MOVE TO LIMIT JAIL OPIOID DEATHS IS YEARS LATE

The San Diego County Sheriff ’s Department’s record on jail deaths is indisputably appalling when it comes to the simplest metric of all: More than 210 inmates have died at county jails since 2006, a mortality rate significantly higher than seen in other large county jail systems in California. The great majority of those deaths occurred while Bill Gore was sheriff from 2009 to February of this year. Yet until his final day in office, Gore rejected critiques of his jail stewardship. Among the many reasons he cited was that they failed to take account of the fact that “since 2011, the use of opioids, including fentanyl, and subsequent overdoses, has become a serious national crisis,” as Gore wrote in a 2019 essay for The San Diego Union-Tribune.

This isn’t the potent excuse the former sheriff may think. It doesn’t explain why local county death rates are higher than elsewhere. Instead, it shows why his jail management went so awry. Three years ago, the then-sheriff appreciated the seriousness of the opioid crisis. So when did the Sheriff ’s Department

take drastic steps to increase the availability in jails of naloxone, a cheap miracle drug also known as Narcan that has saved the lives of thousands of Americans by reversing the effects of opiate overdoses? Back in 2019, when Gore cited the fentanyl menace? Nope. It’s only happened in the last month, according to a new U-T Watchdog story. Heeding a recommendation by the county’s Citizens’ Law Enforcement Review Board, all six county jails will soon have naloxone available in communal areas.

In June 2021, the U-T Watchdog reported that jail overdoses had increased from less than one a month in 2018 to more than 10 a month early last year. Over the last 21⁄2 years, at least 12 inmates have died from overdoses. The likelihood that many of these inmates would still be alive if the Sheriff ’s Department had taken obvious steps years ago should be a focus of the November sheriff ’s runoff pitting Undersheriff Kelly Martinez and, most likely, former deputy city attorney John Hemmerling. Gore’s lethal incompetence hangs over his former department.