DA’s office should have been faulted in report

The San Diego County District Attorney’s Office can prosecute anyone it believes is legally responsible for 185 in-custody deaths listed in a Feb. 3 California State Auditor’s report, but the report only mentions the DA’s office twice.

If the Citizens’ Law Enforcement Review Board (CLERB) has been presented as disengaged and woefully inadequate, then what does this make the DA’s office, which has only prosecuted one nurse for these deaths?

The DA’s office operates with the same level of impunity and disregard for human life as the San Diego County Sheriff ’s Department.

To end this plague of in-custody deaths, the DA’s Office will need to be part of the solution as much as CLERB and the Sheriff ’s Department.

For the state auditor to not correctly identify and include the DA in its report was a horrible mistake.

Darwin Fishman Racial Justice Coalition

of San Diego and North County Equity and Justice Coalition