Mendocino Sheriff Tom Allman Retiring
Tom Allman in September of 2011. [Photo by Kym Kemp]
Allman announced his retirement in a Facebook post early this morning. He wrote, “This is a decision that I have made based on many things, but one of the the most important is the fact that we have a very good undersheriff, Matt Kendall, who is ready to take the helm.”
He said that he hopes to continue “improving the mental health services” in Mendocino County–a cause he has championed for some time. He worked on Measure B, a sales tax to fund mental health services, that passed by a large amount.
Having lived many years in Humboldt County as a youth, Allman was Class President his senior year at South Fork High School. He then went on to become a firefighter for a time but became excited by a law enforcement career. He eventually became a police officer for the City of Fairfield in 1982.
In 1985, Allman was hired by the County of Mendocino as Laytonville’s resident deputy. He moved up through the ranks and became a lieutenant until 1999 when he took a yearlong leave of absence and became a peacekeeper in Kosovo, Yugoslavia. Though he never again took that long of a leave of absence, he also worked in Orleans as a paid volunteer after Hurricane Katrina and volunteered in India to clean up after a tsunami in 2006.
Senator Mike McGuire said this morning, “Mr. Allman is genuine, incredibly tenacious, hard working and has stepped up like never before to keep the community safe during some of the largest wildland fires in state history. He’ll be missed.”
We wish you well, Tom.
Allman and this reporter were in student government together at South Fork High School.
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Thanks Tom, the plant tags were a great idea…
Good try, in a very messy and blighted, backwards place…
My neighbor had 24 plants all with Allman’s tags attached. Bruce Smith came to his property and cut his plants down and told him since his plants were tagged he wasn’t going to arrest him. No valid explanation was given for the eradication. I told him he should go to the sheriff’s office and ask for a refund on the tags. When he did they laughed in his face. But yeah the tags were a great idea to make money for the sheriff’s office.
Shasta County sheriff Tom Bosenko is also retiring this month.
Like Allman, Bosenko was re-elected in 2018.
Bosenko’s challenger in that election, John Greene, lost 52-48. Greene argued to the BOS that Bosenko knew he was retiring, and that he stayed on in order to appoint his handpicked successor, undersheriff Eric Magrini.
The BOS resolved to “interview” the candidates and make a choice. They chose Magrini, unanimously.
In Allman’s case, there was no close challenger in the last election. Otherwise, it appears to be a similar move, raising the question of an attempt to circumvent the voters in order to appoint a successor chosen, not by the people, but by the sheriff himself.
This Shasta Shurf story is a Bravo Sierra comparison – there’s just no there there.
Allman did not have any opponent at all in the re-election, no one else ran.
There was a good reason he ran un-opposed. During his term, he’d suffered painful personal injuries dragging an on fire woman from a burning car. You gonna run against _that_ guy for Shurf?
Of course there’s lots of manuevering to get your successor in there, but try to get on the target a little better.
I would venture to say that it’s not as though his tenure was not without accomplishment nor challenge. There were many times that the good old boy attitude in the heavy hand of judgement , bias and do-as-i-say-not-as-i-do have overshadowed law enforcement in Mendocino County. The hand picked replacement can be six of one half a dozen of the other. The local DA blew his stack over Willits Police picking without his consent. Not sure if same expectation was applied in this case, is Eyster the net to RETIRE?. Enjoy your cider Tom. ❤
Thank you for a job well done under not the easiest circumstances.
Tom Allman has always been a standup guy, all the way back to high school. Congrats and thank you for your service
Thanks for your service, Sheriff Allman.
Here are my prayers for today:
I pray that your successor, Matt Kendall, doesn’t go out of his way to bust small cannabis farmers just trying to support their families in the depressed local economy.
I pray that Matt Kendall never forget that the Emerald Counties are the “Appalachia of the West”. We are poor. We are very poor. There are no jobs. No economic development. More than half our resident are Food Stamp-eligible. More than a third of us are eligible for Medi-Cal.
Those who should be targeted by COMET?
Trespass grows. Those who steal water. Those who pollute and create environmental hazards. Those who have connections to gangs.
I pray that Matt Kendall clearly sees Prop 64 for what it is — a fatally flawed law with a pro-corporate, pro-commercial bias that creates so many impediments to getting permitted that the vast majority of small, family farmers do better growing for the black market.
I pray that Matt Kendall see outsiders, like Flow Kana, for who they are. They are carpetbaggers. They are here to export value out of their value chains back to their investors on Wall Street. Guys like Jason Adler, who invested $175 million Flow Kana, want their money back. They want their money back plus an ROI of 10X.
Flow Kana made a deal with the Devil.
I pray that Matt Kendall will oppose satellite surveillance on Mendocino County’s farmers, as Humboldt County has done, even in Humboldt’s most remote areas, with a company called Planet Labs.
What Planet Labs calls “satellite imagery and insights” is nothing more than the government spying on its own people.
And I pray that Matt Kendall also clearly see the DEA for what it is. It is the government waging war on its own people.
Again, thank you, Sheriff Allman, for walking that fine line between upholding the law and feeling, with your heart, the spirit of the law.
John Sakowicz, Candidate, Mendocino County 1st District Supervisor
https://johnsakowicz.org
Ya know, I would have respected what you said if you hadn’t attached your dumb button on the and made this look like a campaign ad.
Now that I think about it, this was just a campaign ad
Sorry I don’t live in your district. I LOVE your post & campaign ad😁
lol… everything is about Flow Kana for you isn’t it? WTF does the new Sheriff got to do with Flow Kana?
And he was a dedicated listener to community radio. 📻
Tom Allman has done well in everything that he does. I think that he will continue to do well.
I had the opportunity to work with him in the local fire departments. He was dedicated and sincere. I knew his dad I know his mom and most all of his family. I hate to see him go, but I know that he will only move forward and upward from here. He is a man that I am proud to know.