When someone dies in sheriff’s jail custody in Santa Barbara County, the Sheriff’s Office investigates the death.

The county Civil Grand Jury thinks that should change.

In its report released this week, jurors found that the Sheriff-Coroner’s Office has “potential perceived conflict of interest” investigating deaths of people in custody of its own facilities — the Main Jail near Santa Barbara and the Northern Branch Jail near Santa Maria.

“The potential liability to Santa Barbara County for in-custody deaths is significant, and is comparable to any law enforcement-involved death,” the Civil Grand Jury concluded.

The Sheriff-Coroner should ask another county agency to do independent or parallel investigations for deaths in custody, and use an independent medical examination team for pathology investigations, the Grand Jury recommends.

There are low-cost, independent resources that are “readily available and easily implemented” to reduce the risks and liabilities, the report said.

Sheriff-Coroner Bill Brown has 60 days to respond to the report’s findings and explain why the recommendations will or will not be implemented.

The office has received the report and plans to respond in that time, sheriff’s spokeswoman Raquel Zick said.

Deaths-in-Custody Investigations  

In Santa Barbara County, 34 people have died in jail custody from 2006 to 2023, and 10 of those deaths were in the past three years.

No in-custody deaths have been reported in 2024, Zick said.

Most local deaths in the 2006-20 period were recorded as “natural causes,” with others listed as accidental drug overdoses or suicides, according to state data.

The agency that investigates them, the Coroner’s Bureau, is a division of the Sheriff’s Office.

It has a $2.48 million budget and staff including a sergeant, four detectives, a forensic pathologist, pathology technicians, and administrative support staff.

When there is a death-in-custody investigation, the sheriff’s custody, criminal and coroner investigators must all participate, according to policy.

In some recent cases, criminal investigators have been reluctant to participate, and the sheriff “has specifically ordered that all departments comply with this policy with no exceptions,” the Grand Jury said.

Neighboring counties — Ventura and San Luis Obispo — do it differently.

Ventura has a separate medical examiner department, and San Luis Obispo uses a contractor for pathology work.

SLO’s contractor, NAAG Forensic, would be willing to provide autopsy services to Santa Barbara County for deaths-in-custody investigations, too, jurors wrote. The cost is about $2,500 per autopsy.

Ventura offers autopsy services to the public for $5,000 per case, but it’s unclear if it would provide services for Santa Barbara County’s death-in-custody cases, according to the Grand Jury.

There’s also a difference in who decides whether to conduct an autopsy when someone dies in jail.  

Here, Coroner’s Bureau detectives and the pathologist decide, Grand Jury members reported.

In neighboring counties, medical staff decide whether to conduct autopsies, and they do autopsies for almost every death in custody. The only exception is if someone in custody dies because of known natural causes such as pre-diagnosed terminal cancer, the report says.

“The jury was unable to uncover any instances where the coroner staff had requested an independent investigative or medical exam from an outside source,” the report said.

The Santa Barbara County Sheriff’s Office has reported an increase in jail drug overdoses — fatal and non-fatal — in recent years.

The Grand Jury investigated four 2022 deaths in custody — two fentanyl overdoses, a suicide, and one called accidental because of multiple factors that happened after deputies used force on a man held in a safety cell.

In those four cases, each person’s mental health or substance abuse issues were ignored or not communicated across different agencies, contributing to their deaths, jurors concluded.

County Not Certified to Same Level as Neighboring Counties

Ventura and SLO counties require pathologists to be certified by the American Board of Medicolegal Death Investigators and have facilities that meet the National Association of Medical Examiners standards.

Santa Barbara County’s staff and facilities are not certified to those standards, which are recommended but not mandated by the U.S. Department of Justice, according to the report.

The two pathology technicians working in the Coroner’s Bureau are retired law enforcement officers.

The Grand Jury recommends setting up a succession plan and training budget so the department has staff available if either or both are no longer available.  

Oversight

“People are dying in custody at record rates across California,” CalMatters reported last month. “They’re dying from suicide, drug overdoses and the catch-all term natural causes. The number of jail deaths is up even though the number of people in jail is down.”

More than 2,700 people have died in California jails since 2005.

In a move to increase state oversight, Gov. Gavin Newsom signed a bill that will create a director of in-custody death review at the Board of State and Community Corrections. The original bill would have put jail death monitors in every county, CalMatters reported.

Another area of increased state oversight is officer-involved shootings.

The California Department of Justice started investigating officer-involved shootings of unarmed civilians in 2021, including a Guadalupe police case.

Officer Miguel Jaimes shot and killed “uninvolved bystander” Juan Luis Olvera-Preciado, 59, who was sitting in his parked car while police were pursuing a man wanted for outstanding warrants.

Investigators determined one bullet likely ricocheted off the ground and hit Olvera-Preciado through the partly-opened car door.

Olvera-Preciado’s family reached a $4 million settlement with the city, and Jaimes did not face criminal charges for the shooting.

Investigation of law enforcement shootings by Santa Maria, Lompoc and Guadalupe police officers are typically handled by the Sheriff’s Office at the request of leaders in each department to avoid the appearance of a conflict.

However, the Sheriff-Coroner’s Office investigates its own officer-involved shootings.

The District Attorney’s Office reviews reports to determine whether incidents met the standard of justifiable homicide.