By Macy Meinhardt, Voice & Viewpoint Staff Writer
It has been three years since the state of California released an inflammatory audit report regarding the 185 deaths in San Diego County jails from 2006 to 2020; a rate exceeding more than any county in the state.
“The high rate of deaths in San Diego County’s jails compared to other counties raises concerns and suggests that underlying systemic issues with the Sheriff’s Department’s policies and practices have undermined its ability to ensure the health and safety of the individuals in its custody,” the audit report states, signed by Michael S. Tilden, Acting California State Auditor.
The panel was held at Café X and hosted by the San Diego Racial Justice Coalition. The event focused on discussions about the current progress of the community in seeking justice and reform within the San Diego County Sheriff’s Department.
Since 2020 an additional 55 deaths have occurred in county jails, peaking in 2022. While rates of death have trended down in the past two years, the community argues little justice has been done, and the climb to a safer county jail system appears steep.
After considering countywide mortality rates, San Diego jails have the highest number of unexplained deaths, according to the San Diego County Citizens Law Enforcement Review Board’s audit. AC Mills is a family member, one of many, looking for answers for the death of his loved one, Kevin Mills.
On Nov. 11, 2020, Mills, 59, was found unresponsive on the floor of his cell while in the custody of San Diego Central Jail. Sheriff officials determined the cause of death as heart failure, and ruled the manner of death as natural.
According to the father, Mills had behavioral health issues that required medications. Mills says he tried to explain this to medical nurses inside the facility, but to his knowledge, his son was denied his medication for the approximately 4 months he was there. The father now believes that neglect to his behavioral health was a crucial circumstance related to his son’s fatal heart attack.
Neglect by medical and law enforcement personnel in county jails is argued to be a common thread in a lot of in-custody death cases. Newly unsealed court records in the case of Elisa Serna say that witnesses and medical nurses observed her wobbling, vomiting, and eventually striking her head in her cell and collapsing. She asked for help multiple times, but the lead doctor on site, Dr. Friederike Von Lintig thought she was “faking”, records state.
“There are too many cases where the inmates’ care is really the last priority for our sheriff,” said former Assemblymember Lori Saldaña (D-76) on the panel.
Panelists discussed how officers in jails are mostly inexperienced, as most of them are new graduates of the police training academy. Misinformation, skewed policies aimed to to protect “deputies of the sheriff rather than the people that are in these systems,” and overcrowding were also circumstances brought up that contribute to the death rates.
“The training needs to be reviewed, looked at and improved. As I stated earlier, there are too many people incarcerated in the jails for the sheriff department to adequately provide medical care, psychiatric care, and safety and security for their individuals,”said Van Swearingend, a lawyer representing families in litigation with the sheriff’s department over wrongful death.
Instances like Serna and Mills and the evident neglect to the inmates physical and behavioral needs reflect the findings in the audit, that cite “underlying systemic issues”
The audit also states that the “Sheriff’s Department has not consistently taken meaningful action when such deaths have occurred. The department’s reviews of in‑custody deaths have been insufficient and have not consistently led to significant corrective action.”
The sheriff at the time, Bill Gore, promptly resigned in the wake of this audit report coming out in February 2022.
Since then, Kelly Martinez was elected in 2022 to fill Gore’s place. Despite new leadership, members at the panel still maintain that many of these issues have not been properly dealt with or fully addressed.
It was also brought up that the Citizen’s Law Enforcement Review Board (CLERB), charged to independently investigate complaints against the sheriff’s office, has not been effective in providing effective, independent oversight of in-custody deaths. The audit states that CLERB has “failed to investigate nearly one‑third of the deaths of incarcerated individuals in the past 15 years, which means that dozens of deaths have not been subject to a key form of review outside of the Sheriff’s Department.”
While CLERB can investigate complaints against the sheriff’s office, in-custody deaths are off limits for review, creating significant transparency concerns.
Members on the panel said that the San Diego Board of Supervisors are responsible for implementing change to the authority limits of CLERB and urged the Board to use their power to direct change to the sheriff’s office.
Speaking up on the issue at the board of supervisor meetings, engaging in the work and advocacy of groups like San Diego Racial Justice Coalition to end in-custody deaths are a few action items discussed to help bring change forward.
