Court lifts inmate medical care monitoring at San Bernardino County jails (2024)

Court-appointed experts will no longer monitor inmate medical care in San Bernardino County jails under an agreement between the Sheriff’s Department and a prisoner rights nonprofit that alleged civil rights violations in a class-action lawsuit.

U.S. District Court Judge Jesus G. Bernal in Riverside approved the agreement between the Sheriff’s Department and the Berkeley-based Prison Law Office on July 15.

The agreement noted that the Sheriff’s Department was in “substantial compliance” with a five-year remedial plan it entered into as part of its settlement in 2018 to improve inmate conditions at county jails. The plan also required the Sheriff’s Department to improve mental health and dental care for inmates as well as its use-of-force policy for correctional deputies, and to bring the jails into compliance with the Americans with Disabilities Act.

“The San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Department is pleased to announce it has successfully met the jail medical standard requirements in a consent decree it has been operating under since December 2018,” the Sheriff’s Department said in a statement on Wednesday, July 24.

Donald Specter, a senior staff attorney at the Prison Law Office and its former executive director, said his organization and court-appointed experts will continue monitoring the mental health care of inmates, use of force by corrections deputies, and compliance with the Americans with Disabilities Act.

The central focus of the lawsuit, filed in February 2016,was the West Valley Detention Center in Rancho Cucamonga, which is one of the largest jails in the state and houses more than 3,000 inmates.

But San Bernardino County was only one of several counties the Prison Law Office sued over a nine-year period.

Class-action cases

The Prison Law Office filed class-action lawsuits from 2011 to 2020 in seven counties, including San Bernardino and Riverside, alleging civil rights violations of inmates. All of them included similar allegations of poor medical, dental and mental health care, excessive use of force by correctional officers, disability discrimination and solitary confinement.

All of the lawsuits have settled under agreements calling for the jail monitoring that remains in effect, Specter said.

The lawsuits were filed in response to hundreds of letters and phone calls received by the Prison Law Office from inmates with complaints about the conditions at the jails where they were housed. Specter said he and other attorneys from his organization began interviewing inmates in San Bernardino County jails in 2014.

“We were shocked by what we heard. Every other person we interviewed told us some horror story about how they were beaten up by deputies, and a lot of people were suing the department,” Specter said.

To the credit of the sheriff and his staff, he said, they have embraced reform and dramatically improved the culture in the ensuing decade.

“It’s a very different place than when we began the investigation. It was really over the top when we started,” Specter said.

Other provisions lifted

In September, U.S. District Court Judge Virginia A. Phillips in Riverside lifted the monitoring requirement for inmate dental care and solitary confinement in San Bernardino County jails after both sides agreed the Sheriff’s Department showed “substantial compliance” in those areas.

“We made a long-term commitment to work with the (Prison Law Office) to address several issues. I’m glad we are making progress, and both parties are sticking to their commitments to each other,” Sheriff Shannon Dicus said in a statement.

Tess Borden, supervising staff attorney at the Prison Law Office, said her organization is “confident San Bernardino will continue its efforts to provide quality health care to people in its jails and to serve as a model for other jurisdictions.”

Should the Sheriff’s Department consistently show substantial compliance with the remaining provisions of the agreement, they could be lifted by the end of the year, Specter said.

Six areas

Under the agreement with Prison Law, the Sheriff’s Department was tasked with improving inmate treatment in six areas, including inmate access to medications they had been prescribed before booking and receiving proper medical treatment if they were suffering from drug and alcohol withdrawal symptoms.

Those measures required increased staffing, which subsequently was approved by the San Bernardino County Board of Supervisors. The Sheriff’s Department said it “worked tirelessly to implement the needed improvements.”

“Many of these improvements were accomplished while the Department was also dealing with state restrictions associated with a global pandemic,” according to the department’s July 24 statement.

Common problems

Specter said a common problem with all the jails in all the jurisdictions where his organization filed lawsuits is that they were built decades ago and have neither the space nor the resources to properly care for and accommodate inmates.

That problem was only exacerbated by California’s prison realignment, which took effect in 2011 to reduce prison overcrowding by allowing lower-level felons to serve their sentences in county jails. While that effort indeed reduced prison populations, it increased jail populations and the workload of correctional officers and medical and mental health staffing at each jail.

“Most, if not all of them, were not built to have people staying as long as they’re staying, with as many serious charges,” Specter said. “They weren’t built to provide adequate medical and mental health care and rehabilitative services.”

Inmate deaths and abuse

In 2014, a Southern California News Group investigation revealed a pattern of inmate Taser gun torture by deputies as part of a brutal hazing ritual that prompted a spate of civil rights lawsuits.

The litigation resulted in nearly $4 million in settlements, the last occurring in July 2019 for $1.15 million, and triggered a federal grand jury probe, but ultimately no indictments.

In 2021, several medical and mental health-related inmate deaths at the jail reignited a years-long controversy over alleged neglect.

Among those deaths was that of 29-year-old Isaiah Jovan Hernandez, a Type 1 diabetic and father of twin daughters whose family alleged in a lawsuit that, in the seven months he was housed at the jail, he was deprived of insulin and other essential medications that resulted in his death.

In March that year, 24-year-old Casandra Pastora, a diagnosed schizophrenic who was pregnant at the time, was booked at West Valley after her father called 911 to report his daughter had gone off her medication, became erratic and attacked him with a knife during an argument.

Pastora’s father, Sam Toghraie, said he informed the responding deputy of his daughter’s condition, and the deputy told him West Valley “specialized in people with mental health conditions” and that he need not worry.

Nine days after she was booked, Pastora was dead from self-inflicted injuries. Toghraie sued the Sheriff’s Department, alleging inadequate conditions of confinement and denial of needed medical care.

Jim Terrell and Sharon Brunner, Victorville-based criminal defense and civil rights attorneys who represented some of the inmates in the Taser gun cases, said in a joint statement Friday that the biggest obstacle for the Sheriff’s Department is mental health treatment.

“There is a great need to increase training, care and monitoring of the inmates needing mental health care,” particularly with suicidal inmates, the attorneys said in their statement.

The county policy, they said, is to move inmates who need constant monitoring to mental health facilities.

“However, they refuse to use this policy. Constant monitoring is something the jail cannot provide,” the attorneys said. “The county needs to hire more psychiatrists to accomplish the remedial plan and provide adequate care for inmates needing care.”

Originally Published: July 26, 2024 at 3:56 p.m.