At the Oct. 20 meeting of Sonoma County Board of Supervisors, Independent Office of Law Enforcement Review and Outreach (IOLERO) provided the supervisors with their annual report, and it highlighted a few things that Measure P is looking to change.
According to the summary on the agenda, in May of 2020, IOLERO partnered with Sonoma State University (SSU) to research and examine law enforcement’s use-of-force and de-escalation policies and to develop a high-functioning community-oriented policing program. In August of 2020, the board of supervisors placed a measure on the Nov. 3 ballot to allow Sonoma County voters to consider a new ordinance for IOLERO which would significantly increase IOLERO’s legal authority and capacity for law enforcement oversight.
In sections I through IV of the report, IOLERO’s current ordinance and some of the changes proposed by the ballot measure are discussed, as are the challenges IOLERO has faced by its legal limitations and extreme budget constraints over the past four years since the department was established.
However, the majority of the report is dedicated to Section V, which discusses the complaints against the sheriff’s office, the audits of those complaints, the IOLERO director’s recommendations and the changes that have come from this process. According to the report, the audit process recently has produced unprecedented changes to sheriff’s office policies including a new de-escalation policy, increased training in biased policing (implicit bias) and crisis intervention, a policy that makes arrestees safer and another that reduces errors in Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) reporting. Additionally, the sheriff’s office opened an investigation to review the practices of dispatch in conveying accurate information to deputies during calls for service.
Complaints and Audits
According to the report, IOLERO received 24 completed investigations from the sheriff’s office between June 2019 and July 2020. Twelve of those cases were audited. Critical incidents where a death occurs can take 4-6 months to audit.
Of those 12, the sheriff’s office has sustained that a violation was found four times, and IOLERO agreed with three of them and found one to be incomplete. The sheriff’s office had exonerated five of the complaints, and IOLERO agreed with three of them and found two of them to be incomplete, saying it needed additional review of dispatch and medical staff. The final three cases had been found as unfounded by the sheriff’s office, and IOLERO agreed in one case and disagreed in two.
One of the cases highlighted in the report is that of David Ward, who was killed in Sebastopol by officers following a chase and a lot of confusion over a stolen vehicle in November of 2019. In May, Ward’s death was ruled a homicide by the Marin County Coroner.
Five recommendations stemmed from the audit of the case, including: adopt de-escalation policies like the high-risk stop procedure and incorporate them into policy manual; modify the Vehicle Pursuit Policy (when to initiate/terminate); investigate conflicting information from dispatch; increase training in biased policing (implicit bias) and crisis intervention; and address training issues with Internal Affairs investigators (leading questions).
According to the report, as a result of these recommendations, two new policies and one new investigation resulted. An overarching de-escalation policy will now be applied, and officers will receive increased training in implicit bias (two hours every five years increased to four times per year) and crisis intervention (from 32 hours for life to four times per year). In addition, the department opened an investigation of dispatch in relation to the incident.
Another complaint highlighted related to errors in reporting to ICE. Eight recommendations stemmed from this audit, including: revise training program (provide a trainer and guide for employees interpreting the statute); provide regular trainings for employees (e.g.: bi-annual); institute a two-person system of review where every case is reviewed separately by two different employees before notifications are made to ICE; assign the duty of ICE notification to a specified team who receives regular training; do not notify ICE until there is a conviction; authorize employees to run RAP sheets for sex-registrants; training in open-ended questions; and allow auditors to sit-in on interviews of witnesses.
All of the recommendations were incorporated into a new Immigration Notification policy except for waiting until a conviction before ICE notification and allowing the auditor to sit-in on Internal Affairs interviews.
A final case highlighted in the report is the injury during transportation of a combative arrestee. Two recommendations stemmed from this audit, including: adopting a policy for deputies transporting verbally aggressive or combative arrestees to minimize injuries and codifying that Internal Affairs investigators should not use email to interview witnesses.
The department did adopt a transportation of arrestees policy that reads, “When transporting a physically or verbally aggressive, violent or combative arrestee, deputies should notify sheriff’s dispatch while en route to the county jail and request dispatch notify jail staff. The transporting deputy should provide dispatch an estimated travel time to the jail and any safety considerations. Dispatch will notify the jail staff of the impending arrival and provide jail staff with the information.
“Upon arrival at the jail, the transporting deputy waits for the assistance of jail staff which may include mental health staff, medical staff or additional deputies and a video recorder (in addition to BWC’s) prior to removing the arrestee from the vehicle.”
In addition, overall trends IOLERO identified as problematic included: witness interview issues, with leading questions was the most common issue; incomplete investigations including two cases involving errors by jail mental health/medical staff where an inmate was placed in the general population instead of the mental health or medical, and a case involved the harassment/intimidation of an inmate; de-escalation with the most significant issues arising in the David Ward case; and finally dispatch issues, with two cases involved issues of dispatch providing inaccurate or incomplete information to the deputies.
