King City’s former police chief says most ‘bad apples’ are gone

Nick Baldiviez spent 25 years with the department and nine of those as chief. He is currently facing embezzlement and perjury charges from when he was the police chief.

Baldiviez told News Channel 5 that he supports the move to keep King City police officers on the streets, but there will be challenges.

Baldiviez said the city is going to have to hire a chief soon and that there is nowhere to go but up.

“It appears that a majority of the bad apples have been removed from the agency,” said Baldiviez.

As a police administrator, Baldiviez said the sheriff’s proposal was an expensive option to consider and he favored the local control option.

“With local control we spend our local tax dollars locally and when I was a chief there we bought most everything locally starting with our police vehicles.”

Baldiviez said the number one challenge now is to build a stronger relationship with the Hispanic community. He believes the next chief should be qualified, bilingual and have police management experience.

Baldiviez is still waiting to go to trial for the charges against him.