By Joe Nelson
The Press-Enterprise
RIVERSIDE, Calif. — A former Riverside County sheriff’s captain and jail commander is suing the county and Sheriff Chad Bianco, alleging she was fired for speaking out against inmate abuse and deaths and other unconstitutional practices.
Victoria Flores, a Sheriff’s Department veteran of 28 years who had no history of discipline until her April 2024 termination, filed the lawsuit Monday, July 7, in U.S. District Court in Riverside. It alleges whistleblower retaliation, wrongful termination and gender discrimination, among other allegations.
Also named as defendants are Undersheriff Don Sharp and Assistant Sheriff Herman Lopez, who oversees management and operations of the county jail system.
While the Sheriff’s Department told Flores she was fired for the falsification of training records and a dispute with another deputy at the department’s firing range, Flores claims the real reason she was fired was because of Bianco’s fear that she would help publicly expose corruption and the cover-up of inmate abuses at the Robert Presley Detention Center in Riverside, which she commanded for more than two years, and at other jails where inmates died or were seriously injured.
“A motivating factor in plaintiff’s termination was plaintiff’s opposition to defendant’s illegal actions and egregious conduct and fear that she would expose them,” according to the lawsuit. “Plaintiff was terminated in part because defendant Bianco knew plaintiff recognized and would expose the egregious wrongs occurring in the jails.”
The lawsuit hit during an ongoing Department of Justice investigation that began in February 2023 after a spate of 18 inmate deaths in county jails in 2022 — the highest number in 15 years — that sounded an alarm among local activists and the families of those who died and spurred a spate of federal lawsuits.
Flores’ lawsuit was filed about three weeks after her husband, former Riverside County sheriff’s Lt. Samuel Flores, was sentenced to nine months in jail for receiving bribes to steer business to a former Temecula tow company. Samuel Flores was one of three Sheriff’s Department employees who were indicted in March 2020 by a grand jury and convicted in July 2024 .
As a corrections lieutenant at the Robert Presley Detention Center, the county’s main jail, Flores had already begun witnessing problems before she was promoted to captain and jail commander in July 2021, according to the lawsuit.
In May 2021, she learned of an inmate who suffered a head injury and loss of memory after an encounter in which corrections deputies used excessive force. When she reported the incident to the department’s professional standards bureau, with a video of the incident as proof, the involved deputies were not disciplined, according to the lawsuit.
Similar incidents continued to occur at the jail, including a “severe incident” in May 2023 involving a deputy with a history of discipline, but received no discipline in the 2023 incident, according to the lawsuit.
When the Riverside County grand jury began evaluating conditions at the county’s jails in 2021, Flores cooperated in the investigation and “was transparent about all practices concerning administration of the jails.” When the grand jury requested a follow-up interview with Flores in March 2022, the suit alleges, Bianco intervened and told her to say she was sick and could not appear.
“Unwilling to lie but concerned about repercussions from disobeying Bianco, plaintiff said she would instead take a vacation day that day,” according to the lawsuit.
After an inmate was hospitalized in August 2023 because of a fentanyl overdose, Flores alleges, correctional chief Misha Graves was concerned the inmate could die and thus instructed her not to send an incident report because Graves “did not want to have another death listed for corrections.”
Instead, according to the lawsuit, Graves told Flores she would have the inmate federally released from custody while he was in the hospital to “distance Graves from any responsibility.” Flores claims inmates only qualify for federal release when a jail reaches 90% capacity, which was not the case at the time.
Flores also leveled other allegations of corrupt and/or unethical practices at the Sheriff’s Department, including:
- She was fired, in part, to prevent her from exposing an alleged racket in which Orange County contractors who were friends of Assistant Sheriff Robert Gunzel were “wildly inflating” their prices for construction and repair work, at the instruction of Gunzel, and landing contracts with the department. When Flores and other colleagues questioned the charges, they were told to stop challenging them, according to the lawsuit.
- In November 2023, a sergeant informed Flores that another sergeant at the Perris station had a side venture producing pornography for profit. Flores reported it to Graves, who “made it clear she was displeased that plaintiff raised a concern,” according to the lawsuit. Flores later learned that the accused sergeant’s pornography activities were known by department leaders for more than a year, and rather than discipline the sergeant, he was instructed to keep his side business on the “down low,” according to the lawsuit.
- A political supporter of Bianco’s was awarded a lucrative contract for wrapping department buses with decals or graphics, without an appropriate bidding process.
In November 2023, Graves informed Flores, as well as other correctional commanders, they were being transferred to the Larry D. Smith Correctional Facility in Banning. Flores and the other commanders, according to the lawsuit, opposed the transfer and asked to speak with Bianco, but their request was denied.
Flores and the other commanders, according to the suit, believed it was in retaliation for them speaking up about correctional deputies not being held accountable in use-of-force incidents and to hinder the ongoing Justice Department investigation.
“Furthermore, the commanders recognized that by relocating them to different facilities, leadership aimed to prevent them from answering questions during the upcoming DOJ investigation into previous jail incidents because they would lack knowledge of past incidents that had occurred at facilities to which they would be assigned,” the suit alleges.
In a telephone interview Friday, Bianco said Flores and her husband were rightfully terminated because of “serious ethical lapses in judgment.”
He said he disputes every claim Flores alleges in her lawsuit.
“Reading it, it’s like a ‘Twilight Zone’ of a different universe,” Bianco said. “This lawsuit is fitting in today’s day and age when there is a complete lack of responsibility for your own actions and behavior, and somehow you think someone owes you money for that.”
Karen Kartun, an attorney representing Flores, declined to comment.
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