Garrett Hottle
RIVERSIDE (CNS) – A proposal to establish a commission to analyze whether Riverside County might benefit from having a standing oversight committee to implement measures intended to improve Sheriff’s operations was rejected Tuesday by the Board of Supervisors.
“Given everything that has transpired in the last few years, with the number of lawsuits, indicates that we need this committee,” Supervisor Jose Medina said regarding his proposal. “It’s good government, which works best with transparency and accountability. That’s what this will try to do.”
Medina sought an Ad-Hoc Committee to Consider Establishment of an Oversight Committee and Office of Inspector General for the Sheriff’s Department. The ad-hoc group would have reported back to the Board in six months. However, following a three-hour hearing in which nearly 70 people spoke, none of Medina’s four Board colleagues would second a motion to vote on the proposed ad-hoc.
The proposal died.
“Divisive partisan politics has entered Riverside County government,” Sheriff Chad Bianco said vehemently at the end of the Board hearing. He took specific aim at Medina, noting that during the Supervisor’s 12years in the state Assembly, “his votes were to de-criminalize criminal behavior.”
“We’re here because of a lie,” the Sheriff said. “I will not say our agency is perfect, but we’re striving to be the best.”
During Tuesday’s hearing, a roughly equal number of supporters and critics of Sheriff’s operations came forward to address Medina’s proposal.
“There are ongoing issues. To maintain confidence, the county should establish an oversight board. The concentration of power in the department has created a climate of fear, “Linda Sherman said.
Sky Allen with Inland Empire United, a political advocacy group, said Medina had touched on a matter eliciting both “pain and hope.”
“The pain is from the families who feel unheard,” Allen said. “The hope is from residents who still believe government can work for them.”
Desert Hot Springs City Councilman Dirk Voss called the proposed ad-hoc study “a waste of time,” asserting that if it led to a permanent oversight committee and inspector general, there would be “unlawful investigations, litigation and lawsuits.”
La Quinta City Councilman Steve Sanchez aired similar grievances, telling the board, “This is not about transparency. It would be shifting accountability away from voters and to appointees. ‘Oversight’ is calledelections.”
A number of pro-committee speakers pointed to the dozens of in-custody deaths – an exact figure was elusive – that have occurred in the last six or more years throughout the county correctional system, insisting that negligence, poor training and other deficiencies in the Sheriff’s Department were to blame.
Paloma Serna of Saving Lives in Custody California said an oversight committee should have been installed in 2021, after the state Legislature made provisions for counties to establish inspectors general and oversight supervision of local law enforcement agencies via Senate Bill 1185.
“Bianco is not above the law,” she said. “Oversight is not an option when lives are being lost.”
The county deputies’ union, Riverside Sheriffs’ Association, which endorsed all of the Supervisors except Medina in their election or reelection bids over the last six years, had more than one representative on hand.
“Creating a committee will come with no safeguards for potential litigation and due process,” RSA Vice President Jose Santos told the Board. “This will invite legal challenges.”
Medina noted in his proposal that Los Angeles, Orange, Sacramento, San Diego, San Francisco, Santa Clara and Sonoma counties had all moved forward with establishing oversight committees, but it wasn’t clear how much additional financial burden that had placed on the jurisdictions.
The Riverside County Sheriff’s Department regularly leads among county agencies in the number of lawsuits filed annually naming the department as a defendant. The suits often stem from deputy-involved shootings.
In 2014, then-Supervisor Kevin Jeffries, disturbed by the millions of dollars in liability claims the county was having to settle every year, proposed making agencies responsible for paying their own settlements out of their individual budgets. The Sheriff’s Department was the principal opponent of the concept, which didn’t garner support. Bianco was not elected Sheriff until four years later.
He disputed the idea Medina’s proposal was about “transparency and deaths.”
“The Sheriff’s Department does not have a good relationship with political action groups that despise law enforcement,” the Sheriff said. “We’re the most transparent law enforcement agency in the country.”
Bianco, who is running for Governor, noted that in-custody deaths have been steadily dropping since the “anomaly” of 2022, when fatalities spiked to almost two dozen.
“We cannot be held responsible for inmates smuggling fentanyl into jails through their anal cavity or other orifices and then using the drugs later (with sometimes fatal consequences),” he said. “We have spent millions on equipment to locate (smugglers) coming into the jails.”
He and others insisted the Department has adequate “oversight” from the California Department of Justice, U.S. Department of Justice, FBI, county grand jury and other entities.
“This (Medina’s proposal) is a divisive solution to a non-existent problem,” Bianco said.
Medina countered that, in spite of failing to muster support for just the ad-hoc committee, he felt the opportunity for people to have a say in a public forum Tuesday was “productive.”
“Sheriff Bianco attacks me for being politically motivated,” the Supervisor said. “It’s ironic the person who attacks me for being partisan wants to be the Republican candidate for Governor. This issue is not going away. But now we will just not have a platform for discussion.”
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