Liccardo calls for sheriff to resign
San Jose Mayor Sam Liccardo called for Santa Clara County Sheriff Laurie Smith to step down Monday, citing a pattern of alleged wrongdoing that ranges from jail brutality that occurred under her watch, to an alleged pay-toplay scheme related to her 2018 re-election campaign.
Liccardo described a string of problems during the last six years of Smith’s 23-year tenure, exacerbated by a practice of withholding information from the public.
In addition to several highprofile beatings that took place in the county jail, Liccardo said he recently learned of a rule Smith enforced for years, requiring officers from
other agencies to turn off their body-worn cameras when bringing “combative” arrestees into the county jail.
As a result, Liccardo said, potential abuses could not be documented with video evidence. Smith lifted the rule in June “after repeated objections from local police chiefs,” Liccardo said during a public address from City Hall Monday, in which he enumerated what he viewed as Smith’s failures of leadership.
They include violent attacks on jail inmates that sometimes ended in death or serious injury, obfuscation of facts related to those incidents, civil rights lawsuits against deputies that cost taxpayers tens of millions of dollars, two consent decrees that required $450 million in public funds to improve jail conditions, and the criminal bribery investigation that led to three indictments of two top aides and a campaign fundraiser.
Smith promoted the head of her deputies’ union one month after her 2018 re-election, during which that union contributed $300,000 — another example of the “pay-toplay” culture within her office, Liccardo told reporters. The 2018 election marked the first contested race in two decades for Santa Clara County’s
top law enforcement seat.
Then, when a grand jury sought documents from Smith’s office to help with that investigation last October, Smith refused to cooperate “for fear of self-incrimination,” Liccardo said.
“That should disqualify anyone from serving in any law enforcement capacity, let alone as the highest ranking,” he added.
The mayor attributed Smith’s missteps either to corruption, incompetence, or both, saying that regardless of the explanation, Smith’s record suffices “to compel her resignation.”
In a text message, Smith said she had not watched Liccardo’s news conference, but that she’s preparing to respond at the Board of Supervisors meeting Tuesday morning.
Concerns about the jail began mounting in 2015, after three sworn correctional officers beat 31-year-old Michael Tyree to death in his sixthfloor cell, leaving his body battered and soiled with vomit and feces. Tyree died from internal bleeding and significant damage to his spleen and liver, according to the county medical examiner. The guards were convicted of second-degree murder two years later, and the county settled an excessive lawsuit from Tyree’s family for $3.6 million.
Smith vowed to use the episode as a catalyst for reform, saying at the time it had “tarnished the reputation” of her agency.
Although the county Board of Supervisors responded by creating a commission that helped draft 623 recommendations for reform, the Sheriff ’s Office continued to stumble in subsequent years. In 2019, an inmate named Martin Nunez ran head-first into the metal door of his cell while suffering psychiatric distress. Nunez injured his cervical spine and has since filed a lawsuit which is still pending.
Last week, two county supervisors, Joseph Simitian and Otto Lee, called for a probe into the case of Andrew Hogan, a mentally ill man who suffered a traumatic brain injury in the sheriff’s custody, apparently while deputies were transporting him to the county jail. The county paid Hogan’s family more than $10 million in 2018 to settle claims that he was unrestrained in the van and then left unattended and bleeding from head injuries after the ride.
Simitian and Lee asked that the sheriff ’s records related to Hogan’s case be turned over to the state attorney general and Santa Clara County grand jury for investigation. They said they are unaware of any discipline linked to the incident.
The supervisors also invoked Tyree and Nunez, saying several “noteworthy” incidents had occurred in the county jails. They accused the sheriff of stonewalling the county’s Office of Correction and Law Enforcement Monitoring, the county independent monitor and local news outlets when they tried to gather information.
The board is set to consider Simitian and Lee’s recommendations on Tuesday.
A spokesperson for the Sheriff ’s Office said in a statement last week that Hogan and Nunez injured themselves while suffering mental health crises. Both were arrested on minor charges and should have been held in a mental health facility, not a jail, the statement said.
The spokesperson also said the Santa Clara County jail is “severely understaffed,” making it “difficult to operate in a safe and secure manner.”
Liccardo, a former prosecutor, said that he is the first elected official to demand Smith’s resignation, though he hoped others would join him.