The board that provides civilian oversight of the San Diego County Sheriff’s Department and the Probation Department wants to expand its authority and change the way it investigates deaths in custody.
Paul Parker, executive officer of the Citizens’ Law Enforcement Review Board, is proposing several reforms that will rewrite the way the appointed board monitors county law enforcement.
The 11-member board has professional investigators who look into in-custody deaths, uses of force that result in great bodily injury and public complaints of misconduct involving sheriff’s deputies or probation officers.
Parker is seeking permission to attend death-scene investigations rather than waiting for Sheriff’s or Probation officials to provide information on evidence collected at the scene. That wait can span several months, Parker said; by then the scene has been cleaned, evidence processed and removed, and witnesses often gone, making it hard to independently investigate the circumstances of the death.
The review board executive also wants to expand his office’s authority to include oversight of jail medical staff, who work for the county’s Health and Human Services Agency. Currently the board’s oversight is limited to deputies and probation officers.
Currently, the review board’s investigators are unable to access an inmate’s full health care record or interview medical staff to determine whether a lapse in care may have contributed to a person’s death. Parker said these restrictions make it difficult to get a complete picture of the case.
Parker also is asking the Sheriff’s Department to halt its practice of routinely asking the medical examiner to seal autopsy reports, which prevents next-of-kin — and review board investigators — from knowing details of a death for months.
In addition to these reforms, Parker also is inviting the public to provide input into how the citizens review board can better investigate racial discrimination complaints against county law enforcement.
“This board should be facilitating a dialogue, and I don’t believe we have done that,” Parker said in an interview. “I think that’s why I’m here, to try and facilitate communication between the public and law enforcement and try to improve practices.”
The broad changes proposed by Parker first require approval by review board members. If that is successful, then the county Board of Supervisors would have to sign off on the expanded powers and new practices.
The amendments also ask that Parker be able to work with county staff to pursue legislation or policy changes that would allow the citizens review board to provide more information to the public about its investigations.
The policy changes would require buy-in from Sheriff Bill Gore and, potentially, changes to the Peace Officers Bill of Rights, a state law that provides protections to police and sheriff’s deputies who are under investigation.
In all, the proposals represent the most significant changes to civilian oversight of the county sheriff and probation staff since the review board was established in the early 1990s.
Parker, a career medical examiner and former police officer who previously served as the review board’s executive officer between 2017 and 2018, said the reforms would improve the office’s effectiveness and promote trust between the county and the public.
“If we can increase transparency, if there could be a legislative change, the public will then be able to access our investigative reports,” he said. “They’ll be able to hear the case discussions because it won’t happen in closed session.”
People “will see that we’re not solely a rubber stamp for the departments, which is what we are viewed as being,” he said.
Gore and other senior commanders have traditionally resisted more stringent oversight of the department.
Under current practices, the review board staff interviews deputies via questionnaire and may only see investigative material allowed by the sheriff and by state law.
For example, review board staff are not allowed to know whether a deputy or probation officer has been the subject of an internal affairs investigation by their own department.
Sheriff’s spokeswoman Lt. Amber Baggs said the department has always supported the citizens’ review board and has an interest in more transparency.
“We appreciate the CLERB board’s intent to create more transparency in their oversight process,” she said via email.
But Baggs declined to say whether the department agreed with allowing qualified review board staff to be on the scene of death investigations.
She also would not say whether Gore would agree to stop asking the medical examiner to seal autopsy reports or if he supports the review board being able to release more information about its findings. Currently, the board releases only a summary of each case it investigates.
The proposed changes to review board practices have drawn early praise from Nathan Fletcher, the county Board of Supervisors chairman who has pushed for a series of reforms to the jail system and its oversight since he was first elected in 2018.
“Part of the effort to improve conditions in our jails should include expanding the scope of CLERB for all employees or contractors of the Sheriff’s Department, including medical personnel,” Fletcher said in a statement.
Fletcher was instrumental last year in halting a push by Gore to outsource all medical and mental health services provided in the county’s seven jails. Gore had said outsourcing would save money and boost correctional healthcare.
Parker was first hired to run the citizens’ review board in 2017, under a previous Board of Supervisors.
He left in 2018 for a job as chief deputy director of the Los Angeles County Medical Examiner’s Office but returned to San Diego County last year, after Fletcher became chairman and fellow Democrats Terra Lawson-Remer and Nora Vargas were elected to the board.
Since George Floyd was killed by police in Minneapolis in May 2020, community activists in San Diego have been attending review board meetings and demanding that members do more to hold local law enforcement accountable. Activists said they have been hearing more frequently from family members of people who have died or been injured at the hands of police and sheriff’s deputies.
Members of the Racial Justice Coalition of San Diego and the North County Equity and Justice Coalition said in interviews that they support Parker’s proposed reforms and would also like to see changes at the state level.
“We need transparency on the officer’s history because it may show there’s a problem,” said Yusef Miller, co-founder of the North County group. “If they claim that they want to get rid of the bad apples, how can we see which apples are bad in the dark?”
Darwin Fishman, a San Diego State University professor and former member of the city of San Diego’s citizens review board, said it is all but impossible to conduct an independent investigation into jail deaths or serious injuries without in-person interviews and internal documents.
“If you really want to get at (what happened with) an in-custody death, you’re going to need access to medical staff and medical records,” he said.
The Citizens’ Law Enforcement Review Board will meet remotely at 5:30 p.m. Tuesday. Anyone interested in viewing the discussion can log on to https://primetime.bluejeans.com/a2m/live-event/gqrxebaw. Those interested in testifying can follow directions on https://www.sandiegocounty.gov/content/sdc/clerb.html .
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