San Diego’s Latest Round of Jail Deaths Make a Case for No Longer Electing the County Sheriff
Four prisoners have died in San Diego County jails since early February, according to a story by Kelly Davis, writing for the Guardian.
Joseph Castiglione died on February 7 at the Vista Detention facility after being shackled and placed face down on a gurney. On Valentine’s Day, Michael Wilson passed away in San Diego’s Central jail. Derek King expired two days later. A month and two days later Ivan Ortiz’s life ended.
The causes of death were different in each case. What they had in common was the failure of sheriff’s deputies those facilities to respond appropriately to health emergencies. And this failure is rooted in our state constitution’s requirement of electing county sheriffs.
From the Guardian:
The recent deaths have reignited long-running concerns about medical and mental healthcare inside the jails of California’s second most populous county, and the ways the system puts at risk some of the most vulnerable prisoners.
The jail system’s inmate death toll stands at 135 dead over the last decade, according to public records. Between 2000 and 2007, San Diego had the second highest death rate of inmates among the state’s large jail systems, according to the Bureau of Justice Statistics. Since then, those numbers have only increased. A majority of the 135 deaths involve inmates who struggled with serious mental illness. Some prisoners died of a lack of medical care. And many took their own lives.
San Diego county jails particularly struggle with preventing inmate suicides, a 2018 report by Disability Rights California, a watchdog organization, found. During the three-year span of the investigation, more inmates killed themselves in San Diego’s jail system than in LA county jails, despite LA’s inmate population being three times the size. The report found the San Diego jails struggled with an over-incarceration of people with mental health-related disabilities, failed to provide adequate mental health treatment to inmates, did not have in place appropriate suicide prevention practices and lacked oversight.
While it’s easy to point (and he is ultimately responsible) at the man in charge of the jails, Sheriff Bill Gore, I’ve become convinced it’s a byproduct of the process of electing county law enforcement chiefs throughout the State of California.
Keep in mind for the moment the history of malfeasance with County Sheriff’s Department involving sexual assault, excessive force, politicalization, and even arms trafficking as I run down a few selected horror stories from around the state.
Really gross mistreatment of prisoners, via the East Bay Times, reporting on Alameda County:
Former deputies Justin Linn and Erik McDermott face several charges each of assault under the color of authority and witness intimidation that stem from 2016 allegations at the Santa Rita County Jail in Dublin.
Alameda County Superior Court Judge Morris Jacobson also held both defendants on the charge of having allegedly choked an inmate to unconsciousness — previously only McDermott had been charged.
The deputies are alleged to refer to the throwing of feces and urine as “spreading the gospel,” or nicknamed them “crappuccinos,” one inmate testified. The term for the waste-throwing is commonly called “gassing” in the county jail.
Los Angeles County taxpayers stuck for huge lawsuit settlements, via KCET:
During the past decade, Los Angeles County’s taxpayers have doled out more than $1 billion for other people’s mistakes...
...According to a March 5, 2019 memo, the Sheriff’s Department led all county agencies with $10.2 million in judgments and $13 million in settlements for its top three cases, including a $15 million payment over two years to Frank O’Connell, who spent more than 27 years in prison for a murder he did not commit.
In what strikes some as an inappropriate response, new Sheriff Alex Villanueva rehired a deputy fired in 2016 over allegations of domestic abuse, stalking and harassment, rehired two others fired for misconduct, and plans to revisit the cases of several hundred deputies fired under former Sheriff Jim McDonnell. Those actions raise the question whether litigation and settlement figures could rise if fired deputies return to the job.
Brutal treatment of an arrestee leads to his death in Orange County, via the OC Weekly:
A federal lawsuit alleges a group of Orange County Sheriff’s Department (OCSD) deputies “sadistically” tortured and killed a 33-year-old pre-trial detainee in April 2018, though law enforcement officials call the death an accident...
...At least seven deputies put Solano, who’d already been checked for weapons, in “an extreme hold,” “forcefully shoved him against the cell glass wall,” “violently pushed his face down onto a concrete bunk,” dropped his head on the floor, twisted his limbs, kneed him in the back and placed all of their weight (estimated at more than 1,000 pounds) on him while they ignored his repeated screams of “Please, please, please. I can’t breathe,” according to Sehat.
As a restrained Solano gasped for air, the deputies continued to yell, “Stop resisting.” The officers got their wish.
Solano became non-responsive, his face turned blue, drool dribbled out of his mouth and his pulse stopped at some point during the next three minutes, according to the lawsuit.
Riverside County legal settlements threaten its solvency, via the Press Enterprise:
Riverside County’s auditor-controller told supervisors this week that recent legal settlements have been so expensive, and so far in excess of neighboring counties, that the county’s finances are under threat….
...Preliminary numbers compiled by Angulo’s office show that over five years, the county paid out more than $136 million in settlements.
