The Riverside County Board of Supervisors Tuesday voted unanimously to create an ad hoc committee to evaluate advisory and oversight options related to the Riverside County Sheriff’s Department. Supervisor Chuck Washington was absent.
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As part of the motion, the ad hoc committee, which includes Supervisors Jose Medina and Karen Spiegel, has been charged with coming back to the full board within 180 days with a “well-informed recommendation.”
“As Supervisor Spiegel and I begin to come together and map out how we move forward, [it’s important] we make sure that the voices that were heard here today are reflected in our work,” Medina, who seconded the motion at the July 14 meeting, said. “And that at the end of the day, when we come forward to the full board with recommendations, it is something that all can support, that it is something meaningful, that it is something that will provide what is necessary for full accountability.”
The 4-0 vote came nearly a year after a similar motion, made by Medina, failed for lack of a second. That vote was the subject of a grand jury report released earlier this year, the first of three focused on sheriff oversight, and was brought up by a number of the almost 60 commenters ahead of the vote.
“As stated in the grand jury report, Riverside remains among the largest counties without fully-empowered civilian oversight, and this presents measurable governance risks,” said Nanette Pratini, a board member for the League of Women Voters Riverside. “Fortunately, there are proven steps that can be taken to solve them.”
But the added support offered by the grand jury report calling for increased sheriff oversight was not the only thing that changed between last year’s meeting and this year’s discussion.
The first difference was that Tuesday’s agenda item was co-sponsored by both Medina and Spiegel, who said the pair had a long talk after last year’s meeting and that she believes in transparency, accountability and conversation.
“I’m supporting the conversation, and I’m supporting it because when you work with your colleagues and you have open conversations, whether you agree or not, you get to a point where you have to work together and move forward,” she said. “And that’s exactly what Supervisor Medina and I are doing.”
Secondly, the motion itself was altered slightly.
Last year’s motion called for the board to create an ad hoc committee to consider the establishment of a sheriff’s department oversight committee and office of inspector general, appoint Medina and a second supervisor to serve on that ad hoc committee and direct specific county departments to support the committee as requested.
The goal of that ad hoc committee was to “deliver a proposal to establish a sheriff’s department oversight committee and inspector general” for consideration by the supervisors.
This year’s motion similarly called for the board to establish an ad hoc committee, appoint two supervisors and direct specific county departments to support the committee as requested. However, the goal of the ad hoc committee had changed.
Instead of considering the establishment of an oversight committee and inspector general, the newly created ad hoc committee will instead review governance models utilized by other jurisdictions, evaluate existing advisory and oversight mechanisms and consider legal, fiscal, operational and governance considerations in collaboration with interested stakeholders before making recommendations to the board.
“RSA opposed the previous version of this proposal because we believed it was incomplete and lacked the necessary safeguards, operational analysis and balanced stakeholder involvement,” said Jose Santos, president of the Riverside Sheriff’s Association (RSA), at Tuesday’s meeting. “Today, RSA is not supporting the creation of the permanent oversight body. However, we are not opposing the legitimate and balanced process to study the issue.”
The third, and most noticeable difference during Tuesday’s meeting, was the absence of both Sheriff Chad Bianco and the lack of deputies in the room. At last year’s meeting, deputies lined the entire back wall of the chambers and Bianco, addressing the supervisors, said the effort was “purely about political control and influence.”
This year, instead of attending the meeting, Bianco was at an event to endorse Michael Gates, who is running against current California Attorney General [AG] Rob Bonta in the November general election.
“Why would I sit through lies, emotions and anti-law enforcement rhetoric when the vote was already determined,” Bianco said of his decision in an email to The Riverside Record. “What purpose would me pointing out the fact that the public is being lied to about the lack of transparency and oversight serve?”
When asked whether he felt it was a conflict to endorse the candidate running against Bonta during ongoing litigation between the state and the sheriff’s department over Bianco’s investigation into alleged election irregularities, he called Bonta a “complete fraud.”
