Established in 1849, the current sheriff is Patrick Withrow, who heads a department of over 800 sworn and support personnel.
On 20 October 1989, Detective Dighton Little, SWAT team member, was shot by a suspect during a joint raid conducted with the Stanislaus County Sheriff's Department.
The number of body fragments found at the site has forced police agencies to reevaluate how many may have been killed by the pair.
[5] Sheriff Baxter Dunn, former deputy Monte McFall, and other county officials were indicted on federal corruption charges in 2003.
[8] In 2017, famed pathologist and physician Bennet Omalu resigned as chief medical examiner alleging routine egregious interference in postmortem examinations by then Sheriff Steve Moore (who doubled as coroner) to protect law enforcement officers who killed people.