San Diego Union-Tribune (Sunday)
S.D. INMATE’S STORY: COVID FEARS, FILTH AND VIOLENCE
Man recently released raises concerns about county jail practices
During the worst of his 10-day stay in San Diego’s Central Jail, Richard Lantz was sure he would die.
The Spring Valley resident was arrested for the first time in his life Halloween night after a tussle with a neighbor in his condominium complex.
By then the novel coronavirus was already sweeping through San Diego County jails.
Lantz, 51, has underlying health conditions, including diabetes. He said in an interview this week that jail quarantine protocols the Sheriff ’s Department has implemented to protect inmates from COVID-19 turned out to be less rigorous in practice than they are on paper.
Lantz said deputies in the central jail routinely moved from cell to cell with face masks dangling below their noses — or no masks at all — and there was a lack of soap, hand sanitizer and cleaning supplies for inmates.
“They packed us in three people
per cell,” said Lantz, who stands 6 feet tall, nearly the width of the cell, which he estimated was 12 feet long.
The San Diego County Sheriff ’s Department’s COVID-19 quarantine protocol says inmates are allowed access to a common area for at least 30 minutes each day. But Lantz said three days passed before he and his cellmates were allowed out of their cells to shower and use the phone.
“Fifteen to 30 minutes every three days,” he said. “Otherwise, we were stuck in the cell.”
Lantz, who approached The San Diego Union-tribune after reading about deaths in San Diego County jails, described a terrifying experience in the downtown jail.
He said he was denied his prescribed diabetes medication, and deputies refused to let him see a doctor when his blood-sugar level rose dangerously high. Deputies also caused him to miss his lawyer’s appointment, stranding him in jail for an extra week, he said.
Due to quarantine rules, deputies would not allow inmates to throw away food packaging, so it piled up in a corner of the cell, Lantz said. One of Lantz’s cellmates, an elderly man who showed signs of dementia, started eating rotted food and pieces of packaging from the pile.
The man appeared to believe he was on a ship and often cried out for a woman named Jennifer. Lantz and the other cellmate tried summoning deputies to help him.
“They responded by telling us to watch him until morning and then (they) cut off our emergency call button,” Lantz said.
That morning deputies moved the man to a cell with an inmate Lantz described as “loud and short-tempered.” Lantz said he watched as the elderly man “got the crap beat out of him” by his new cellmate.
Deputies removed the violent inmate. The older man had a black eye and a bloated face from the beating, Lantz said.
The Sheriff’s Department declined to respond to questions about Lantz’s allegations.
But a spokesman, Lt. Ricardo Lopez, has said previously that the Sheriff’s Department is committed to providing a safe environment for inmates and staff amid the COVID-19 pandemic. Last spring he said the jail was providing cleaners, soap and masks for inmates.
“Our Medical Services Division and our entire Detention Services Bureau are working diligently every single day to prevent and mitigate the spread of COVID-19,” Lopez said in a statement earlier this year.
The actions by jail commanders have not always worked.
According to the department’s website, at least 575 inmates and staff have been infected by the novel coronavirus, including at least 240 active cases as of last week. One employee died in October from COVID-19, the sheriff reported.
The outbreak is the latest example of the dangers some inmates face in custody.
At least 12 county jail inmates have died so far this year, according to the latest jail records, extending a years-long mortality rate that has been the highest among California’s largest jail systems in more than a decade.
Deaths in San Diego County jails have averaged more than one a month , a Union-tribune investigation found last year.
Lantz said he was thinking about that as he sat handcuffed in the back of a sheriff’s cruiser on Halloween night. He also was worried about how he would make his rent payment, and who might feed his cats.
“I would be homeless if I got evicted,” he said. “I don’t make enough to pay more rent.”
Happened on Halloween
Lantz grew up on a goat farm in Norco, 100 miles north of San Diego. He drove a truck for a while after high school, but his bipolar disorder made that job increasingly difficult. Back pain, diabetes and issues with his memory didn’t help, he said.
Lantz moved to San Diego County just over 15 years ago and qualified for state disability benefits. He makes do by renting out spare rooms in his Spring Valley condominium and doing freelance writing.
The condo complex was hosting an outdoor, mostly socially distanced Halloween party when Lantz arrived dressed as Capt. Malcolm Reynolds, the hero in the science fiction TV series “Firefly.”
One of his neighbors accused Lantz of pointing a laser at his child, something Lantz said was accidental, if it happened at all. He said the man began striking him, knocking him to the ground and beating him.
The following moments were a blur, Lantz said, but he remembers his neighbor’s wife raising her voice. “She said ‘Don’t you point a gun at me.’