“The active court case is a perfect example of a corrupt politician waging lawfare and abusing the system because of his position, all while wastefully spending taxpayer resources to unlawfully cover up a criminal investigation,” Bianco, who at the press conference also announced he would be running for re-election in 2028, said. “Nothing will get better in California if the current AG is not replaced in November.”
Medina, in an interview with The Record, said Bianco’s absence didn’t bother him.
“We’re here to do the business of the county,” he said. “If he has other business elsewhere, so be it.”
And while Undersheriff Don Sharp told supervisors at the meeting that he was not there to oppose or support the motion, but rather to highlight the department’s willingness to answer questions and the hard work of its employees, Bianco again reiterated, in an email to The Record, his belief that the push for oversight was politically motivated and based on lies by politicians and activists.
“I am not opposed to an oversight committee if there was truly a need,” he said. “I am opposed to turning Riverside County into Los Angeles because Supervisor Media is anti-law enforcement and doesn’t have the ability to separate his opinion and emotion from fact and reality.”
The few who spoke against sheriff oversight echoed Bianco’s statements that the move was politically motivated and based on incorrect information.
“You’re going after our sheriff because you’re a Democrat, and you’re a Democrat, and you’re a Democrat, and that’s why you’re doing it,” said Jessica Christopher, pointing to the three Democrat supervisors on the dais. “And it’s nothing more than that.”
Christopher, who said her niece died in custody, said her death was not the fault of the deputies, but was rather the consequences of her own actions.
“It was her fault, and the choices that she made through her life,” Christopher said. “And that is true for the majority of those deaths.”
Many of those who spoke in support of sheriff oversight called on the supervisors to take direct action, instead of creating an ad hoc committee.
“The time for another six months has passed,” Sukhbir Singh Gill, who challenged Spiegel for the District 2 seat in the June election, said. “The civil grand jury has completed its work and delivered its recommendations. The public is asking for implementation.”
Concerns raised were much the same as last year: the high number of in-custody deaths, conditions at county jails, the cost of lawsuits against the department and the number of deputies charged with or convicted of crimes.
“Of all 58 counties in California, Riverside had the second highest number of in-custody deaths,” said Amaris Montes, staff attorney at the ACLU of Southern California, pointing to data from the AG. “These are not just statistics or numbers, they are losses of family, friends [and] loved ones that may have been preventable.”
According to the data she presented, there had been approximately 270 in-custody deaths from 2011 to 2025. Nearly 100 of those deaths happened since 2019, she said, when Bianco took office.
A number of speakers also brought up concerns about the fact that Bianco serves as both sheriff and coroner in the county, which State Sen. Sabrina Cervantes is attempting to address with SB 1379.
“We’ve seen this before when families asked you to separate the sheriff and coroner and this board voted no,” Lisa Matus, whose son Richard Matus Jr. died while in custody at the Cois Byrd Detention Center in August 2022, said. “The state of California ultimately had to step in, because Riverside County would not.
“I assume this item will pass because the grand jury report requires a response, but another process is not accountability,” she continued.
The bill, currently making its way through the legislature, would require the county to separate the offices by July 1, 2027.
“In Riverside County, this structure has contributed to persistent challenges regarding the deaths of individuals in custody in the county’s jails, including underreporting, inconsistent determinations of causes of death, and limited access to information for families and the public,” wrote in support of the bill. “In some cases, deaths involving trauma or neglect have been classified as ‘natural’ or ‘undetermined,’ raising serious concerns about investigative integrity and oversight.”
Bianco, in an email to The Record, called the push part of “an active movement by the anti-law enforcement progressives to destroy law enforcement in Riverside County.
“Jose Medina and his protégés, the Cervantes sisters, are heading this movement,” he said in reference to Cervantes and her sister Riverside City Councilmember Clarissa Cervantes who is running for Assembly District 58 and is currently involved in litigation against Bianco over his ballot seizure. “There is no other explanation for a law that specifically separates only the coroner and sheriff’s office in Riverside County; the law applies to no other county in the state.”
While SB 1379 has until the end of next month to make it to Gov. Gavin Newsom’s desk for this legislative session, the ad hoc committee has roughly six months to present its recommendations to the board.
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