By Robert Salonga and Julia Prodis Sulek
San Jose Mercury News
SAN JOSE — A group of newer, inexperienced correctional officers at Santa Clara County’s beleaguered Main Jail are responsible for an alarming number of excessive force complaints, Sheriff Laurie Smith said Wednesday, vowing to beef up supervision of the night shift where many of those officers work.
Guards on the so-called “D-Shift” — the Wednesday-through-Saturday night shift — were responsible for 43 percent, or 18 of 42, use-of-force complaints filed with Internal Affairs by inmates so far this year, said Smith, who oversees the jails. None of the other three shifts received more than nine complaints, including the other night shift, which received eight.
The figures come in the wake of the August beating death of a mentally ill inmate and murder charges against three guards during the D-shift. This newspaper had repeatedly requested the numbers Smith released Wednesday after uncovering a series of complaints from inmates about other guards who worked that shift.
“There is a troubling cluster of complaints emanating from a particular shift at the Main Jail,” Smith acknowledged at a news conference. Not only are inmates complaining about use of force more often on this shift, she said, but correctional officers on the D-Team are also self-reporting their uses of force, as required, at higher rates than on the other shifts.
Beginning Monday, Smith said her office is adding more training and “another layer of supervision and accountability” to “reduce the instances where custody staff needs to place hands on any kind of inmate.”
The sheriff also said Wednesday she will work to consolidate many of the mentally ill inmates, which account for nearly half the jail population. They are now spread throughout the jail.
The announcement comes after correctional deputies Jereh Lubrin, Matthew Farris and Rafael Rodriguez — with no more than three years on the job — were charged with murder in the Aug. 26 fatal beating of inmate Michael Tyree.
His death prompted renewed investigations into inmate complaints of excessive force — there have been more than 300 since 2010 — and spurred the creation of a citizens commission to investigate jail conditions and inmate treatment at the Main Jail.
The chairwoman of the commission, retired Judge LaDoris Cordell, said Wednesday the sheriff’s latest revelation leaves many questions unanswered.
“So, we have a little picture of one period in 2015 without any detail other than some numbers, and that’s not good enough to understand what’s really going on, and that’s what we’re trying to do,” said Cordell, whose commission is meeting at 11 a.m. Saturday in the Board of Supervisors chambers to try to get more information. “What are they doing? Using batons, punching, kicking? We need to dig deeper.”
Smith said an entrenched seniority system — which allows more experienced officers to choose their shifts — has left the troubled D-Shift populated by the least-experienced staff and supervisors. She is adding a veteran lieutenant and sergeant to work the D-Shift and will select nine deputies trained in crisis intervention to temporarily remain at the Main Jail, instead of transferring them to Elmwood as they had requested. Without providing numbers, Smith added that complaints about excessive force in prior years also tended to cluster on the D-Shift.
“Inexperience doesn’t lead to it,” Smith said of the excessive force complaints, “but inexperience intent on doing something like this is a problem.”
She discounted the suggestion that the D-Shift gets the brunt of the excessive force allegations because it includes raucous Friday and Saturday nights, when belligerent and intoxicated arrestees come through booking. Her analysis shows that most of the complaints come from the housing portion of the jail, not booking.
Several inmates have told the newspaper they were roughed up by guards on the D-Team, including Ruben Garcia, who claims guards on that shift broke his jaw. He has since filed a claim against the county.
Lance Scimeca, president of the county Correctional Peace Officers Association, took issue with some of the sheriff’s comments, saying no matter how junior, all correctional officers are equally trained and professional. Also, there is a “sprinkling” of senior correctional officers who prefer the night shift, he said. About 70 correctional deputies and officers are assigned to each shift.
He blamed the sheriff, in part, for cutting the number of supervisors at the Main Jail when she took control of the jail system in 2010 from the Department of Corrections, reducing the number of supervisors at night. If one of the four scheduled sergeants is on vacation or out sick, he said, that position is not always backfilled.
“In corrections, we have one of the worst ratios; we’re 19-to-1,” he said. “So when a sergeant is missing, instead of 19-to-1, you’re talking 30-to-1.”
He couldn’t say for sure how many sergeants were working the night Tyree was killed.
“I believe our correctional officers are professional, and they do their best and do a good job,” Scimeca said. “But I think it would be good to have a complete regiment of supervisors to guide them and give them the tools they need to complete their jobs.”
Copyright 2015 the San Jose Mercury News