By Jeff McDonald
The San Diego Union-Tribune
SAN DIEGO — Sheriff Kelly A. Martinez announced a new jail-safety protocol Thursday intended to better protect people in her custody by subjecting sworn deputies, contractors and visitors to a screening system similar to those used at county courthouses.
The effort was promoted as a way to boost security and help prevent drugs from being smuggled into county jails. But the new screening equipment is largely designed to detect metal objects such as guns and knives rather than dangerous narcotics.
The magnetometers will be employed on a random and spot-check basis at unspecified jail facilities, Martinez said. Use of the technology may be expanded in coming budget years as the department adds additional screeners, she said.
Deputies and other department employees and jail visitors will not be asked to undergo the more thorough scans that are used to examine people being booked into custody, with full body imaging that can see foreign objects internally.
“We are not using the body scanners on people in this group,” Martinez said about jail workers and visitors. “They are not going through a body scanner.”
The imaging scanners generally are used to find drugs that have been deliberately ingested or hidden in or on a person’s body — a smuggling strategy that the sheriff said is not generally used by workers or visitors to the jails.
“We don’t think employees are going to be smuggling drugs in that fashion,” Martinez said.
The department already has purchased some of the screening devices, and may seek extra money in coming budget years to install them at all jail facilities, the sheriff said. She declined to say where they will be deployed initially due to security concerns, she said.
The new screeners are the latest in a series of changes the Sheriff’s Department has implemented in recent years, including upgrading its mail-processing office and using drug-sniffing dogs to find illegal contraband, Martinez said.
“This is just adding an additional layer to screening that we are already doing,” she said.
The enhanced protocol is a significant concession to the civilian oversight board, families of people who have died in custody and other advocates who have urged Martinez to do more to protect the health and safety of incarcerated men and women.
MaryAnne Pintar, the new chair of the county Citizens’ Law Enforcement Review Board, or CLERB, thanked the sheriff for the new protocol.
The oversight board has twice recommended that everyone be digitally scanned with the more sensitive devices every time they enter a jail.
“This is not everything we asked for, and there is still a lot more to do to achieve zero overdose deaths, which should be our goal,” Pintar said. “But this is a solid step in the right direction, and I think it will make a difference.”
She said the oversight panel will continue its work.
“We will be monitoring the plan’s effectiveness closely to see if this leads to a reduction in overdose cases that come our way,” she said.
The sheriff has resisted implementing a body-scanning program jail-wide for years, even though CLERB and other outside agencies and interest groups have long called for stricter oversight of all people entering jails.
Department officials historically have responded by saying there is no evidence deputies are responsible for the influx of illegal drugs inside county jails. They also raised questions about the long-term health effects of repeated radiation exposure from the scanners.
The 4 Cs of inmate management: Maintaining order involves more than just searching and counting inmates and performing inspections. It involves understanding your inmate population.
For many years, the only people regularly scanned for drugs as they enter the jails have been people being booked into custody. Employees and visitors are subject to search at the discretion of the Sheriff’s Department, but that practice is not regularly enforced.
Sabrina Weddle , whose brother, Saxon Rodriguez , died in Central Jail in 2021 from drugs he obtained while in custody, said the sheriff is right to crack down on smuggling inside her jails. But she questioned whether the new devices are enough.
“I hope this is not just a statement for the media to make it look like the department is doing something,” she said. “I hope this is one step closer to lives being saved in county jails.”
Weddle also questioned the effectiveness of using magnetometers to fight drug smuggling.
“I’m not sure how accurate these screenings will be when it comes to deputies sneaking drugs in,” she said. “A metal detector may not let everyone know that this particular deputy has fentanyl in his pocket.”
Yusef Miller , the co-founder of the North County Equity and Justice Coalition advocacy group, credited the sheriff for improving standards for preventing drugs from being smuggled into jails.
“This is one step of many that needs to happen to make sure we have confidence in the screening process,” he said. “We have had a very porous system, as stated by inmates and family members.”
Miller said he was bothered that the sheriff is not saying more about details of the program. He suggested that she spell out some parameters of the new effort, such as how many of the county’s jails it will involve.
“Even if they can’t give us a location of where they will scan, if 30 percent of all detention centers will have random inspections, that would give us confidence that one-third of the time all the staff is being checked,” he said
“It’s a blind side that we have with law enforcement that we don’t want to admit there may be leakage (of drugs being smuggled into jails) or a breach of trust because a person is sworn, but reality should dictate our methods,” he added.
Twice last year, San Diego County was sued by family members of people who died after obtaining drugs in jail.
Also last year, a deputy was arrested for possessing cocaine on jail property, and another deputy was charged with taking prescription drugs from a drop box inside a sheriff’s substation. Both deputies pleaded guilty and were sentenced to probation.
Martinez said she was not prepared to publicly discuss any details of the enhanced screening program.
San Diego County has had a persistent problem with people dying in jail for many years.
So far this year, six people have died in sheriff’s custody; 51 others died over the prior three years. Since 2006, 243 men and women have died in San Diego County jails, according to a state audit released in 2022 and department records.
Most of the people in county jail have not been convicted of the crime for which they are being held. Instead, they are generally unable to make bail before facing trial, or they are incarcerated on a probation or parole violation.
The in-custody deaths are costly.
Just last week, San Diego County agreed to a $15 million settlement with the family of Elisa Serna , who died a harrowing death in 2019 after she was not placed into the department’s drug- and alcohol-withdrawal protocols.
According to court records, a sheriff’s deputy and jail nurse watched Serna collapse in her cell, hit her head and slump to the floor before leaving her alone a puddle of her own urine. She was found an hour later, dead and in the same position.
The San Diego County Board of Supervisors agreed to pay $14 million to Serna’s surviving family members, the largest wrongful-death payout ever approved. A medical contractor agreed to pay the remaining $1 million.
The Serna settlement pushed the total amount paid by the county for Sheriff’s Department misconduct and negligence past $75 million since 2019, records show. The county faces a slew of additional lawsuits related to allegations of negligence by sheriff’s deputies and other personnel.
Martinez said she has worked hard to better protect people in her custody since she was sworn into office early last year.
She said as soon as she took over she implemented a pilot program at the Central Jail called the Contraband and Narcotics Interdiction Team, which has now been expanded to other main booking facilities — the Vista jail in North County and the Las Colinas women’s jail in Santee .
As a result, Martinez said, deputies have seized more than 1,000 grams of fentanyl from people being booked into custody, and overdoses in county jails have fallen by 27 percent.
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