Lantz said it was a toy gun that went with his costume, and he isn’t sure he brandished it at anyone. Nonetheless, sheriff ’s deputies arrived and took control of the situation.
The neighbor had a gash on his head and Lantz was arrested. According to the District Attorney’s Office, Lantz was charged with felony assault for striking his neighbor with a gun.
“He claimed I pistol-whipped him with a real gun,” said Lantz, who has no prior criminal history, according to San Diego County court records.
Once booked into the downtown jail, Lantz heard his bail had been set at $30,000, which he couldn’t afford.
He was placed in a room lined with benches . One man caught his eye, Lantz said, “an Iraqi war veteran who was talking about how he was going to kill himself.”
“They (deputies) heard him talking, but they did absolutely nothing,” Lantz said. “We told him, ‘If you do that, they win.’ That seemed to talk him down.”
Guards checked incoming inmates for contraband before issuing them clothes.
Lantz was X-rayed to check for weapons or drugs, tested for tuberculosis, issued a scratchy blanket inmates called a “suicide wrap” and marched off to quarantine in a three-man cell.
Deputies took his cane, so getting around was difficult, Lantz said. He was stuck with the top bunk. There was no ladder, so he had to use a nearby table to reach the top.
Lantz is an observant Jew. The guards mocked him when he requested kosher food, so he skipped more meals than he could remember, he said.
A nurse woke him in the middle of the night to test his blood-sugar level. It came back dangerously high at 425. Lantz was offered insulin but declined.
“They considered me to be uncooperative because I wouldn’t let them shoot me up with insulin without checking my blood sugar” a second time, he said.
Lantz takes Glipizide to keep his diabetes in check, a prescription drug the Sheriff ’s Department does not stock. The jail offered him an alternative called Metformin, but he said he doesn’t tolerate the drug.
Due to the quarantine, more than a week passed before Lantz was permitted to speak to a public defender. Once he told her his story, she arranged a videoconference with the Superior Court and the judge released Lantz on his own recognizance.
150 inmates dead since 2009
More than 150 inmates have died in San Diego County jails since 2009. Not counted among them is 34-year-old Mark Armendo, who was found unconscious in his cell at the Vista jail in late June.
Armendo never regained consciousness and was released from jail custody by a judge, before Armendo died in a hospital.
His family has since sued, saying Armendo contracted COVID-19 in jail. A jail official said that if he died of the virus, he didn’t contract it in jail.
The Sheriff’s Department has said it is focused on preventing deaths and injuries. Over the last several years, the department has made changes to its medical and
mental-health services, boosting spending and training and adding staff.
Earlier this year, Gore proposed fully outsourcing the health care services across his seven jails, which hold about 4,000 people. The idea was opposed by County Supervisor Nathan Fletcher and hundreds of county nurses and mentalhealth counselors who stand to lose their jobs.
Gore and his command staff also have said they’re making improvements in the hope of winning accreditation from the National Commission on Correctional Health Care, a nonprofit that advises jail systems on best practices.
“NCCHC (accreditation) will increase how efficient we are in providing all of the health benefits that we provide to our inmates,” Cmdr. Erika Frierson told the Uniontribune last year.
The department spent $100,000 on a commission study that came out in 2017 and pledged to adopt its recommendations to secure accreditation by 2020.
It is unlikely the department will reach that goal this year. Last fall the department said it had dozens of standards to meet to qualify for accreditation.
Also more inmates have died as a result of some of the lapses singled out in the 2017 study, according to lawsuits and jail records.
For instance, Spiros Fonseca of El Cajon hanged himself at the Central Jail in June, hours after being booked into custody, when he was supposed to be on the department’s drug-withdrawal protocols. He was 26.
The 2017 study described the jails’ suicide prevention program as “inadequate” and said the drug withdrawal protocol was not being followed consistently.
The study also faulted the Sheriff’s Department for not doing enough to address chronic health problems — such as diabetes, asthma, heart conditions and seizure disorder — that plague many of the people who cycle through San Diego jails.
Two issues Lantz identified — the high third bunk in his cell and the deputies muting the emergency call button — have played a role in at least two inmate deaths and one serious injury, according to court records.
In February 2018, Frankie Greer, an Army veteran, suffered a serious brain injury when he fell from the third bunk onto the concrete f loor.
Greer suffered from a seizure disorder, but deputies would not allow him to bring his anti-seizure medication into the jail and declined his request for a lower bunk, according to a lawsuit.
“Cellmates attempted to alert jail staff of (Greer’s) fall through a cell intercom. However, because the intercom was silenced, his cellmates were unable to contact the deputies,” the lawsuit said.
In April, U.S. District Judge Gonzalo Curiel denied the county’s request to dismiss the lawsuit.