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A former sheriff’s captain in Santa Clara County was found guilty of felony bribery and conspiracy charges in a scheme that ultimately took down previous Sheriff Laurie Smith, prosecutors said Wednesday.
Capt. James Jensen was indicted in 2020 along with a gun parts manufacturer and a local lawyer on the charges.
The lawyer, Harpaul Nahal, 42, was acquitted Wednesday.
Jensen, a former spokesperson for the Santa Clara County Sheriff’s Office, conspired with the chief executive officer and a middle manager from AS Solution Inc., an international security company. The company offered a $90,000 bribe in exchange for 10 to 12 Carry Concealed Weapon permits for its executive protection agents, according to prosecutors.
At the time the charges were filed in 2020, Santa Clara County District Attorney Jeff Rosen said the investigation “revealed a sad reality” that two different policies seem to exist within the Santa Clara County Sheriff’s Office for those seeking CCW licenses.
“For the average member of the public, no matter how pressing or justified their need, if they follow the procedure … and mail in an application, it will not be reviewed,” Rosen said in 2020. “However, if you are, in the words of Sheriff’s Captain James Jensen, a ‘VIP,’ then he will meet you at Starbucks, personally review your application and help you fill it out.”
Last November, a Milpitas gun shop owner admitted his involvement in a bribing scheme with Smith, prosecutors said.
Michael Nichols, 48, pleaded guilty to a conspiracy to solicit a bribe under Smith’s administration, trading concealed firearms permits for various donations, including supporting Smith’s reelection campaign, the Santa Clara County District Attorney’s Office said.
Smith was “was locked into a tight election” at the time, according to prosecutors, and money from the conspiracy was spent less than a week later to support her reelection.
Smith served as sheriff for over two decades, but was found guilty in a 2022 of six civil counts of corruption and willful misconduct for her part in the scheme in a trial to remove her from office. Smith was on trial over accusations from a 2021 civil grand jury report alleging that the Sheriff’s Office traded the Carry Concealed Weapons licenses to campaign donors and that Smith accepted San Jose Sharks tickets without reporting them as gifts. She was never criminally charged and stepped down.
“The current administration of the Sheriff’s Office is in full support of the jury’s decision,” the office said in a statement released Wednesday. “We do not condone nor defend these types of actions.”
The Sheriff’s Office said that under its new leadership with Sheriff Robert Jonsen it has “completely overhauled” its Carry Concealed Weapon permits process “to ensure that such crimes do not occur again.”
“The actions of the former captain are not representative of the upstanding men and women of the Sheriff’s Office, who serve and protect our community with honesty and integrity every single day,” the sheriff’s statement said.
Jensen is scheduled to be sentenced on Sept. 9 and is facing up to four years in state prison.
There have now been five conspirators convicted as a result of the investigation into the issuance of CCW licenses by the Sheriff’s Office in 2018 and 2019, prosecutors said.
This story was written by Katy St. Clair for Bay City News Service.
Now the new Sheriff campaigned on cleaning up the mess but I haven’t seen a thing, so I guess we’re supposed to believe that this scheme was confined to a few bad actors at the top. For anyone who believes that, please remember that “the fish rots from the head.” I want to see an outside, no-holds-barred investigation, in the meantime if you happen to be on a jury duty and a member of the sheriff’s office is called to testify, please remember that that person served in an agency with a long running open, notorious bribery ring and attempted cover up. If that Sheriff’s employee had any integrity (such as you might expect from a witness whose testimony that would cause you to vote to convict), they would have left the Sheriff’s department for honest work. Supposedly there’s plenty around as all the law enforcement agencies want to pay higher salaries.