Liccardo calls for sheriff’s resignation

Smith’s management of Santa Clara County’s jails cited

SAN JOSE » The mayor of the Bay Area’s largest city is calling for the resignation of Sheriff Laurie Smith over her management of Santa Clara County’s jails, adding to a chorus of criticism of the sheriff’s office, including recent calls from county leaders for outside investigations into inmate abuse and neglect at the jails.

San Jose Mayor Sam Liccardo says revelations last week about multimillion-dollar payouts to settle major-injury litigation from mentally ill men in jail custody, sluggish reforms, his own knowledge of troubling jail practices, and ongoing bribery and corruption scandals besetting Smith have led him to demand the sixterm sheriff leave office.

“It may not be obvious to her, but it’s painfully obvious to everyone else,” Liccardo said in an exclusive interview with this news organization. “Sheriff Smith must resign.”

The sheriff’s office did not respond to requests for comment Monday about the mayor’s declaration. The agency did, however, announce a news conference for this morning at its headquarters to provide “an update of accuracy” in response to a county Board of Supervisors referral seeking external probes into the sheriff’s office by the state attorney general and the county’s civil grand jury.

Last week, this news organization re

ported that the county quietly paid $10 million to the family of Andrew Hogan, who was in the throes of a psychiatric crisis in August 2018 when he was transported unrestrained and repeatedly hit his head against the walls of a jail-transport van with no intervention from correctional deputies or staff.

The county is currently assessing an abuse claim from another mentally ill inmate, Juan Martin Nunez, who in August 2019 injured his spine from a fall in his cell. He alleges that jail staff moved him despite his cries that he might be paralyzed, and blames them and paramedics for him becoming a quadriplegic. County sources say he could receive a settlement larger than Hogan’s family.

The financial claims come despite upward of $450 million spent by the county on bettering jail conditions in the years since the 2015 murder of Michael Tyree, a mentally ill inmate who was beaten to death by three jail deputies, and in response to a federal consent decree over decrepit jail conditions.

“The repeated violation of civil rights of jail inmates has damaged and ended lives,” Liccardo said. “It further undermines the community’s confidence in law enforcement more generally. I hate to see the work of good cops undermined by the poor leadership of the sheriff.”

Liccardo also said he has learned of a troubling practice at the jails, in which the the sheriff’s office ordered officers from area police departments to turn off their body-worn cameras when booking certain people into custody. Liccardo said the practice was only halted after objections by police agencies.

“Until June of this year, it was a requirement at the jail for arrestees who appeared to be combative,” he said. “Several departments were puzzled and frustrated by this.”

Several South Bay law enforcement sources familiar with jail booking said the mayor’s account was broadly accurate, but that there were some caveats: Body cameras were turned off, for example, to comply with healthprivacy laws when accompanying an arrested person in a hospital or medical setting. One such setting was Valley Medical Center in San Jose, where the majority of people arrested in the South Bay are taken if they require medical care or evaluation, and which is protected by sheriff’s deputies.

But by and large, they said, police were told to turn off their body-worn cameras when booking people who were combative into jail. Officers who were adamant about keeping their cameras on were often allowed to though, the sources said.

The mayor’s calls for the sheriff’s resignation follow the request from supervisors Joseph Simitian and Otto Lee last week that the county release a confidential report and video of jail staff’s response to the Hogan case, and use that information to compel external investigations of the jails, including by the county’s civil grand jury.

The civil grand jury has the unique authority to initiate proceedings that could lead to the forced removal of the sheriff, who is up for reelection for a seventh term in June.

Liccardo said the jail controversy worsens public confidence in the sheriff, who is already under intense scrutiny for another major scandal in which one of her key political fundraisers and two close advisers in her office — including her undersheriff — have been indicted on bribery charges alleging that they brokered the issuing of concealed-gun permits in exchange for political donations and favors.

Smith invoked her Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination in refusing to testify to one of the related criminal grand juries last year. In another criminal grand jury hearing, an employee testified that Smith willfully skirted campaign-finance reporting laws to mask her use of a San Jose Sharks luxury suite donated by a political supporter and concealedgun permit recipient.

“When she refuses to cooperate in an investigation because she fears her testimony will incriminate her,” Liccardo said, “she has to step down.”