Editor’s note: This story has been updated to include additional comment from the Riverside County Sheriff’s Department.
A proposal to create an ad hoc committee to consider the establishment of a Sheriff’s Department Oversight Committee and Office of Inspector General by the Riverside County Board of Supervisors failed last month for lack of a second.
“I want to have this conversation in a safe space for everyone with differing viewpoints that would be productive,” Supervisor Chuck Washington said at the July 29 meeting. “I did not believe that the way this was brought forward would produce that, and so I’m not prepared to support this ad hoc committee at this point.”
Supervisor Jose Medina said his goal in bringing the item to the board was to provide the county, the sheriff’s department and the community a forum to discuss the issues and work together to come up with potential solutions through the ad hoc committee.
“In my 10 years of service in the state legislature, I sometimes think I’m doing a good job when I upset [or] piss off people on both sides of the issue, and I think I’ve done that here today,” Medina said at the meeting. “I’ve heard from the advocates that I’m not going fast enough, that it’s not doing enough all at once, [and] I’ve heard from those who are on the other side that I’m going too fast or that I’m not taking their points of view into consideration.”
For more than an hour, the board heard from members of the public, largely in support of sheriff oversight, which is allowed under AB 1185, even if not specifically in favor of the creation of the ad hoc committee.
“People want transparency. People want accountability. People want oversight of the [Riverside] County Sheriff’s Department,” Sky Allen, executive director of local advocacy group Inland Empire United, said at the meeting. “They’re tired of systems that protect power instead of protecting people. This isn’t about politics. It’s about…the pain of families who feel unheard, and the hope of residents who still believe the government can work for them. Please be bold for them today.”
Allen said her team and coalition partners had reached out to more than 7,500 residents all across the county over the last few months to hear their thoughts on the issue. Those responses have since been compiled into a comprehensive report the organization released last week.
Some of those who spoke at the meeting went into greater detail about what they found, including that people felt greater oversight of the department would increase trust and safety and reduce the number of in-custody deaths.
According to data first provided to The Riverside Record by theRiverside Sheriff Accountability Coalition (RSAC), one of the organizations spearheading oversight efforts, and confirmed with data obtained from the California Department of Justice’s Open Justice data portal, there have been 262 reported in-custody deaths between 2011 and 2024 in Riverside County.
That number not only includes people who died while incarcerated at Riverside County jails, but also those who died during the process of arrest or at crime/arrest scenes. This data was also the basis for a report by CARE First California and RSAC published last fall.
Both Supervisor Karen Spiegel and Sheriff Chad Bianco called those numbers used by RSAC members who spoke at the meeting into question.
“We are here because of a lie…perpetuated by disingenuous politicians, activists and complicit media that dismisses the truth for sensationalist headlines that divide us,” Bianco said at the meeting. “And I will point out the headlines that some of them apparently read, because the numbers that they give you all, know are completely factually inaccurate.”
In an interview with The Record after the meeting, Luis Nolasco, senior policy advocate and organizer with the ACLU of Southern California and RSAC member, pushed back on that assertion.
“That data, in and of itself, that’s directly from the California Attorney General,” he said. “The sheriff’s department is mandated to report all this information about in-custody deaths to the state, so all that information that the attorney general has collected, and that we just asked for, and that was provided to us, it’s public information.”
That data, reported to the state by law enforcement agencies like the sheriff’s department, is collected by the California Department of Justice Criminal Justice Statistics center, updated as necessary and posted to the Open Justice data portal.
According to the dataset, which was last updated May 29, the total number of deaths spiked in 2021 when 12 people died while in the custody of county jails and 21 died during the process of arrest. The next year, 2022, the total number of deaths was 32 — 19 of whom died while in the custody of county jails, the highest number in the county’s history. Months later, Attorney General Rob Bonta launched an investigation into the department, which Bianco said was politically motivated.
“This is not about transparency, never has been,” Bianco, who first took office in 2019, said at the meeting. “A politically-motivated DOJ investigation from our attorney general cited ‘alarming reports of wrongdoing and civil rights violations and investigations.’ Mind you that those alarming reports came from the same anti-law enforcement activist groups you are hearing from today.”
Nolasco said RSAC’s calls for oversight of the department were not because of a political grudge against Bianco, who earlier this year announced his run for governor, but were instead a response to the lived experiences of those whose loved ones had died while in the custody of the sheriff’s department.
