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El Paso County Sheriff Richard Wiles proved to be “silly,” “stupid” and “unprofessional” when he accused a city councilman of the same for having the gall to videotape one of his detectives on a public street.

Sheriff Richard Wiles denounced Socorro City Councilman Jesus Gandara Jr. on a KFOX 14 news segment Tuesday after an incident in which the councilman accused a detective of assaulting him.

The detective was investigating Gandara for allegedly abusing his power and having public workers pave his private driveway with public funding.

Accompanied by a photographer, the detective was trying to determine if the public project extended into Gandara’s private driveway.

Gandara then stepped out of his home with his own camera.

So far, everything seems normal and legit – aside from the fact that Gandara is a possible swindler.

This is how Wiles explains it:

"He comes out and he starts videotaping us. Now how silly is that? Here's a police vehicle out there, here's a police crime tech with a video camera, and he's videotaping us, that's stupid. It doesn't make any sense, it's very unprofessional, and I don't appreciate the way he is treating my personnel," Wiles told KFOX 14.

"So he goes up and tries to videotape the witness in the back of the police car who doesn't want to be videotaped and the detective approached him and asked him to step back, and grabbed the camera and pushed it down."

However, according to a Socorro police report, the detective grabbed Gandara’s hand and squeezed it, causing pain.

Gandara has since filed a misdemeanor assault charge against the detective, which concerns Wiles because he believes Socorro police are acting only on the orders of the Socorro councilman.

And we are not naïve to assume that Socorro police would have filed the same report had this been a regular Joe Blow from Socorro.

Regardless, the detective tried to prevent Gandara from videotaping, which is a violation of his rights, no matter how bad of sleazebag he may be.

And the sheriff doesn’t help matters any by insulting the councilman for videotaping the detective.