Calls For Oversight Of Riverside County Sheriff’s Department Continue

For the second Riverside County Board of Supervisors meeting in a row, a number of public speakers called for increased oversight of the sheriff’s department.

“We have a great need for civilian oversight and accountability,” Lisa Matus, whose son Richard Matus Jr. died while in custody at the Cois Byrd Detention Center in August 2022, said during the Nov. 7 meeting. “Maybe all the tragedies from the deaths in and out of custody, excessive force and maybe deputies’ arrests would not have taken place. Maybe the DOJ would not have had to open a civil rights investigation.”

Matus was joined by eight others who called on the board to create a civilian oversight committee for the Riverside County Sheriff’s Department and to separate the department from the coroner’s office in an effort to increase transparency and accountability and help restore public trust.

“You all have the opportunity to do right by those wronged by creating an office of inspector general and a civilian oversight committee,” Luis Nolasco, senior policy advocate with the American Civil Liberties Union of Southern California, said. “We sincerely hope that you can begin to take the necessary steps to address these issues and work with the community to bring forth change.”

Nolasco said the ACLU originally started pushing for oversight of the sheriff’s department during the height of the Covid pandemic in an effort to protect incarcerated communities from the virus after hearing from family members of those in county jails. He said the organization then started to notice that the department had a high number of deputy shootings and in-custody deaths. 

“We’re working with over nine families that all have lost their loved ones, then there’s an additional like five or six families that we’re working with that have been impacted by the sheriff’s deputies,” Nolasco said. “All the time, we get calls from people inside about conditions, brutality.”

According to the sheriff’s department, 18 people died while in custody last year. So far this year, the department has reported 10 in-custody deaths.

“If folks are going to be in custody, then the county has a responsibility to make sure that folks come in alive, they come out alive,” Mary Valdemar, co-founder of the Chicano Indigenous Community for Culturally Conscious Advocacy and Action in San Bernardino, said. “If they come into a system that they’re supposed to be responsible, and supposedly protecting and serving the community, then harm within that system should not be a thing.”

The group is asking that the board create both a civilian oversight committee and an office of the inspector general, fund alternatives to incarceration and separate the sheriff’s department from the coroner’s office to better facilitate transparency in death investigations.

“You have the opportunity to step in, and also do the right thing to build in community participation and oversight, to make sure that the solutions and the responses are on prevention and investment in community care and mutual aid,” Valdemar said to the board. “There are things that we can do to mitigate these deaths, and we are asking that you do them now.”

In an email to The Record, Supervisor Kevin Jeffries said that it is his intention to ask that the board direct county staff to evaluate the feasibility of separating the coroner’s office from the sheriff’s department.

“The board must know the advantages, disadvantages, and financial costs of separating and standing up the coroner’s department,” he said.

However, when it comes to creating an independent oversight panel, Jeffries said that the board had not yet taken up that proposal, stating that many of those asking for an oversight panel are the “very same critics calling on us to defund our law enforcement.”

“That history makes it hard to take them seriously when they seemed oblivious to the consequences of reducing patrol deputies in our unincorporated communities,” he said.

Jeffries also said the situation was also made worse by “blistering partisan-style attacks” on Bianco and his team, which he said did not help facilitate ongoing dialogue.

In other public comment 

A handful of residents spoke out against the county’s use of the Dominion Voting Systems, with more than a few calling on the county to cancel its contract. In an email to The Record, Jeff Greene, chief of staff for Supervisor Kevin Jeffries, said the county was not currently considering changing its elections protocol.

“The Board just approved the newest Dominion contract earlier this year, unanimously and with no public opposition,” he said. “No new findings or evidence has been presented since that time that would be likely to cause the County to cancel that contract, particularly with the election less than four months away.”

Greene said that not only would it be “literally impossible,” to replace the system with primaries just a few months away, but that the state has also prohibited hand-count-only elections and has mandated the mailing of ballots to all registered voters.

“The constituents’ primary quarrel is with the State, not with the County,” he said.

A video of the meeting can be found here on the county’s website.