Despite 12 jail deaths this year, sheriff refuses to discuss why it’s happening

More than a year has passed since The San Diego Union-tribune published the results of a six-month investigation into the high number of deaths inside county jails since Bill Gore became sheriff.

The findings were stark: Every month for more than 10 years, someone died in San Diego County custody.

They died from natural causes. They suffered overdoses. Sometimes inmates killed other inmates. Sometimes they killed themselves. Each manner of death was well represented in the data.

The data also confirmed that San Diego County had recorded the highest jail-mortality rate among California’s six largest counties for at least 10 years.

The sheriff declined repeated interview requests ahead of publication but publicly disputed the findings as soon as the series was published. Since then, he and his staff continue to misrepresent the deaths occurring in San Diego County jails.

A sheriff ’s sergeant told the Citizens Law Enforcement Review Board earlier this month that various parts of the Union-tribune’s multi-day report were “skewed,” “biased” and “pure speculation.”

Sgt. Aaron Meleen also told the volunteer oversight board that sheriff ’s data “appear to have been selected to fit the writers’ biased narrative” and “the article only focused on comparisons in five counties between 2013 and 2014.”

In fact, the investigation examined 20 years of fatalities and, most specifically, the jail deaths that occurred over the 10 years Gore has served as sheriff.

In addition, Meleen wrongly told the board that the Union-tribune “updated” the series in November 2019 in response to Gore’s claims that the stories were incorrect.

The sergeant repeatedly conflated results of a department study into jail suicides with the jail systems’ overall death rate, and presented the board with a recent report in the Redding Record-searchlight that he said placed San Diego in the middle of the pack of California counties with regard to in-custody deaths.

The paper of record in Shasta County, with barely 180,000 residents, noted there were 189 deaths in San Diego County jails between 2005 and 2019 and produced an analysis based on deaths per bookings. The national standard, used by the U.S. Bureau of Justice Statistics, is to use a jail system’s average daily population to calculate its mortality rate.

Employing the national standard puts San Diego County far ahead of all other large California counties, as the “Dying Behind Bars” investigation established.

The death rate in San Diego jails between 2010 and 2019 averaged 245.6 per 100,000 inmates over the 10-year period. In Los Angeles, the average was 157.7; the averages in San Bernardino and Santa Clara were just under 149; Orange County’s average was 134.9; and Sacramento recorded a 93.9 average.

In his presentation, Meleen also claimed that the Union-tribune declined to take into account deaths in city jails.

Police departments in Orange and Los Angeles counties have their own jails and the San Diego Sheriff ’s Department has argued that those jails act as a “filter,” taking some of the highest risk inmates off the hands of county jails.

But the Union-tribune did examine this claim and found that very few people die in police department custody. An analysis of that data did not change the finding that San Diego County has the highest mortality rate among large jail systems.

Meleen also told the review board that the Union-tribune overlooked the impact of AB 109 — 2011 legislation that shifted some inmates to jail custody instead of prison.

Again, Union-tribune reporters examined that data and it didn’t change the findings.

Throughout the reporting process last year, Gore and his top commanders declined to discuss the department policies and procedures that contributed to more than 140 deaths over 10 years.

Instead, they issued prepared statements to the newspaper and posted videos on the department website showing how they treat and care for the thousands of inmates in their custody.

And when the Union-tribune discovered flaws in the methodology of the department’s contract statistician, neither Gore nor his expert responded to the discrepancies.

Many readers were shocked as soon as the “Dying Behind Bars” series was published.

The reports introduced readers to the inmates who died and their grieving families. They exposed serious lapses in the Sheriff ’s Department medical and mental-health treatment practices. Taxpayers were troubled by the millions of dollars in jury awards and legal settlements that county supervisors had to approve.

The Union-tribune reached out to Meleen and to Sheriff ’s Department spokesman Lt. Ricardo Lopez last week about the mischaracterizations presented to the oversight board and received no response.

Paul Parker, the review board executive director who was copied on the email, replied quickly to the letter.

“I have forwarded your email to the CLERB members and, as I shared it with the CLERB, it will be (an) attachment to the January agenda,” he wrote.

So far this year, 12 inmates have died in San Diego County custody — 13 if an inmate who was found unconscious in his cell and died of COVID-19 just after he was released is included.

The county also is confronting a handful of new wrongful-death lawsuits from the families of inmates who died behind bars.