By Robert Salonga
Mercury News
SAN JOSE, Calif. — Two Santa Clara County supervisors are calling for unprecedented outside scrutiny of the sheriff’s office and the jails it operates, asserting the agency has stubbornly resisted oversight of its management of county jails, including in cases of serious inmate injuries that exposed the county to millions of dollars in legal liability.
In a referral submitted for the Board of Supervisors’ next meeting Tuesday, Joseph Simitian and Otto Lee are requesting the public release of records in the case of Andrew Hogan, with the aim of prompting external investigations into the sheriff’s office by both the state attorney general and a civil grand jury.
Hogan was a mentally ill former inmate who was severely disabled after repeatedly injuring himself while riding unrestrained in a jail transport van.
The supervisors’ referral asks the county counsel to release a confidential investigative report on Hogan’s case, as well as four-and-a-half hours’ worth of body-camera footage and other audio-video recordings of deputies’ response. The supervisors are also asking the Office of County Law Enforcement Monitoring — the civilian overseer of the sheriff’s office — to review any disciplinary action taken in the case.
This news organization reported Monday that the county quietly paid $10 million to Hogan’s family in March 2020 to settle claims that deputies and jail staff failed to adequately supervise Hogan during a psychiatric crisis in August 2018, and did not intervene after he was injured in their custody, standing by for several minutes after the van arrived at the Main Jail while they waited for paramedics. Hogan’s injuries were severe enough that doctors had to remove part of his skull to save him.
The referral also seeks an update on an ongoing claim by former inmate Juan Martin Nunez, who alleges that he became quadriplegic in August 2019 after he fell in his cell and injured his spine. Nunez claims that deputies ignored him when he cried out that he believed he was paralyzed, moved him without stabilizing him, and waited for more than 24 hours before summoning paramedics. County sources familiar with the case believe Nunez could receive an even larger settlement than Hogan.
The financial liabilities come despite the county spending upwards of $450 million on reforms recommended after mentally ill inmate Michael Tyree was beaten to death by three jail deputies in 2015, and a federal consent decree that settled litigation over decrepit conditions in county jails.
Besides seeking the public disclosure of the records, Simitian and Lee are asking for the information to be sent to the California attorney general’s office for a probe of sheriff’s jail operations, similar to the pattern-or-practice investigations conducted by the U.S. Department of Justice.
More aggressively, the supervisors also want the records to go the county Superior Court’s Civil Grand Jury for an investigation of the sheriff’s office for official misconduct. The civil grand jury has the unique authority to initiate the forced removal of a sitting sheriff, an elected position in California counties.
If approved by a majority vote Tuesday, county staff would have a Sept. 14 deadline to release the records and complete the oversight review of Hogan’s case.
A grand jury investigation could not start until the 2022 jury term begins in January — five months before the June primary election in which Sheriff Laurie Smith could vie for a seventh term.
In a statement to this news organization earlier this week, the sheriff’s office called the injuries suffered by Hogan and Nunez “tragic,” and suggested the two men should not have been in the jails because of their severe mental illness.
“Both were in custody for minor charges and should have been placed in treatment facilities, not a jail,” the statement said.
The sheriff’s office has not said whether any disciplinary action was taken in either the Hogan or Nunez case. The agency continues to resist requests for access to its records from the firm tasked with civilian oversight of jail operations.
In their referral, Simitian and Lee state that they are not aware of any discipline taken in the Hogan case — and imply that political maneuvering may have played a role in the decision.
Specifically, they note that Amy Le, then the president of the county correctional officers’ union, was the watch commander at the Main Jail in San Jose on the night Hogan arrived injured in 2018. Around the same time, Le shepherded her union’s endorsement of Sheriff Laurie Smith in the most contested re-election bid of Smith’s career. The union also spent $300,000 to support Smith’s re-election.
A few months after the election — and after Hogan’s ordeal — Le was promoted to captain.
“Coincidence alone is certainly not proof of causality,” the referral states. “But in this instance the apparent coincidences merit further scrutiny.”
In June 2019, Le was abruptly walked off the job and eventually retired after being accused of insubordination in a bizarre episode involving her decision to commission the construction of an outdoor barbecue area and gazebo at the Elmwood Correctional Complex in Milpitas. She claimed she was the target of retaliation and has sued the sheriff’s office alleging race, age and gender discrimination, and harassment.
The calls for external investigations into jail conditions comes as the sheriff’s office faces ongoing corruption allegations stemming from Smith’s 2018 re-election bid. Some of Smith’s political allies — including the co-treasurer of an independent expenditure committee, and a sheriff’s captain and an undersheriff who were among her close advisers — have been indicted on bribery and conspiracy charges alleging that they brokered the exchange of concealed-gun permits for political donations.
When Smith — the sole signatory for the specialized permits — was called before a criminal grand jury in August 2020, she invoked her Fifth Amendment rights against self-incrimination.
Three months later, grand jury testimony behind one of the indictments revealed the sheriff willfully tried to skirt gift-reporting laws by directing a staff member to purchase low-level San Jose Sharks tickets to mask her use of a donated luxury suite by one of her political supporters, and a gun-permit recipient.
(c)2021 the San Jose Mercury News (San Jose, Calif.)