“For us, it’s all much bigger than just Bianco,” he said. “I think Bianco is a symptom of a much bigger problem, which is the systemic lack of accountability and transparency within this department.”
The total number of in-custody deaths fell to 21 in 2023. Fourteen of those deaths happened while people were in the custody of county jails, six died during the process of arrest and one was marked as “other,” according to the data. Last year, the total number of in-custody deaths dropped to 15, eight of which were people in the custody of county jails, six who died during the process of arrest and one death that was marked as “other.”
Bianco, in an interview with The Record, said that he gets “emotional” every time he gets the call that a person has died while in custody, but that it was impossible for the department to prevent people who are incarcerated from accidentally overdosing or killing themselves.
“It doesn’t mean we failed. It just means we weren’t successful, but we certainly didn’t fail,” he said. “And this anti-law enforcement, blame somebody else, don’t take accountability for your own failures, don’t take accountability for your family members’ failures or for the actions that they did and somehow blame me and, realistically, every single one of them file a lawsuit.”
The cost of those lawsuits was another issue brought up by those in support of a sheriff oversight committee.
“We are paying a massive price for these abuses, not just with our lives, but with the hundreds of millions of dollars we are wasting on [sheriff department] settlements,” Emma Li said. “We deserve, and we demand, real accountability and oversight, and you, the Board of Supervisors, can make this happen.”
According to county data obtained by The Record, the county has paid out more than $107 million for claims made against the sheriff’s department for incidents that happened between 2014 and 2024 as of March of this year. While some claims were paid out within days of the county being notified of the claim, others took nearly a decade to be considered resolved, according to the data.
It was not immediately clear how many pending claims there were against the department, though Riverside County Director of Communications Brooke Federico said between 80-90% of people who file claims do not receive any payment from the county. During the most recent fiscal year, she said 90% of claimants had their claims closed without payment.
It was also not immediately clear how many lawsuits had been filed against the department that were still pending as part of the claims process. The Record filed a California Public Records Act request with the county, though the county has requested an extension to fulfill the request.
When it came to the cost of settlements, Bianco said that they had “nothing to do with wrongdoing,” but were instead business decisions with which he did not agree.
“I say fight them till the end, because all this is doing by settling these lawsuits is enabling,” he said in an interview with The Record. “These attorneys just keep filing bigger and bigger lawsuits, hoping for bigger and bigger settlements.”
Those in support of sheriff oversight also brought up what they felt was a lack of transparency from the department.
“The [proposed ad hoc] committee is not here to remove the elected sheriff, but to hold the sheriff’s department accountable to the core values of the department, which are integrity, honesty, honesty, honesty and professionalism,” Michael Lujan, a retired sheriff’s captain with 31 years of experience who lost to Bianco in the 2022 election, said at the meeting. “The truth, however painful, always finds its way into the light, and I think over the last few years we’ve been experiencing that through litigation.”
Bianco pushed back against the assertion that his department wasn’t transparent, stating in an interview with The Record that it has always been his position that the department release as much information as legally permitted.
“There [is] some information that we cannot give legally without a judge telling us to give, whether you request [it through] a public records request act or not,” he said. “And because we don’t give you that information, and we tell you why, you can’t say we’re lying. You can’t say we’re covering it up, you just didn’t get that.
“You can get it if you go to a judge and convince a judge that the judge should allow you to see that, you can get it then,” he continued. “But we’re not going to be held civilly liable for violating that law, because we gave you information that we were prevented from giving.”
He also said that there was a preexisting committee that already provides feedback to the department. That committee, the Riverside County Sheriff’s Advisory Committee, was created to “aid in the transparency” of the department, according to a private Facebook group description.
However, prior to last month’s meeting when three of the committee’s members addressed the board, Nolasco said neither he nor other RSAC members had known the identities of any of its members. Bianco said that was done deliberately to ensure the safety of the committee members.
“The reason why I refuse to give you their names is because from week one, when their names did get out, they were absolutely attacked by the activists that we have here, and not only them, their children in school, so I’m not going to give you their names,” he said at the meeting, noting that they were appointed by the sheriff’s department with input from the supervisors. “I was very surprised, thank you very much, to see them show up here today, because I didn’t want them here.”
