WHY SHERIFF BILL GORE’S DECISION IS A RELIEF
San Diego County Sheriff Bill Gore’s surprise announcement Wednesday that he would retire Feb. 3 instead of completing his third full term said it was an honor to serve in the role for 12 years and an opportunity to devote all his attention to his wife of 43 years. His official statement, coming six months after he’d announced he wouldn’t run again, made no mention of the controversy that has dogged him.
The San Diego Union-Tribune Editorial Board thanks Gore for five decades of public service in law enforcement — but hopes his successor is an improvement. The second-generation San Diegan graduated from Crawford High School and the University of San Diego. During 32 years with the FBI, Gore played a key role in the creation of the San Diego Regional Computer Forensics Laboratory, the first such lab in the nation. And since he joined the Sheriff ’s Department in 2004, it has maintained a reputation with among the lowest crime rates in its service areas of any large U.S. county. Yet Gore’s pending departure is welcome — for three reasons.
A first reason is that it is apparently not part of an orchestrated effort to install Undersheriff Kelly Martinez as Gore’s interim replacement and give her a boost in the June election. In 2009, Sheriff Bill Kolender announced plans to retire early and urged county supervisors to replace him with then-Undersheriff Gore. This helped Gore win a full term in 2010. On Wednesday, Martinez said that she would not seek that interim appointment, and Nathan Fletcher, chair of the county Board of Supervisors, told an editorial writer that he opposed naming an interim sheriff until after the filing deadline for sheriff candidates closed on March 11. “I don’t think we should put our thumb on the scale,” Fletcher said. Waiting until after the filing deadline precludes the possibility that an interim sheriff might go back on promises not to seek the job after being appointed, he said. Of course, Gore, Fletcher and a supervisorial majority endorsed Martinez this past summer, so the effort was already being orchestrated.
A second reason Gore won’t be missed as sheriff is his inability to limit deaths at county jails, which grew more unacceptable with each passing year. More than 150 people have died in custody due to poor health, suicide, overdoses and homicide since he became sheriff. Some cases reflected egregious callousness from deputies toward inmates suffering drug withdrawals or lacking the medicine they needed for severe medical conditions. In 2019, after a six-month investigation, the Union-Tribune documented how San Diego County had the highest jail-mortality rate among the state’s largest counties. Despite the department’s claims to have embraced reforms, last year saw a record 18 deaths.
In recent years, Gore replied by declining interview requests and depicting himself as a victim of the media. This carried an implication that the jail system — despite a culture of death — was just fine.
A third reason to welcome Gore’s early departure is the evidence of racial disparities in his department’s interactions with the public. A report the department commissioned by the Center for Policing Equity and released Dec. 9 found that sheriff ’s deputies were four times more likely to use force against Black people than White people. In March, the Union-Tribune published an analysis of 128,000 sheriff ’s deputies’ stops of drivers and pedestrians from July 2018 to July 2020. It found Black people were stopped at a per-capita rate 68 percent higher than the Black share of the county population.
Last month, the Citizens’ Law Enforcement Review Board, a civilian oversight board, asked the agency to explain how it would address the disparities. A response shouldn’t wait until an elected sheriff takes office next year. An interim sheriff may not be able to make sweeping changes. But having any sheriff with a new perspective will be a start.