In a historic break from a male-dominated, deeply conservative past, Orange County supervisors on Tuesday named a woman and former Los Angeles County cop to lead its troubled Sheriff's Department and help bury the legacy of its indicted former sheriff.
Sandra Hutchens, a 53-year-old retired Los Angeles County sheriff's division chief, becomes the 12th sheriff of Orange County and the first woman to hold the position. She pledged to be an agent of change in a department that has suffered through scandals, criminal indictments and withering criticism.
The vote puts her in charge of California's second-largest sheriff's department, replacing Michael S. Carona in what supervisors hope will signal an era free of the turmoil that marked his nine-year reign. Carona, who resigned in January, is facing federal corruption charges.
Until two weeks ago, few people in Orange County's power structure had even heard of Hutchens, a Dana Point resident who spent nearly 30 years with the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department.
She won the job in a 3-2 vote, edging longtime Santa Ana Police Chief Paul Walters, whom many considered to be the front-runner in the county's nationwide search.
"I will live up to the confidence you have placed in me today," Hutchens told the board after the vote. "I am a change agent. I will be a change agent in the Sheriff's Department."
Supervisors agreed that the department needed radical change. Carona's indictment in October was the crowning blow in a series of scandals that included the conviction and jailing of one of his assistants, the highly publicized gang rape trial of another assistant's son, and a grand jury investigation that depicted Orange County's largest jail as nearly barbaric, with inmates enforcing the rules and some jailers napping or watching television instead of making their rounds. In one instance, an inmate was beaten to death as a jailer watched the television show "Cops."
Orange County political observers said Hutchens' appointment represented a break from tradition, with supervisors saying that they wanted a cop unconnected to the county's Republican power brokers, who enjoyed tremendous access during Carona's tenure.
"It's a surprising choice for conservative Orange County to go outside the county and pick a female," said Fred Smoller, a political science professor at Chapman University in Orange. "They were really convinced they had a problem in that department and it was a result of politics. They really wanted to restore the integrity of that office."