Of the three self-identified members who spoke at the meeting, one was against the creation of the ad hoc committee and one was in support of increased oversight. All three are members of the private Facebook group.
“An oversight committee can provide an extra layer of support [along with] the existing measures to keep inmates safe from themselves and others,” Rick Saldivar, who said he had served on the committee since 2020, said at the meeting. “Furthermore, the implementation of an oversight committee can bring constructive impact to the sheriff’s department as a whole by promoting transparency, accountability and continuous improvement, and we can work towards creating a safer and more humane environment for both inmates and staff.”
However, Rodney Kyles called the idea “hogwash.”
“I had some preconceived ideas, until I met [Bianco] personally,” he said at the meeting. “He’s taken us through his whole department, every single aspect of it. If the issue comes up, he addresses it [and] we address it with him, so the transparency is there.”
Tamara Frazier, the final member of the committee who spoke at the meeting, had given time to Kyles, but said in her comments that she didn’t necessarily share his sentiments.
“I am here just to say that we are here,” she said. “He established this about four years ago, and we are here to work with anybody in the community that wants to talk to us.
“We are the direct bridge between the community and the sheriff’s department,” she continued. “So if you have any concerns, I just advise you to reach out to us.”
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Bianco told The Record the department has a list of people who want to be part of the committee that gets used to fill vacancies as they arise.
“When we lose people on the committee, we fill them, and have lots of people that reach out to say, ‘Hey, if there’s ever an opening, I want to be a part,’” he told The Record. “We haven’t lost very many lately. They like doing what they’re doing.”
Nolasco said he was able to connect with one of the members after the meeting and was looking forward to being able to talk with the group and learning more about their work, though he said that it was “truly bonkers” that information about a group with the stated aim of increasing transparency had not been made available to the general public prior to the July 29 meeting.
“There is not a single public trace anywhere on any county website or any public document that spells out the purpose of this advisory committee,” he said. “And something that is concerning to us is if this truly is a public body under the county, then they should be held under the same laws of the Brown Act.”
The California Brown Act governs open meetings in the state for all local agencies, inclusive of commissions and committees, and dictates regulations surrounding what constitutes a meeting, notice and agenda requirements, rights of the public and what is permissible to be discussed in closed session along with penalties and remedies for violations of the act.
According to a county official, the committee, which was voluntarily created by the sheriff’s department, is neither a legislative, governing nor statutorily required body.
“Based on the information available on the sheriff’s advisory committee, this group is not likely subject to the Brown Act,” Federico said in an email to The Record. “Please refer to the sheriff’s department for more information.”
In an emailed statement to The Record, Bianco said that the advisory committee was not subject to the Brown Act and “shouldn’t be.”
“From the formation of the committee, several members and their children were subjected to ridicule and harassment for participating in the committee,” he said. “I am deeply concerned about their safety and troubled by the constant demand and maneuvering from activist groups and the media to obtain their names.”
Those who spoke against the ad hoc committee and sheriff oversight generally at the meeting, including Desert Hot Springs Councilmember Dirk Voss and La Quinta Councilmember Steve Sanchez, said they felt the agenda item was politically motivated and would create additional costly and unnecessary bureaucracy.
“I look at this as nothing more than…a solution looking for a problem,” Voss said. “It’s creating unnecessary and politically-driven policy that will ultimately prove to be a bureaucracy of duplication, wasted time [and] unlawful investigations that will ultimately violate personnel rules and employee protections creating litigation and lawsuits.”
Bianco echoed their sentiments, stating at the meeting that the department was the “most scrutinized government office in our county,” with oversight already being provided by the supervisors, the executive office, the district attorney, the California Department of Justice, the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the U.S. Department of Justice among other local, state and federal entities.
“Let me be very clear that this is not about transparency, and it is not about deaths,” he told the board, accusing Medina of bringing partisan politics into the county. “This is purely about political control and influence.”
Despite the outcome, Nolasco said RSAC would continue to push for greater oversight, transparency and accountability of the sheriff’s department.
“System change work is very slow, but I think if I were to have a conversation with myself from 2020 when we started this work, just the fact that we even had this item on a formal agenda for discussion, I think, was a victory in and of itself,” he said. “Was it the result we wanted? No, but I don’t think it was a loss.”
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