Solano Sheriff Tom Ferrara to retire in September

FAIRFIELD – Solano County Sheriff Tom Ferrara will retire in September after 42 years as a law enforcement officer and 13 years as sheriff, Ferrara announced on Thursday.

Ferrara sent a letter to the Solano County Board of Supervisors Thursday announcing his retirement. “I am leaving behind an administration and a supporting staff that are highly qualified and fully capable of continuing the duties of the Sheriff’s Office,” Ferrara wrote. “I have complete confidence in the ability of the employees of the Sheriff’s Office to continue under new leadership.”

Ferrara was reelected in 2022 and still has three years remaining in his current term. The sheriff is generally elected to a four-year term, but a state law passed in 2022 requires county offices to be elected on presidential election years, so Ferrara’s current term will last until 2028. Ferrara said his retirement will be effective on Sept. 25.

The Board of Supervisors will appoint a sheriff to serve the remainder of Ferrara’s term and in his letter, Ferrara recommended that Undersheriff Brad DeWall be appointed. 

“Undersheriff DeWall has been my second-in-command for several years and he is highly experienced and well qualified to lead the Sheriff’s Office,” Ferrara wrote. “He knows both the department and county government very well and has achieved the necessary level of experience to provide effective leadership for a diverse law enforcement agency.”

The sheriff’s office operates the county jails, provides security in courts, and is responsible for policing unincorporated areas of the county and the city of Rio Vista. 

According to his sheriff’s office biography, Ferrara’s first law enforcement position was as a cadet with the Rio Vista Police Department in 1978. After graduating from the police academy, he was a reserve officer in Rio Vista and then was hired as a police officer in Isleton in 1983. He joined the Solano County Sheriff’s Office the following year.

He was promoted to sergeant in 1995 and then to chief deputy in 1999. When Sheriff Gary Stanton reorganized the sheriff’s office in 2002, Ferrara was promoted to captain and placed in charge of the county jails. He was promoted again to undersheriff in 2006.

Stanton retired in 2012 and recommended Ferrara to replace him for the remainder of his term. Ferrara won his election as sheriff unopposed at the end of Stanton’s term in 2014. He then fended off election challenges from sheriff’s Deputy Daryl Snedeker and Fairfield police Lt. Dan Marshall in 2018, earning more than half the vote.

In recent years, Ferrara’s office has faced controversy and attempts at greater oversight. In 2021, an investigative report revealed that multiple deputies had displayed Three Percenter symbols on their personal social media pages, a group with extreme anti-government, pro-gun beliefs that was involved in the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol. Ferrara defended the deputies and refused to investigate the incident.

Later in 2021, Ferrara’s office was sued by Nakia Porter, who alleged that sheriff’s deputies dragged her from her car and beat her unconscious after she had pulled over to switch drivers near Dixon. Ferrara defended the deputies, saying that Porter had slipped her wrist out of her handcuffs and struck Deputy Dalton McCampbell, though no video shows this.

Following the incident with Porter, the Board of Supervisors had a meeting to consider creating an oversight board that could investigate the sheriff’s office, but declined to do so.

In 2022, Ferrara once again faced Snedeker for reelection, but handily beat him, 70%-30%. During the election, Snedeker criticized the agency’s “hand-me-down” system where an incumbent will retire early and pass the job to a subordinate, who then runs as an incumbent.

“A hand-me-down system like that limits your ability to evolve as an agency,” Snedeker said. “It's just the status quo: that's what they know, that's what they do.”

Snedeker campaigned on doing more to help people in jails connect with resources to reduce recidivism.

The sheriff’s office had difficulty preventing deadly drugs like fentanyl from getting into the jails that year and there were five deaths in Solano County jails in 2022 – more than in the previous 20 years – and five more deaths in 2023. However, no one died in the jails in 2024. 

The next sheriff could oversee a major expansion of the office’s responsibilities in the county. The Board of Supervisors is considering an $11.2 million contract for sheriff’s deputies to patrol Vallejo and bolster the beleaguered Vallejo Police Department starting next year. The state legislature passed a new law that would allow the sheriff’s office to hire back retired deputies to supplement its own ranks to patrol Vallejo.

However, that plan has run into roadblocks. During a Board of Supervisors meeting last month, Ferrara questioned whether he could staff up and obtain equipment in time for the Jan. 1 start date. A particular challenge was that the state Public Employees' Retirement System found that retired deputies were already working for the sheriff’s office beyond what they were legally allowed to and ordered Ferrara to terminate eight retired deputies’ contracts by this month.

The board is expected to revisit the contract at its July 22 meeting.