prosecuting sex registrants pursuant to California Penal Code Section 290.

On June 16, 2008, Pacheco along with the Attorney General obtained an indictment on four people on a combined 11 felony and 26 misdemeanor counts for their roles in a money-laundering conspiracy involving six different political campaigns for state office. The defendants were Mark Leggio, Nicola Cacucciolo, Nick Vito Cacucciolo and James Lloyd Deremiah. The charges stemmed from illegal monetary contributions made by the defendants to at least six different political campaigns for state office. The timing and pattern of these contributions demonstrated that defendant Leggio had reimbursed employees and friends for making those political contributions.

On May 3, 2010, Pacheco, along with then Attorney General Jerry Brown and 18 other California District Attorneys announced they had reached a $27.6 million settlement with Wal-mart Stores Inc. for various violations of environmental laws and regulations.

As part of the settlement, Wal-mart instituted policies and procedures throughout their company in California to assure that environmental law and regulations are followed. There were 22 Wal-mart stores in Riverside County in violation of environmental regulations.

On July 10, 2008, Pacheco filed legal action seeking an injunction against TravelCenters of America for violating the laws governing the management and handling of underground storage tanks of hazardous materials.

At the request of Pacheco, Attorney General Brown joined the case to enforce California's health and safety laws, which Travelcenters had consistently violated and ignored.

Over a number of years, the Riverside Department of Environmental Health conducted inspections at the TravelCenters facility in Riverside County, which revealed numerous, longstanding violations of California's underground storage tank law. TravelCenters of America had failed to correct many of the deficiencies, even after repeated warnings.

Pacheco launched an 8-month investigation that resulted in 700 police officers from 35 different law enforcement agencies conducting the largest gang suppression operation in the history of Riverside County on March 27, 2009. The operation was conducted in conjunction with the service of two gang injunction lawsuits against two of the most violent Desert Hot Springs criminal street gangs.

Pacheco's operation resulted in the arrest of 126 known gang members and other violent criminals, the removal of 50 firearms from the streets, and the seizure of drugs.

Pacheco told The Desert Sun regarding the Operation Falling Sun: "I want the gangs to feel like the sun has fallen on them."

Three months after Operation Falling Sun, Pacheco announced along with Thomas P. O'Brien "Operation Falling Sun Phase II." During an 11-month investigation, the preeminent drug distributors in Desert Hot Springs were uncovered and arrested and charged with federal drug charges.

The investigation uncovered the details of the drug dealers' connection to the Mexican drug cartels. DEA Investigators, FBI agents, an ICE agent, and an IRS investigator have developed cases against the major distributors and followed the trail of ill-gained drug money.

In August 2007, Pacheco gathered support from 19 other elected District Attorneys in California and filed a motion in federal court seeking to prevent the early release of 56,000 criminals from California State Prisons on behalf of the citizens of Riverside County. Pacheco dedicated Riverside County Assistant District Attorney Bill Mitchell to be lead counsel in the lawsuit to represent himself and the elected District Attorneys from San Diego, Santa Barbara, Orange, Sacramento, San Bernardino, Placer, Colusa, Amador, Contra Costa, Solano, Tehama, Butte, Kern, San Luis Obispo, Ventura, El Dorado, Nevada, Kings and Tuolumne Counties.

In the motion, the 20 District Attorneys have intervened in a federal lawsuit filed against Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger and the State of California by two California prison inmates, Ralph Coleman and Marciano Plata. The Coleman/Plata lawsuit asks the state to address the prison overcrowding issue. The 20 District Attorneys filed the motion in opposition to the Coleman/Plata lawsuit after the United States District Court for the Eastern and Northern District of California appointed a three judge panel to recommend solutions to the overcrowding issues which included implementing a prison population cap and ordering the early release of prisoners.

On December 12, 2008, Pacheco testified in the lawsuit against the early release of prisoners in the San Francisco federal court. In his testimony, Pacheco offered evidence that the early release of prisoners would jeopardize public safety and further harm our fragile local criminal justice system. United States Code section 3626 requires the court to give substantial weight to any adverse effect on public safety or the operation of the criminal justice system caused by the early release of state prisoners.

On October 25, 2010, the Supreme Court of California directly repudiated some of Pacheco's more controversial positions in a unanimous decision signed by Chief Justice Ronald M. George. In the court's words: "Notwithstanding the considerable preference that the Riverside Superior Court generally afforded the trial of criminal cases over civil cases, the District Attorney of Riverside County consistently has taken the position that a California statutory provision required the Riverside court to extend its efforts even further and make every superior court judge and courtroom – including the specialized superior court departments devoted to hearing and resolving family law, probate, and juvenile matters (as well as the judges from outside the county who had been assigned to that court specifically to assist with the backlog of long-delayed civil trials) – potentially available for the trial of any criminal case that was facing dismissal under the applicable California speedy-trial statutes." The court held that Pacheco's position was meritless. The court then also held that the failure of the state legislature to provide enough judges to Riverside County constituted good cause for dismissing severely delayed criminal cases under the relevant state statute implementing the constitutional right to a speedy trial.[4]