...By comparison, San Bernardino County paid out $36 million and Orange County paid out almost $28 million during the same period, according to Angulo’s data. Los Angeles County – with a population four times bigger than Riverside County – paid out $321 million.
The biggest Riverside County payouts – about $85 million – came in the area of public safety, Angulo’s figures show. The Sheriff’s Department frequently gets sued by families of those shot by deputies; in November, for example, a jury awarded $2.5 million to the mother of a mentally ill man shot and killed by deputies in Moreno Valley in 2015.
San Bernardino County pays big bucks in jailhouse discrimination lawsuit, via the San Bernardino Sun:
San Bernardino County is to pay about $1 million to gay, bisexual, transgender and intersex inmates who were incarcerated in a so-called Alternative Lifestyle Tank at the West Valley Detention Center from 2012 to 2018, a U.S. District Court judge ruled this month.
Riverside Judge Jesus G. Bernal announced his decision six months after the American Civil Liberties Union and San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Department agreed to settle a 2014 lawsuitover LGBTQI inmates being held in cells for up to 23 hours a day and prohibited from participating in jail programs.
I could go on, and you’re welcome to by simply searching Google News using the terms “_______ County Sheriffs lawsuit.” The point here is that California has a problem.
Moving beyond the treatment of prisoners, California Sheriff’s are attracting nationwide attention from conservative media outlets, thanks to the fact that sheriffs in roughly half the state's jurisdictions are actively resisting enforcement of the "California Values Act," by actively assisting federal immigration authorities in non-felony detentions.
The State of California’s initial attempt to track racial profiling complaints against police has been foiled, reporting numbers so low as to not be believed, and sheriff departments were among the biggest obstructionists, according to ABC News:
Plumas County sheriff's Deputy Ed Obayashi, an expert on use-of-force policies who teaches other law enforcement personnel around the state, said the racial numbers don't reflect reality, but he discounted any nefarious intent.
In Southern California, the San Diego County Sheriff's Department, where Obayashi used to work, reported just one racial profiling complaint in 2017, while the Riverside County Sheriff's Department had seven. About 3.34 million people live in San Diego County, while the population of Riverside County, which includes the cities of Riverside and Palm Springs, is around 2.42 million. The Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department, the United States' largest sheriff's agency, recorded 31.
"There's no way," Obayashi said. "People who see this report are going to say, 'They're covering this up.'" He and others blamed conservative reporting policies that leave out informal complaints, coupled with "complaint fatigue" by people who are too frightened to complain or believe they'll be ignored.
The practice of electing sheriffs is at the heart of these problems according to an op-ed written by Connecting California columnist Joe Mathews. I agree.
Once elected, sheriffs in all 58 counties have power over jails and policing, and act pretty much as they please. Under our state’s structure, a sheriff in California can’t really be fired. Those most liable to complain about a sheriff — inmates and those accused of crimes — have trouble gaining the public’s ear, let alone its sympathy. And in the Trump era, some sheriffs, especially in conservative precincts, have flirted with anti-California treason, defying state laws that protect our immigrant families.
In theory, sheriffs should be accountable precisely because they are elected. The California Constitution requires every county to have an elected sheriff for that reason. But in practice, sheriffs’ elections are not healthy contests. They draw little media attention, so voters know little about the contenders or the issues...
... The two most prominent sheriffs of this century — Lee Baca of Los Angeles County and Mike Carona of Orange County — are now convicted felons. In both cases, state and local officials failed to police their corruption, so federal investigations were required to push them out of office.
The fact that the feds are often the only people who can stop such abuses is an unspoken reason so many California sheriffs prioritize the immigration-related whims of federal authorities over fealty to state law.
Reforming or requiring oversight of law enforcement practices is a politically dicey thing to do these days. Witness the intensity of efforts to support or oppose legislative efforts to change the standard for deadly use of force.
Given that California police kill people at a rate 37% higher than the national per capita average and of those who were completely unarmed when killed by police, three quarters were people of color, you’d think reforming the oldest unchanged use-of-force law in the nation wouldn’t be that difficult.
San Diego Assemblywoman Shirley Weber's attempt at reform legislation was killed last year by Democratic Senate President Pro Tem Toni Atkins amid heavy law enforcement opposition. This year there are competing proposals and serious lobbying in progress.
California’s transparency law for police misconduct records (SB1421) was supposed to have gone into effect Jan. 1, 2019. One department shredded all their old records rather than comply. Others have fought the law (and lost) in court. After initially attempting to charge news organizations hundreds of thousands of dollars to comply with records requests, the San Diego Sheriff’s office has reversed its policy.
Fixing the problem of electing sheriffs will require an amendment to the California constitution, and that won’t be an easy task. What needs to happen is for county wide law enforcement to be under the authority of boards of supervisors. It’s not a perfect solution, but it’s the only one I see with a chance of happening.
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